I had Ubuntu for 8 years and it was as you describe (things broke all the time and every time I had to spend hours searching forums for arcane command lines etc). With Bazzite everything just works and nothing ever breaks. KDE with Wayland looks and feels amazing. I love love love the experience!

Why not Bazzite on both? Bazzite is a fantastic desktop OS! Easier to use than naked Fedora and virtually unbreakable.

Meanwhile Windows has been getting worse and worse. Completely unreasonable and unnecessary hardware requirements, spyware, constantly running antivirus and other processes you don't want, forced updates and reboots, shoving AI down your throat. In other words, you pay money to have a worse experience and less control over your own PC.

I've been ideologically opposed to Windows for a while, but a few years ago Linux required many trade-offs and compromises, to the point I wouldn't have recommended to most people. But now things are completely different and I would happily recommend it to anyone except those who have a hard requirement for MS software (or Adobe).

I used Ubuntu for 8 years constantly fixing issues, from the day I installed it (because it didn't support basic Ryzen), after every distro upgrade, and various other random points, e.g. when installing a package whose dependency overwrote something. Each issue took hours to fix, usually searching forums for arcane command lines and trying everything until something worked (possibly breaking other things in the process).

Last year I tried Bazzite for my kid who like games and realized that it's 100x better than Ubuntu, for both gaming and serious work. It's 100x more stable and virtually unbreakable, far more modern and up-to-date than Ubuntu, and I can still do just about everything I want (just have to do it differently because it's atomic). Since I switched to Bazzite I have had zero issues, because atomic distros are inherently so much more stable. Everyone uses the exact same image, and the state of the OS is always fresh and doesn't deteriorate over time the way mutable distros do. And best of all, if any issue does come up (which is extremely rare), the fix is always the same and it takes 1 minute: boot into the previous version.

I used to avoid using my PC due to constant issues with Ubuntu, now I often switch it on simply because Bazzite makes me so happy.

It frustrates me to no end that people to this day still recommend Ubuntu and its derivatives as "good" and "user friendly" when it literally breaks all the bloody time, and meanwhile there are awesome distros like Bazzite and Aurora that are rock-solid like MacOS and ChromeOS.

It seems to me that the people/committees who built C++ just spent decades inventing new and creative ways for developers to shoot themselves in the foot. Like, why does the language need to offer a hundred different ways to accomplish each trivial task (and 98 of them are bad)?

It's a "two-way street" (you can walk away as much as he), but you need to understand that this is not an equal relationship. It might have been if Linux did not yet have a file system and you were the only person who could build one. If that was the case, Linus might have swallowed his pride for the good of the project. But as it stands, Linux has existed for some 35 years without Bcachefs and can continue to do so. So the key stakeholders have simply decided that with this amount of friction, despite the technical advantages, it's not worth the trouble (yes, it is sad).

Very realistically and bluntly, you have 3 options: a) Learn to work Linus and other kernel maintainers in ways that are comparable with their work and processes. Remember, you're on their territory, and when in Rome, do as the Romans do. b) Keep and develop Bcachefs out of kernel. That way you can stay on your own turf and work on your terms, but Bcachefs is going to be a much less attractive and viable option, leave alone become the default fs. c) Have someone else do the integration work and collaboration with the kernel team.

These are your options, but a combination is also an option. I would probably recommend starting with option b first and finish the bulk of the work out of tree. Then once it's all done and ready to ship, try to get it into the kernel as politely and timely as possible (you shouldn't need any late commits this time). Continue developing new and experimental functionality out of tree to keep the number of PRs (and thus possible causes of friction) low. I don't know if at any point you'd want to ask someone else to interface with the kernel team. I think it's far preferable if you can learn to do it yourself. Knowing how to work with people (including difficult people) is an incredibly important and useful skill in almost anyone's career. Maybe find a communication/diplomacy mentor? I've never heard anyone complain about your engineering skills, but this is really holding you back.

Again and as always, thank you for your hard work. I wish you all the best and hope that some day we can all use Bcachefs by default.