Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Steps Down As Upstream Apple Silicon Maintainer

[gayhitler@lemmy.ml]

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/[email protected]/

Here’s the whole thread if you wanna read for yourself.

My take away is that rust people are generally fine and try to abide by the norms of the kernel development process but Martin acts like a jerk and it would be okay if he didn’t come back.

See the comment far, far down in the thread implying that he’s somehow a more serious commenter or developer because he’s funded by donations as opposed to a company.

[gayhitler@lemmy.ml]

The system works

[gayhitler@lemmy.ml]

It has always been like this.

[telorand@reddthat.com]

That's a good way to take a bad situation and make it better. Good luck! Maybe I'll join you one day.

[templa@beehaw.org]

Damn, Linus really went out of his way to say:

How about you accept the fact that maybe the problem is you.
You think you know better. But the current process works.
It has problems, but problems are a fact of life. There is no perfect.
However, I will say that the social media brigading just makes me not
want to have anything at all to do with your approach.
Because if we have issues in the kernel development model, then social
media sure as hell isn't the solution. The same way it sure as hell
wasn't the solution to politics.
Technical patches and discussions matter. Social media brigading - no
than\k you.

Link

[penquin@lemm.ee]

Man, this is so unfortunate

[thatsnothowyoudoit@lemmy.ca]

That’s a shame irrespective of the drama. Asahi is surprisingly good. Installation is (relatively) straightforward.

I’ve got it on my primary laptop. I don’t use it frequently because battery life is poor compared to MacOS and I can’t use an external display but it’s an impressive achievement and I’m sure it will only get better. I haven’t used fedora in 20 years but it’s slick and easy and most of it just works. It looks just like my Linux workstation desktop.

[catloaf@lemm.ee]

...but still fails to answer the question of "should we continue implementing kernel things in rust".

[drspod@lemmy.ml]

Maybe im wrong

Correct.

[nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org]

the small request that those contributions be in the language of the project isn’t something to fight against.

When the contributions not in C are explicitly approved by the project owner, it seems that the 30+ year maintainers shouldn't try to blockade any progress from actually happening. Working multi-language projects isn't that much of a nightmare, if code governance and boundaries are well-defined and enforced.

Definitely a case of "everyone sucks here". The maintainer being a dick and sabotaging R4L without technical justification and Hector putting it on blast.

[corgana@startrek.website]

There is a reason the type of devs who have the talent, passion and time for projects like this are not spending 60hrs/wk at Google.

[corgana@startrek.website]

FOSS land is always going to be populated by freaks and geeks. The well socialized, talented devs get jobs at Google. It's impressive the "system" works as well as it does but passion is a big motivator.

[m1ch431@lemmy.ml]

Rust seems to be imperative for security. I hope people in the Linux kernel community put aside their differences and find common ground for the benefit of everyone.

[satansmaggotycumfart@lemmy.world]

Ossify is up there with moist in my list of favourite words.

[templa@beehaw.org]

Yes I read the whole thread and the lack of replies on his part were kind of infuriating

[horsey@lemmy.world]

What is it that rust is less preferable to?

[thewebguy@lemmy.ml]

Agreed, especially as the proprietary alternatives are starting to incorporate more and more Rust, even Windows is starting to rewrite their core libraries in Rust.

On top of security though, its going to be important for continuing to bring new maintainers onboard. Less and less people are learning C, especially to a level proficient enough to be a kernel maintainer. As Rust matures even more, C is effectively a legacy language at this point, a C++ won't be too far behind either, and Linux is going to be hard pressed to find maintainers as the graybeards retire.

[demizerone@lemmy.world]

The kernel developers should Come up with a memory safe version of C for developing on the kernel. Kind of like how Git was created.

[corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca]

The crucial point is that the people who can work on the kernel now itself are

• c people who don't know rust yet
• c people who know rust well

The moment we get rust in there, the people who can work on the kernel reliably as a whole are

• c people who know rust well

That's a much smaller group than the one above.

Here's the point: THE SAME ISSUE would arise if it were D, or some kind of compiled python, object-oriented bash static objects, if that existed; or anything. Whatever the other language was, it'd present the same risk.

Rust people: it's not about you. It's about splitting the codebase.

[programmingsocks@pawb.social]

Rust is already as fast as C and memory safe. The reasons people don't want it in the kernel basically amount to being a boomer that doesn't like new things for immaterial reasons.