> Well, maybe that's exactly what should happen. Maybe rust should have never been allowed in the kernel in the first place.
Can you clarify these two sentences? You say there should be a memory-safe kernel, and then you say Rust should never have been allowed, which is the opposite.
What they're getting at is that it probably would have been better if the Rust people had started their own kernel project, cherry-picked the pieces of Linux they wanted, and then made their own new thing without three decades of obsolete Unix/Linux baggage. This would mean they could spend their time actually writing software and and less time trying to convince a bunch of C programmers that their time is at an end and their influence is counterproductive.
Describing it as “the Rust people” as though they are separate from the a Linux project is a rhetorical sleight of hand to imply some sort of outside invasion.
These are a Linux kernel people who want to use Rust. Writing a new kernel would be fundamentally different than working on Linux.
Also, they are “writing software,” and have been for a long time now. This isn’t just some random arguing on mailing lists, this is actual patches, with folks like Asahi and Android writing real meaningful drivers on top of it.
They are separate from the other kernel developers, but not in the negative way you seem to want to assign to me. They aren't an outside invasion, they are a cultural revolution.
They may want to work on Linux but it's clear that the rest of the Linux developer community does not want to allow it, for reasons you are free to interpret as positive or negative as you see fit.
They want to write software, and they are getting somewhere, but they are restricted by the attitudes of the rest of the Linux kernel people fighting against them, so they are sucked into constant flamewars and divisive infighting. All just so they can say what they are working on is "Linux".
At the end, the question must be asked whether or not Linux and its decades of Linux/Unix baggage are worth holding back the progress represented by a kernel that is Rust from top to bottom, and written with safety and security as its top priorities from day zero instead of decades after.
There are people interested in making the Linux kernel more memory safe using Rust. And from what I am observing they aren't interested in a hard fork and are looking for collaboration.
These are different populations.
Contrary to what Theodore Ts'o is ignorantly saying, Rust is not a religion.
Same opinion here, have all this giant proRust energy and put it behind a few Rust kernels, combining the Rust super powers with latest kernels architectures and have at least one Rust kernel that is not UNIX but something super modern.
I would have expected more then one Rust kernels.
It kind of seems that Rust community is missing the ability or the desire to implement a kernel and would like the Linux kernel devs to do the work for them.
There are tons of embedded kernels, Android uses Rust in their Linux, Windows already ships Rust in their kernel. Just because someone mentions one project doesn’t mean it’s an exhaustive list.
I mean notable projects, I do not consider toy projects in this.
Just because someone pushed some Rust into a kernel it does not make that kernel a Rust kernel, this is the issue with Rust community , hyping the fact that some devs managed to pushed a few lines of Rust in some kernel as some big victory.
Even Mozilla gave up on making a browser in 100% Rust, it seems that rewriting in Rust is not that easy and people like to talk then do the work.
I'm not talking about toy projects. I'm talking about real, used in production kernels. One of those embedded ones is used by my employer, for example.
> people like to talk then do the work.
There are tens of millions (I'm being conservative here, not sure I'd claim 100M) of Rust code running in production, at many very large tech companies. I feel like you have an opinion and are trying to fit the facts to it, rather than the other way around.
So why are you naming that non toy kernel your company uses in many devices in production?
I did not say that there are not tons of millions of Rust lines of code used in production, I wish there would be a modern kernel for PCs not some micro/nano kernel for some board. I see it a big waste to push Rust into Linux or Windows kernels instead of those competent developers writing that new modern kernel, it feels like they are forced to work on Linux/Windows so they want to have fun with Rust at work. If Rust is so superior then you just need to start the kernel, prove is super fast and super safe and Big Tech will put the money so they can use it on their servers, Like why would Netflix not use the super kernel written in Rust ?
"just" writing a production-grade Linux equivalent would take decades. Some people are working on such projects, but those will take a long time, if ever, to mature, whereas improving Linux means making positive change today. Both things can be pursued in parallel, by different people. It's not an either/or.
Good luck to this new kernels, my guess is that you do not get any speed boost from using Rust, sure you might get fewer bugs but since we do not have a basic kernel and OS yet with a GUI that I can run at least in a VM tells me that something is not matching the hype, maybe the constant fighting with the type system make adding new things or updating existing code super slow.
I honestly wish to see modern OS as a competition to the decades old Linux and Windows.
Can you clarify these two sentences? You say there should be a memory-safe kernel, and then you say Rust should never have been allowed, which is the opposite.