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

[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.

[expr@programming.dev]

So... Rust?

[ahal@lemmy.ca]

I always thought kernel devs were smart people. I'm kind of shocked learning a new language is this big of a barrier to them.

[ceebee_eh@lemmy.world]

They kind of already do. The C used by the kernel team isn't the exact same as what everyone else uses. Mainly because of the tooling they've built around it. I can't remember specifics, but the tooling in place really helps out in that department.

Also, "memory safe C" is already a proposal for the C lang project.

[lefantome@programming.dev]

Not a fork of course but there is Redox

https://www.redox-os.org/

[lefantome@programming.dev]

No. The kernel does not care about X11 vs Wayland. Or rather, both X11 and Wayland use KM| ( Kernel Mode Setting ) and DRM ( Direct Rendering ) these days. That is, both X11 and Wayland call on the same kernel features.

[lefantome@programming.dev]

RISC-V is the “new” CPU architecture

[robertomorrison@lemmy.world]

Even “smart people” have resource/time limitations. Learning rust to an extent that will work on that level is not the same as learning C.

[dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

The rust people said they'd take ownership of the work for the bindings. What's the issue?

[industrystandard@lemmy.world]

Does the kernel not need a lot of memory unsafe Rust code? There is a way to bypass the safety nets and I heard that for stuff like kernel development that is necessity.

[integrate777@discuss.online]

Hector posting it to social media, and by his own admission, to shame the C devs, is pretty hostile and bad faith too.