this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025

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Asahi Lina: For personal reasons, I no longer feel safe working on Linux GPU drivers or the Linux graphics ecosystem. I've paused work on Apple GPU drivers indefinitely. (mastodon.gamedev.place)

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

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For personal reasons, I no longer feel safe working on Linux GPU drivers or the Linux graphics ecosystem. I've paused work on Apple GPU drivers indefinitely.

I can't share any more information at this time, so please don't ask for more details. Thank you.

If you think you know what happened or the context, you probably don't. Please don't make assumptions. Thank you.

I'm safe physically, but I'll be taking some time off in general to focus on my health.

Well that's sudden.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Spinning more drama around this project, that’s what it needs.

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

RIP Asahi Linux.

Fuck off to all the fascists ruining OSS.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What fascists are ruining OSS?

[–] [email protected] 67 points 2 days ago

Guessing it's because Lina is queer. A little bit ago, I was trying to find what was going on and found a bunch of bigoted comments and conspiracy theories about her and her girlfriend(maybe wife now?).

[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 days ago (1 children)

First Marcan, now Lina. Huge blow to the Asahi project :(

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

If the Rust maintainers keep dropping like this, I foresee Linux eventually losing its lead as an operating system. The transition to Rust is absolutely necessary, other OSs are catching up slowly but surely.

And unlike AI, this makes an actual positive difference in maintainability and speed.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Rust isn't necessary. It can be mildly helpful, but it's also hurt in that it's community tends to make it actively unhelpful, just like in this case.

Linux development happened just fine for decades before rust, and while there are benefits to rust from a security point of view, if they can't maintain the code, they'll just go back to C and deal with process and policy for managing memory safety.

[+] [email protected] -7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Some old fashioned c++ and c developers, like me, feel more entitled to entrench more, and see Rust as a political movement, and not a serious tool.

I’m fairly reactionary against adding more Rust to stable projects. While I’m sure at some of that is me being old and set in my ways, the other gives people like me talking points, which may or may not help.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

your description of yourself is that you're an insufferable twat?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (9 children)

Ignoring your rudeness now. It’s more like I’ve seen the same wheel invented a lot of times and can recognize most tech are basically equally functional.

I used to make fun of cobol because it has no stack; I often wondered why such a language was ever popular, why it had so many lines of code. Now, I know there was a reason it worked, why it still is used, and can appreciate how people work with it.

I’ve made a couple of my own languages nobody uses; so new and different languages do not overawe me as much.

Any popular language, new or old, works well enough with it having strengths and weaknesses. Some have superiority in their libraries or ecosystems and not the core. It’s ok to choose a language based on this or that. It’s ok to mix and match languages together in one project because it’s how they talk together which makes it work, and in the larger scope of things it really does not matter which is used.

I personally have nothing against any language, including rust.

It’s a general trend to try to fit a specific language everywhere that irritates me, I tend to see that as a software nerd’s religion or politics instead of how much better that language is.

And so, based on the above, is why proponents of their holy language irritate the crap out of me. And rust is certainly not the first to do that

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There's a lot of irony here for you to invent enemy "holy rust" people in your head while failing to see your own projection of "use my holy C I preach and stop preaching others".

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I made no such claim about c nor am I saying it should be used in general, if you read what I wrote more carefully, I am actually against all that

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

other OSs are catching up slowly but surely.

Which ones are those? Linux is a rock, it doesnt budge it just slowly but surely does its thing. Thats why people use Linux, because it serves its purpose and it has been doing that for a while without Rust.

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[–] [email protected] 92 points 2 days ago (5 children)

This is the worst way how to announce something like this.

I don't know the context, but if the goal was to not start a wave of speculations, it would be better to simply not hint at anything. I wonder what happened, and I respect if they don't want to deal with it, but this does feel weird.

[–] [email protected] 74 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I no longer feel safe

Please don’t make assumptions

Yeah wtf is that. If there are reasons to feel unsafe that arent just entirely individual, then you should tell other people that might be in danger. If its entirely individual, then state that so that other people wont be worried about their safety.

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[–] [email protected] 95 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Wild. All I wanna do now is make assumptions. 🤣

[–] [email protected] 64 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Most of it was pretty much said in the previous announcement from the Asahi leadership. The TL:DR is that people are incredibly entitled, support took a huge downturn, but demands kept rising, and allegedly there have been numerous personal attacks on people. The Linux project leadership drama was just the whipped cream on top of the cake

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

WTF? Is somebody threatening her for working on open source drivers???

What is this fucking timeline...

Edit: ohhhhh...there seems to be a LOT of underlying stuff happening here. Like Lina is an anime alter-ego of Marcan I guess? So confused...

[–] [email protected] 60 points 2 days ago (1 children)

These talking points about identity originated from kiwi farms.

It's this kind of weird unhealthy speculation that gets people to step down.

I'd not perpetuate it.

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