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Linus Torvalds Begins Expressing Regrets Merging Bcachefs
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Can someone say why bcachefs is interesting? Btrfs I can sort of understand. I haven't much kept track of most others.
For me the reason was that I wanted encryption, raid1 and compression with a mainlined filesystem to my workstation. Btrfs doesn't have encryption, so you need to do it with luks to an mdadm raid, and build btrfs on top of that. Luks on mdadm raid is known to be slow, and in general not a great idea.
ZFS has raid levels, encryption and compression, but doesn't have fsck. So you better have an UPS for your workstation for electric outages. If you do not unmount a ZFS volume cleanly, there's a risk of data loss. ZFS also has a weird license, so you will never get it with mainline Linux kernel. And if you install the module separately, you're not able to update to the latest kernel before ZFS supports it.
Bcachefs has all of this. And it's supposed to be faster than ZFS and btrfs. In a few years it can really be the golden Linux filesystem recommended for everybody. I sure hope Kent gets some more help and stops picking fights with Linus before that.
Why involve mdadm? You can use one btrfs filesystem on a pair of luks volumes with btrfs's "raid1" (or dup) profile. Both volumes can decrypt with the same key.