With DKMS packages now being available for Ubuntu and Debian Linux distributions for running the latest out-of-tree Bcachefs file-system driver support with ease and reproducibility, I decided to try out the updated Bcachefs driver on Ubuntu Linux to see how the performance is relative to the upstream Linux 6.17 kernel with its now-frozen Bcachefs support.
Bcachefs lead developer Kent Overstreet is now maintaining the Debian/Ubuntu packages for Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS) modules to make it easy running the latest Bcachefs code — both the kernel modules and then the Bcachefs user-space tools too — with ease. Kent is also maintaining similar packages for other Linux distributions too now that the upstream Linux kernel developer has parted ways with Bcachefs improvements for now.
Indeed, setting up the Bcachefs repository on Ubuntu was straight-forward and was quickly off and running with my tests using Ubuntu 25.10 daily with the Linux 6.17 kernel.
For getting an idea of the performance of the current Bcachefs out-of-tree/DKMS state, I ran some benchmarks compared to the recently wrapped up Linux 6.17 filesystem benchmarks. Again, all testing was done on a Crucial T705 1TB PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSD (CT1000T705SSD3) and using the stock/default mount options for each file-system tested. Bcachefs is both with the upstream Linux 6.17 state and then the Bcachefs DKMS packages alongside the Linux 6.17 benchmarks of Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS, OpenZFS, and XFS file-systems.
