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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.

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Rust in Linux lead retires rather than deal with more “nontechnical nonsense” (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Linux people doing Linux things, it seems.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I understand the reluctance but it feels to me like arguing “we should just stick with COBOL because it works.”

For those depending on COBOL code that does the job and has been doing it just well for a few decades, there are approximately zero good reasons to not stick with it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Does it count as “doing it well” when every release has fixes for previous releases’ memory bugs?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Eventually all the people who know and are good at cobol will die.
A while before that happens, the people who know it will continually demand more money for their rare skills.
Eventually, the cobol systems out there will need to interface new systems in some way it wasn't designed to and it'll be more expensive to shoehorn the remote system than to let the ancient beast retire.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Even if, we are talking about the Linux kernel. Our entire ecosystem builds upon C. People choosing C for new projects because it is the common denominator.

If Rust should be adopted in the kernel faster, patches should be send which comment how each line addresses issues of memory management solved and elaborations for rust specific patterns unfamiliar to a C dev.

Lurkers will pick up Rust that way as well.

Each Rust dev had to pick it up and therefore should be able to enable other - probably more experienced - Linux kernel hacker to provide reviewable patches.

It shouldn't be the other way around, else you are just stepping on the efforts the other human provided to that project.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm not against Rust. I'd like to see something less dangerous with memory than C, but I don't think it's time yet for the kernel to leave C.

It's pretty clean, stable, it's working well at the moment and the C language (or variants of it) is/are still actively used everywhere. I think the kernel universally going Rust will be a long road of everything under the sun going there first before it's ported in earnest.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The goal ATM is simply to allow people to write new drivers in rust, not convert the whole kernel to rust. It will be a very long time, before more core parts would be allowed to be written in rust let alone rewriting any existing core kernel code. Which is all fine as new drivers are a large part where bugs are added - older parts have had a long time for bugs to be found and fixed and so it is far less important to need to rewrite them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Yes there is never old code with bugs that have been sitting there for decades.