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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 weeks 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] 91 points 2 weeks ago (23 children)

Except in this case, it was a bunch of old C devs who aren't just resistant but openly hostile to change, and they'd rather bully people into silence than try to progress.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

If I go to any of the teams I interact with who program their components in C++ and proposed Rust or anything else, I'd get a similar reaction. They're very good at C++ and they very rarely have memory and threading issues. 😂

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

They don’t get, that without memory issue resistant language, not a lot of new blood will be as good as them dealing with that stuff since they already have that solved in the language itself.

It is about making kernel development future proof, so that new devs keep on coming and don’t create massive security holes on the way.

Well this is how I understand it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Note that Rust does not "solve" memory management for you, it just checks whether yours is memory safe. Initially you might rely on the borrow checker for those checks, but as you become more and more used to Rust you'll start to anticipate it and write code that already safisfies it. So ultimately you'll still learn how to safely deal with memory management, just in a different way.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Yeah all of the times I see Rust being described as "harder to learn" than C I just shake my head. It's like saying that it's easier to just fall off the cliff at the Grand Canyon instead of taking the path down. Any additional difficulty is because the language forces you to understand memory and pointers properly, instead of just letting you fuck around and find out.