Retiring from the Rust for Linux Project – Wedson Almeida Filho

I try to sit on the fence when it comes to Rust and the Linux kernel. On one end, is Rust the right choice to be included... over others such as Zig or (perhaps) Odin? Are we 10 years too soon to include a "safe language" ????

Then again, we have Linus Torvolds who, in the last 20 years, has been hell-bent against including C++ in the kernel despite backlash.. yet.. he has accepted Rust a year or so ago. He obviously sees Rust in a completely different manner compared to C++ -- even though you could write crap code in Rust as well.

I get it -- the amount of harcore C programmers are likely shrinking. This means, over time, the linux kernel will eventually have less maintainers. It seems, to me, that Linus accepts reality that he is getting older (54) and wont be the maintainer forever. The younger generation are going to be the back-bone of keeping the project alive and if they are NOT focusing their efforts on C.. then what are they focusing on?

Rust, as good as it is, does have hype riding behind it. We also have other "Nu" languages which are eventually getting their stable releases in the coming months/years. Again, is Rust the right choice?

I understand the backlash especially veterans who have put in their efforts on the kernel and have no wish to learn Rust. I am sure there are plenty of Rust people throwing their world views opinions yet barely wrote anything decent in C, if at all.

Seems like everyone has an opinion even if their views on the opposite end is lacking.

As I say I try to sit on the fence. I have not focused my efforts on Rust but I don't actively object to it. I am just skeptical it has been added too soon to the project... but that is my opinion.

> I truly believe the future of kernels is with memory-safe languages. 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.

This is why I want to work on multi-kernel NixOS — I want to make this threat as credible as possible.

If ever new kennel requires one to switch to an entirely different user land arbitrarily, they're just imposing stupid switching costs that hamper competition. If you can easily get your experimental kernel and rig it up with NixOS, we could have a real renaissance for systems programming.

i encourage everyone to watch the linked video [0]. reminds me of the recent non-technical arguments made in the freebsd thread [1].

git mailing lists have such a greybeard IRC vibe to them. i will, from now on, use "only accepts patches per mail" as a proxy for "not worth suggesting new ideas to" for all projects. it's a stupid proxy. correlation and causation and all that. but it's a very useful one for your sanity.

[0] https://youtu.be/WiPp9YEBV0Q?t=1529

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41386697

I'm at the point of wishing for the Rust experiment in the Linux kernel to be over. It's become an over-dramatic culture clash of a distraction, taking away from the valuable time that the already over-burdened kernel developers have available. Combine that with the veiled threats and passive aggressive tone of the email and it is all a turn-off.

Let the Rust folks go off and do their own kernel project(s). If they can come up with something feasibly better, it will be adopted and they can displace the current C-based Linux kernel. Based on what I've seen of Rust and the crowd that has taken to it, this does not seem a likely outcome. (Worse yet, maintainers are dropping Rust packages for practical reasons.) Still, they should try so that they can see for themselves while leaving the current developers to their existing affairs.

Like parents separating two fighting children, both sides of this need to be pulled away and kept separated. The Rust crowd can go off and have their own project(s) and the Linux kernel can continue being only C-based. And never the twain shall meet. If the Rust crowd manages to build something better, it will replace the alternative. If not, they need to accept the reasons why without pleading to social media masses. We've seen PipeWire come along and replace PulseAudio. We've seen X11 keep a stronghold over Wayland. To the Rust crowd, focus your energy on building something somewhere else that you feel is better. To the Linux kernel developer crowd, it's time to move on from this experiment for everyone's peace of mind.

Who was the angry guy who was shouting ?

I'm out of my depth here, and I don't fully understand. From what I gather, Rust restricts the possible pathways in the problem space to ensure certain assumptions in the API and to manage memory safely. Is the issue that C allows for more freedom in exploring all possible pathways, or is the problem rooted only to cultural or else?

This was inevitable.

Forget all this drama, I wonder if we can have a Borrow Checker, like the one Rust has, implemented on top of C as an optional feature? And since it's just a compile-time thing, it won't cause any incompatibility or breakage at runtime. I love the idea of having the memory safety features that the Rust compiler offers, but I find Rust unreadable, it hurts my eyes, why do we have to write "let" to define a variable? why did they completely change the syntax if the goal is to be a C alternative!?

> and to reiterate, no one is trying force anyone else to learn Rust nor prevent refactorings of C code

I have no dog in this race, but basic logic says if the linux kernel contains rust code, then a linux kernel dev will either need to learn rust or avoid doing things that require changes to those parts of the code.

I don’t know how you can wave this away as “technical nonsense”.

The Phoronix forums are always a place of infinite brain rot. Phoronix is valuable, but its forums... No.

They let you in, you take a shit on the floor and leave. Who is to blame?

I don't blame this guy. It's the people who let the Barbarians in, because politics.

Sometimes gates need to be kept.

linux kernel should've been rewritten in rust already, it's inevitable ( /s )