In some controversial news, openSUSE announced that it plans to disable support for the Bcachefs file system in openSUSE Tumbleweed with the next major kernel update, Linux 6.17, due out in late September or early October 2025.
Starting with Linux kernel 6.17, Linus Torvalds changed the maintainer status of the Bcachefs file system from “supported” to “externally maintained” since Bcachefs is no longer supported by the core kernel team because the Bcachefs devs refuse to follow the standards and rules regarding bug fixes and kernel versions.
While Bcachefs support lives in current kernel releases, no new Bcachefs commits will be accepted for the upcoming Linux 6.17 kernel series. As such, some distribution maintainers who ship the latest and greatest kernel have already decided to disable support for Bcachefs installations.
“Given Bcachefs is “externally maintained” since 6.17, we are disabling the filesystem in 6.17 too,” said SUSE employee Jiri Slaby. “Therefore, everyone using it should follow the Bcachefs’ upstream advice on how to install and use it. Anyone interested might also possibly prepare a KMP [Kernel_Module_Packages] for themselves (and others).”
openSUSE devs also said that they do not plan on maintaining or backporting Bcachefs downstream patches in the openSUSE kernel builds starting with Linux kernel 6.17, and that they will re-enable Bcachefs support once the Bcachefs maintainer behaves and the code is maintained upstream again.
This change will most likely affect users of the openSUSE Tumbleweed distribution, as well as openSUSE Slowroll. openSUSE devs ensure users that the current Linux 6.16 kernel builds in Tumbleweed are not affected by this change, so if you want to keep using Bcachefs, you shouldn’t update your installations to Linux kernel 6.17.
Linux kernel 6.17 is expected to hit the streets later this month, on September 28th, or on October 5th if Linus Torvalds decides that an extra RC (Release Candidate) is needed.
