Bcachefs Receives Funding By NLNet With NGI Zero Grant

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Bcachefs Receives Funding By NLNet With NGI Zero Grant

The Bcachefs file-system that was mainlined to the Linux kernel last year has received a grant from the NLNet Foundation...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Bcachefs-NLNet-Grant

[botipua22]

I stick to good old ext4 but bcachefs has my interest piqued.

[varikonniemi]

I could not envision a better recipient for funding. Contrast to the recently announced 1 million for gnome? What will it materialize as?

[spicfoo]

I could not envision a better recipient for funding. Contrast to the recently announced 1 million for gnome? What will it materialize as?

You don't have to talk down another Free software project to celebrate a different one. The funding for GNOME will address important aspects including accessibility, secrets storage and encrypted home directories. I don't see anything at all objectionable about what it funds and I will directly benefit from accessibility improvements.

[varikonniemi]

You don't have to talk down another Free software project to celebrate a different one. The funding for GNOME will address important aspects including accessibility, secrets storage and encrypted home directories. I don't see anything at all objectionable about what it funds and I will directly benefit from accessibility improvements.

My point was more towards contrasting how frontend bs gets funding but the meat of the issue, what makes Linux the premiere, is most often forgotten in these kind of outside fundings.

Sure, you want to fund Linux desktop. Best way to do that it by funding Linux, and let the desktop organically build on top of a incrementally better kernel you funded. Instead of spending 1M on UI you could spend 1M on kernel, and have 10M worth of enthusiastic volunteer UI developers come in because your kernel became next level.

[spicfoo]

My point was more towards contrasting how frontend bs gets funding but the meat of the issue, what makes Linux the premiere, is most often forgotten in these kind of outside fundings.
Sure, you want to fund Linux desktop. Best way to do that it by funding Linux, and let the desktop organically build on top of a incrementally better kernel you funded.

On the contrary, the vast majority of funding for Linux is for backend systems including millions from all the major tech companies. Desktop barely receives any funding at all and is lagging behind heavily. If anything, desktop should receive much more funding from non traditional sources because nobody is paying for desktop linux. Accessibility for example needs a lot more attention and adding more funding to the kernel does nothing at all to help with that.

[Quackdoc]

Really glad to see bcachefs get the funding it deserves. or at least some of it. I currently use it on my gaming and scratch nvme, compared to f2fs I havent noticed a difference in speed, but for sure how much I am able to shove onto it thanks to reflink and compression that actually saves space. It also hasn't crashed except for a single time, but I was/am running dkms so I updated that and issue never occured again

[skeevy420]

My point was more towards contrasting how frontend bs gets funding but the meat of the issue, what makes Linux the premiere, is most often forgotten in these kind of outside fundings.

Sure, you want to fund Linux desktop. Best way to do that it by funding Linux, and let the desktop organically build on top of a incrementally better kernel you funded. Instead of spending 1M on UI you could spend 1M on kernel, and have 10M worth of enthusiastic volunteer UI developers come in because your kernel became next level.

It's because the front end bs is what people see when they use an OS. How good Linux is behind the scenes is irrelevant if how it looks and behaves up front is crappy and hard to use when compared to the desktop alternatives in macOS and Windows.

What you're suggesting is basically the current status quo and is why we're in a place where themes don't even work between Qt and GTK, let alone all the other UI tool kits. A bunch of random enthusiastic volunteers don't have a unified direction or goal. They want what they want and that's what they do. That's why we've ended up with KDE, GNOME, XFCE, Enlightenment, Budgie, COSMIC, IceWM, Fluxbox, Blackbox, Openbox, Sway, SwayFX, i3, Weston, Metacity, Mutter, KWin, KWin-FT....

Projects and funding means leadership, direction, and goals. It's leadership, direction, and goals that are able to put the 10M worth of enthusiastic volunteers to good use. The UI getting funding is just as important and, dare I say, more important than the kernel's funding.

It's like America's defense budget. Having naval carrier groups, hundreds of F35s, battalions of soldiers on the ready, and thousands of nuclear bombs and missiles seems kind of useless when you can't even offer health insurance, feed the children, or pay the teachers. Throwing all the budget to the kernel and letting the rest of the OS fight for the scraps is like that. Trickle down kernel-nomics.

[ehansin]

Go Kent, go! I just took a look at his Patreon page, and his header image is a picture of the Battersea Power Station, different image, but what is featured on the Pink Floyd "Animals" album. Nice

[hyperchaotic]

It's really wonderful to see entities like the European Commission DG CNECT and the German Sovereign Tech Fund helping projects. I hope we'll see more of this going forward - companies and governments recognizing the advantages of open source to the community as a whole.