From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
Oof, that video... I don't have enough patience to put up with that sort of thing either. I wonder how plausible a complete Rust fork of the kernel would be.
That person in the audience was really grinding my gears. Just let the folks you're talking to answer you; no need to keep going on your diatribe when it's based on a false assumption and waste the whole room's time.
I wonder how plausible a complete Rust fork of the kernel would be.
It sounds highly impractical, and it would probably introduce more issues than Rust solves, even if there were enough people with enough free time to do it. Any change must be evolutionary if it's going to be achievable.
NOT a fork of Linux, but Redox is aiming for a Unix-like OS based on Rust – but even with “source compatibility” with Linux/BSD and drivers being in userspace, my guess would be hardware drivers are still going to be a big speed bump
All you need nowadays for a decent Unix-like is compatibility with a handful of Linux softwares and a web browser. Hell, if you could get WINE working on your kernel you could maybe support as many Windows apps/games as Linux for free.
The big issue, as I see it, is performant drivers for a wide range of hardware. That doesn't come easy, but I wonder if that can be addressed in a way I'm too inexperienced to know.
But projects like Redox are a genuine threat to the hegemony of Linux - if memory safety isn't given the true recognition it deserves, projects like Redox serve to be the same disrupting force as Linux once was for UNIX.
Ted Ts'o is a prick with a god complex. I understand his experience is hard to match, we all have something in our lives we're that good at, but that does not need to lead to acting like a fucking religious fanatic.
Who is Ted Ts' in this context?
He's the guy you hear vexing rust in the video posted. While both languages have their pros and cons, he chooses to just blast this other guy by repeating the same crap over and over without letting him reply. Basically the kind of person with a "I win because I'm louder" demeanor.
Who the fuck is this little shit? Can't they even be a little considerate towards rust? Just because they have 15 years worth of inertia for C doesn't mean they can close their eyes and say "nope, I'm not interested". I do not see how the kernel can survive without making rust a first class citizen
Someone linked the thread from Phoronix forum and the comments are so awful. Imagine having to deal with people like this.
One of them reads:
We need Microsoft people like we need fleas. Why can't they work for projects we don't like, like GNOME?
It is funny because Ts'o works at Google, lol.
Phoronix comments were always dumb, like, infuriating bad, I don't even read them anymore, the moderation on that site don't give a fuck about toxicity in there
Avis/Bridei/Artem has been active as a super troll on that forum for years and absolutely nothing had been done
Phoronix comments are a special place on the internet. Don't go there for a good discussion.
The kernel is mostly written in C, by C developers... understandably they're rather refactor C code to make it better instead of rewritting everything in the current fancy language that'll save the world this time (especially considering proponents of said language always, at every chance they get, sell it as C is crap, this is better).
Linux is over 30yo and keeps getting better and more stable, that's the power of open-source.
This sounds exactly like the type of nontechnical nonsense they're complaining about: attacking a strawman ("they're trying to prevent people from refactoring C code and making them rewrite everything in the current fancy language") even after explicitly calling out that that was not going to happen ("and to reiterate, no one is trying force anyone else to learn Rust nor prevent refactorings of C code").
Most reasonable people say c is good, rust is better
C is crap for anything where security matters. I'll happily take that debate with anyone who thinks differently.
[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
Agree. I'm an absolutely awesome software dev myself - and I know C by heart (being my favorite language after assembler). However, with age comes humility and the ability to recognize that I will write buggy code every now and then.
Better the language saves me when I can't, in security critical situations.
I think most people would agree with you, but that isn't really the issue. Rather the question is where the threshold for rewriting in Rust vs maintaining in C lies. Rewriting in any language is costly and error-prone, so at what point do the benefits outweigh that cost and risk? For a legacy, battle-tested codebase (possibly one of the most widely tested codebases out there), the benefit is probably on the lower side.
What debate? You offered zero arguments and "C bad tho" isn't one.
Do you believe C isn't crap when it comes to security? Please explain why and I'll happily debate you.
/fw hacker, reverse engineer
Maybe when you build some little application or whatever. When building the most used kernel in the world, there are probably some considerations that very few people can even try to understand.
C is crap for anything where security matters.
True for people misusing it. If you want to argue the ease of mis-use, it's a fun talk.
Better in what ways? Rust's strong points are not to just make a program more stable, but more secure from a memory standpoint and I don't think Linux keeps improving on that
at every chance they get, sell it as C is crap, this is better
For 'sendmail' values of $C, this resembles another argument. Also, of course for $C=sysvinit.
This is a little off topic and admittedly an oversimplification, but people saying Rust's memory safety isn't a big deal remind me of people saying static typing isn't a big deal.
The video attached is a perfect example of the kind of "I'm not prepared to learn anything new so everyone else is wrong" attitude that is eating away at Linux like a cancer.
If memory safety isn't adopted into the kernel, and C fanaticism discarded, Linux will face the same fate as the kernels it once replaced. Does the Linux foundation want to drag its heels and stuff millions into AI ventures whilst sysadmins quietly shift to new kernels that offer memory safety, or does it want to be part of that future?
If Linux gets rewritten in Rust it will be a new kernel, not Linux. You can make new kernels, even in Rust but they aren't Linux. You can advertise them at Linux conferences but you can't force every Linux dev to work on your new Rust kernel.
There is no "your" new rust kernel. There is a gigantic ship of Theseus that is the Linux kernel, and many parts of it are being rewritten, refactored, removed an added all the time by god knows how many different people. Some of those things will be done in rust.
Can we stop reacting to this the way conservatives react to gay people? Just let some rust exist. Nobody is forcing everyone to be gay, and nobody is forcing everybody to immediately abandon C and rewrite everything in rust.
Isn't Linux still Linux even though probably a lot of the original code is gone? Why would slowly rewriting it whole, or just parts, in Rust make it stop being Linux?
Is a single line of code in the kernel completely unchanged since its birth?
I am no visionary but if Linux doesn’t internalize this, I’m afraid some other kernel will do to it what it did to Unix.
Maybe that's not a bad thing? If you ask me the GNU people are missing a trick. Perhaps if they rewrote Hurd in Rust they could finally shed that "/Linux".
RUST ppl feel like ARCH ppl. yes it might be better than some other setup yadda yadda, but they are so enervating.i'd rather switch back to windows11 than read another post/blog on how som crustians replaced this or that c library. just shut up already.
People are dumb as hell, it's fucking open source, go maintain the c fork, and let the those who want to improve the fucking shit cve producing codebase make a rust fork. And see which one people will use, and we all know that the rust fork will have wider adoption, it's a no brainer.
No one is forcing them to maintain the Linux kernel, no one is telling them to stop writing patches, they can't because you can download the code and work on it as you like.
It's people who know they will be irrelevant because they spent decades producing shit software, and they can't even be bothered to learn a new language to improve stability and security for the whole fucking userbase. Give me a break, what a bunch of whiners.
This is such a dumb take. For as much as I'd like to have a safer language in the kernel you need the current developers, the "big heads" at least because they have a lot of niche knowledge about their domains and how they implementation works (regardless of language) People shouldn't take shit like this from the ext4 developer, but it doesn't mean we should start vilifying all of them.
This guy's concerns are real and valid but were expressed with the maturity of a lunatic child, but they are not all like this.
Nobody can maintan a fork of the linux kernel on their own or even with a team. It's a HUGE task.
There already is rust in part of the linux kernel. It's not a fork.
But I agree with your first statement, people are dumb as hell, me included lol
I feel like the time to hide information behind YouTube links is over. Feels like a link to a paywall article at this point.
I admit I'm biased towards C-languages out of sheer personal preference and limited exposure to Rust but I am wondering, are there any major technical barriers to Rust replacing these languages in it's current form anymore?
I know there has been a lot of movement towards supporting Rust in the last 6 years since I've become aware of it, but I also get flashbacks from the the early 00's when I would hear about how Java was destined to replace C++, and the early 2010's when Python was destined to replace everything only to realize that the hype fundamentally misunderstood the use case limitations of the various languages.
omfg, that guy in the video...
3min 30s, sample for context
If you keep watching for 10 minutes, it's an interesting discussion. Too bad they had to cut it short due to time.