Why does it suck for users? Those brave enough to use new filesystem, surely can use custom kernel for the time being, while merge effort is underway and vanilla kernel might not be the most stable option.
I believe part of the problem is distributions including it in their installers without requiring any of the usual “type the words “I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING”” to proceed” warning gates that are otherwise typical.
What distributions are including kernels so quickly without also including various patch sets applied? Even Gentoo layers patches on top of the recent kernels, unless you run the literal source; but if you can do that you can apply your own patch sets.
Big distros like RedHat or Ubuntu always roll patched kernels, and as far as I know they’re usually a bit long in the tooth.
It seems to me like the goal is to work around the user having to type that to use Bcachefs while implying that they will have with the standard gatekeepers to avoid any limits on adoption via quality checks.
Any distro shipping -rc releases to regular users can apply Kent's patches themselves if they think it's that important. But seriously, how many distros do that, and of those, how many of their users are on experimental filesystems?
