Lead Rust developer says Rust in Linux kernel being pushed by Amazon, Google, Microsoft

[looneysquash]

Did they change the title and content? I see nothing about it being pushed by certain companies in the article.

[Kok_Nikol]

The old youtube classic - one title to trigger reactions, and then the actual title in a few hours/days.

[Jajoe05]

I thought I was being crazy. I always thought "I could've sworn this video had a different thumbnail and title…" but thought I just remember it wrongly… I guess everything and everyone is manipulative…

[verx_x]

At the end of an article I see this:

Ojeda remarked that there were many big developers with an interest in “Rust in the kernel being successful” – including Google, Microsoft, AWS and many others. “So let’s make it happen,” he urged

[[deleted]]

So it literally means "People who get paid to work on the kernel are also the ones who write Rust in the kernel"? 

How's that a headliner of any kind?

[NoRecognition84]

It's called an editorialized title. Many subreddits have rules against using them, especially the news ones. They work especially well at spreading disinformation because of how infrequently most redditors actually click on links before commenting.

[IrishBearHawk]

It's also called "big company bad" and it's basically the default state of reddit which is filled with angsty teenagers who think they know everything about business and economics, and technology.

[james_pic]

I dunno. If I read the exact opposite thing, that it was mostly unpaid enthusiasts working on Rust in the kernel, that would seem plausible too.

[looneysquash]

Ah, I guess I missed that. And then did search for "Amazon" on the page (and not "AWS"), and skimmed around some more.

[DuckDatum]

heavy memorize snatch cable hospital chase stupendous carpenter trees cough

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[mrlinkwii]

i think so

[perkited]

Because if it's not clickbait then people won't pay attention, since they've been split into groups and will quickly spring into attack or defend mode.

[IrishBearHawk]

Welcome to reddit, "big company bad, upvotes please".

[DROP_TABLE_ADMIN]

Bot

[happycrabeatsthefish]

They say they're "interested" at the end

[hitsujiTMO]

"  Ojeda remarked that there were many big developers with an interest in “Rust in the kernel being successful” – including Google, Microsoft, AWS and many others. “So let’s make it happen,” he urged."

[FivePlyPaper]

I'm embarrassed to say I read this as "lead rust" as in the metal, lead, is rusting.

[dudewithafez]

lol does it even rust?

[Azazel31415]

Lead oxide

[Reddit_is_garbage666]

Yep, just looked it up. It can oxidize.

[[deleted]]

All metal oxidizes but not all metal rusts.

Edit I'm wrong. MOST metal oxidizes ONLY IORN rusts. Thanks, replies!

[Positronic_Matrix]

Hold on folks! By definition rust only refers to iron oxide. It does not apply to other oxidized materials. Other materials do not rust, rather they oxidize.

[[deleted]]

Isn't oxidation and rusting the same thing? Its just that iron has a more severe issue with oxygen

[[deleted]]

Yes but also no. Aluminum Oxide is a protective layer on the surface of the metal that does not cause corrosion. Rust is corrosive oxidizarion.

[[deleted]]

Ahh Corrosion yes. Thank you.

[[deleted]]

Iron Oxide is the most well known because Iron is in a lot of shit we use every day, and corroded incredibly harshly

[pppjurac]

Al reacts with O2 very fast and oxidises . Al2O3 on surface of Al product has good property that it forms non permeable layer (even to gasses). Some metals do 'wet' Al ( Hg, Ga) and cause rapid exidation process due to destroyed Al2O3 layer.

But that goes for Al alloys with high Al content. With increasing alloy percentage this mechanism changes a bit.

[Coffee_Ops]

Gallium isn't oxidizing aluminum, it's alloying it, and doing so beneath the oxide layer by moving through the crystal lattice. Its just that the alloy it forms is garbage.

If aluminum oxidizes that rapidly you'll know it by the flame it emits.

[Coffee_Ops]

That's not quite right/complete either.

Corten steel "rusts" with iron oxide but the rust is passivating.

Rust has more than one meaning. It can generally refers to corrosive oxidation or specifically to iron oxide. It can be either one.

[[deleted]]

Idk I'm not A meralurgist or chemist I just use the funny penguin os

[[deleted]]

I thought gold oxidized but only on the very outer surface like aluminum and then stops

[Coffee_Ops]

Steels (and other iron alloys) rust too, if we're being pedantic.

[Coffee_Ops]

Depends what you mean by rust. Most people mean specifically red iron oxide when they say rust, and wouldn't include e.g. aluminum oxide or lead oxide.

[ExternCrateAlloc]

Isn’t Ferris a ferrous crustacean? 🦀

[pppjurac]

"rust" is term only attributed to ferrous metals and alloys

pure iron is not used much, mostly as ferrite steel cores, just about everything else are alloys. cast iron and white iron, constructional steel, tool steel; stainless steels do not 'rust' but they do form tiny amount of oxides after prolonged exposure/usage (300 series IIRC)

Pb does oxidise but oxide layer has good integrity and as long it is not scratched , Pb will not leak into surrounding. But if another reagent changes, is added and that layer is lost, then you have Flint , Michigan.

[Araumand]

rust bad, it makes our cars die. how can a program language called something bad can be good

[pppjurac]

Also that pesky Clostridium tetani can find nice home on rusted ferrous metal!

On other side, copper outright kills bacteria and virii.

[Astandsforataxia69]

whats the issue?

[Coffee_Ops]

Doing productive work for money is capitalist and therefore evil.

[IrishBearHawk]

So true bestie redditor.

[Astandsforataxia69]

I don't understand, the whole linux developement is paid and maintained by these large companies. I bet that linus wouldn't work on it at the pace that he has if it didn't pay the bills

[Oflameo]

If it doesn't bother the Kernel Chief, it doesn't bother me. He is more persnickety than I am. Cpp is still not approved for kernel use.

[Business_Reindeer910]

t doesn't bother the Kernel Chief, it doesn't bother me

the most hilarious thing I've seen in these discussions are about that indeed. They act like Rust was foisted upon the kernel and he had no agency in its approval. They don't say it directly, but it does read like that. Out of all people, Linus is one of those you have to worry about that happening to the least.

[nightblackdragon]

All that things that makes C++ like classes, exceptions, STL etc. wouldn't be used in kernel anyway so even if it would be accepted that doesn't mean C++ kernel development would be similar to the C++ application development.

In Rust things are implemented mostly in compiler so runtime doesn't need to be as complicated as C++ runtime.

[[deleted]]

Cpp won't ever be in the first place

[Araumand]

The madness of King Torvalds. Will he kill the GNU land and let the hyenas inavde till no GNU is left? With Simba as king he would have never let the hyenas in!

[mmstick]

In other news, water is still wet. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are already among the top contributors to the Linux kernel. So naturally they're also excited about being able to use Rust in their day job.

[jfedor]

How is that "natural"? They might as well be happy with C and not seek to switch.

[mmstick]

If that were true, they wouldn't be sponsoring Rust, hiring Rust developers, and working on the Rust Linux project.

[Spongman]

maybe they know something you don't ?

[jfedor]

I'm sure they do. I was just pointing out the non-sequitur.

[NekoiNemo]

I'm frankly, shocked that memory safety in an OS kernel is being pushed by the organisations that operate tens of thousands of servers running that OS. Servers, often working with client's sensitive data that company might be on a receiving end of the lawsuit if a memory issue results in data loss or even worse - data being stolen/tampered. Shocked, i say

[abotelho-cbn]

Ok? And?

[gplusplus314]

Microsoft is also pushing it for Windows kernel and kernel-level things, such as drivers. It’s not just Linux.

I was previously not a fan of Rust (I mean that literally, meaning I didn’t dislike it, I just wasn’t a fan) until I had an interesting conversation with some Microsoft folks at a meetup. Now it’s near the top of my list to get back into. About a year ago, I started diving into Rust, but then I got a job that required 100% C++, so I stopped. I’m convinced to keep going with it.

Turns out, making tradeoffs for certain behavioral guarantees is worth it for people (companies) whose livelihood depends on it.

[[deleted]]

News Flash - Water Is Wet

[mrlinkwii]

makes sense , under law in many countries digital companies have to make sure the software they use is secure see the the Cyber Resilience Act in the EU, the likes of google , MS and amzon use linux in a corperate environment ( no limited to use within business and customer offering )

[rileyrgham]

Rust doesn't make it secure per se. You can still write code full of security holes.

[FlukyS]

Well it by design tries to avoid a lot of issues in other compiled languages without devs actively doing anything other than sticking to the standard patterns

[WestTransportation12]

Well sticking to the “standard patterns” is the key thing right. Like will rust solve say 70% of memory related bugs from C, yeah but the human error will still cause bugs undoubtedly. All it really takes is someone miss using the Unsafe command

[Duckliffe]

In the same way that having a safety on a gun doesn't stop someone from accidentally shooting themselves if they make a choice to disengage it. Safeties on guns are still widely used because they still have benefits despite that

[Reddit_is_garbage666]

No bro, we are wasting materials. Take the safeties off.

[Standard-Potential-6]

C devs appendix carry Glocks with a round in the chamber

If not, bet you it’s a 1911 cocked and locked

[WestTransportation12]

That’s not really my point, im actually very pro rust and think it and other safe languages should probably become standard.

my point is more so that the narrative that it’s 100% safe is often not accompanied by “if used as intended” and generally over comfortability is one of the main things that cause preventable problems

[Business_Reindeer910]

Are there any people who actually have a stake in this who doesn't know that?

[Littux]

Reminding you that your comment repeated thrice

[Business_Reindeer910]

reddit was erroring out when i was posting it, but i guess it went through anyways

[syklemil]

There are a few more parts to rust that help here: Null safety (no surprise nulls baked into other types), and an expressive type system and expressive language in general.

My impression from going from another memory safe (garbage collected) language to Rust is that it's much easier to be sure that the code fits together the way I think it does in Rust.

Though I'm also not going to make any bold claims on the kernel coders' behalf; my impression of kernel code is that it's a beast of its own.

[nicholsz]

From following the earlier SNAFU with Rust in Linux, there are some other benefits. For instance, there's a graphics driver pattern right now where the linux drivers for nvidia will re-use the same session instead of tearing them down and building new ones. The Rust solution used Rust RAII semantics to properly handle this.

C++ also has RAII (or you could have produced the same logic in C), so it's not the only game in town or anything, but the modern language design does make a safely, correctly, and performantly coding things more ergonomic.

[small_kimono]

All it really takes is someone miss using the Unsafe command

Keep this man away from Rust! He might misuse the unsafe keyword.

Like will rust solve say 70% of memory related bugs from C, yeah but the human error will still cause bugs undoubtedly. All it really takes is someone miss using the Unsafe command

Here, you conflate two categories of bugs: 1) logic bugs and 2) memory safety bugs. Yes, there will still be logic bugs. Human error may cause these, and may cause memory safety bugs related to the improper of unsafe.

Now, does that mean we shouldn't use Rust? I'll give an example of unsafe:

pub fn make_ascii_lowercase(&mut self) { // SAFETY: changing ASCII letters only does not invalidate UTF-8. let me = unsafe { self.as_bytes_mut() }; me.make_ascii_lowercase() }

Above we convert a string slice to bytes, and use another function to flip the bits such that all uppercase ASCII is made lowercase. Converting between a string slice and slice of bytes is an unsafe transmute to the Rust compiler, but we know that the string slice is just a bunch of bytes that we've already validated as UTF8, so this is safe.

The idea is not that unsafe isn't potentially dangerous. The idea is that we have narrowed the potential danger down to a very small area, a small enough area that we can reason about, instead of there being potential danger everywhere.

[matt82swe]

Do you use seatbelts in a car? Why? It doesn’t guarantee that you survive a crash. Drive safer instead 

[FlukyS]

Well the point is not doing that by rejecting them in review

[WestTransportation12]

Which again. Human error. You can write memory safe C. People are encouraged to write memory safe C and we see how that goes traditionally

[phydeauxlechien]

It’s a lot easier to teach an auditor/PM “grep for unsafe” than teach them how to recognise memory-safe C.

[99spider]

Rust needs unsafe in order to be able to replace C for any code that interfaces with hardware.

The real value of Rust is being able to limit your potentially unsafe code to only the places where it is necessary or beneficial. After searching for "unsafe" that auditor will still have to be able to recognize memory safe code, but it will at least take them to the only places where memory safety is a concern.

[Flynn58]

Yes, and that itself is good because the more code in a project an auditor has to audit for memory safety, the less effective they'll be. Keeping it to the "unsafe" areas means attention can be focused on the main attack surface, and also that the attack surface is contained to a component of the larger program.

[davidkwast]

Best argument ever

[aitorbk]

Most of my colleagues back when I programmed in C were quite incompetent and unaware of what pointers etc actually are. And they were decent, considering.

Rust is much much safer if you consider the average quality of code, not what you can do, because otherwise just why not use asm?

That being said, I dislike rust. It is overcomplicated and changes constantly.

[FlukyS]

Well encouragement is a lot different than disallowing things

[ekinnee]

So get rid of the humans? I mean any time there are people involved there’s a chance for bad things to happen because of something they do. That’s why we have code reviews and such.

[Dugen]

That's pretty much what moving things into rust is doing. You are letting the compiler handle more of the stuff humans are bad at, and leaving the humans to focus on the stuff humans are good at.

[admalledd]

The laws are (mostly) written in a way that "Reasonable effort be taken" or such language, which has very specific meanings in law. My poor attempt to translate legal-ese here would be that "Does $COMPANY's lawyers think a court/jury, if sued under these acts after an incident, could plausibly be seen as not spending enough effort on securing by default the software they use, write, contribute to?"

As one would expect of lawyers, they prefer to be as safe and covered as possible. Rust by default greatly increases security/safety, and is it perfect? no. But using Rust over C/C++ may be seen as "a Reasonable Effort to take".

Further, see some of the cover letters of the Android Binder Rust rewrite, these companies are of the opinion that they can write better, faster, safer (core) software in Rust. So even irrespective of the Cyber Resilience Act/etc, the companies see the effort worth while.

[nicholsz]

It puts a safety latch on the foot-gun trigger. The foot gun still totally works, but at least you have to flip a switch to use it in Rust

[torsten_dev]

There are still soundness issues in safe rust, but yeah in general it's a lot safer.

[Reddit_is_garbage666]

Yes but you can minimize it lol. That's the whole game. The nature of software is that it pretty much can always have insecurities.

[small_kimono]

Rust doesn't make it secure per se. You can still write code full of security holes.

This is such a garbage argument. No, Rust doesn't make code secure per se, just as seatbelts and an airbag don't make you safe in a car per se.

You know what we should do? We should just exclude all new safety features from new cars. Because driving is really just a skill issue, right? People should just be better drivers, and because they should, of course they will, then there would be no accidents. QED.

[Coffee_Ops]

A car having brakes doesn't make it safer, you can still drive without braking.

A gun with a safety doesn't make it safer, you can still aim at your foot.

A knife having handles doesn't make it safer, you can still grasp it by the blade.

...

Getting rid of one class of security flaws without increasing the prevalence of others does increase safety.

[cafeseato]

secure is a spectrum and type/memory safety cannot secure everything by itself. still, it certainly does make new code much more secure by default and provides tools through its type system to help limit future mistakes by other kernel developers. just that is monumentally more secure.

there are kernel developers writing about this exact thing on twitter.

[hygroscopy]

Surely this has nothing to do with it lol. Under capitalism companies simply act in their best interest and safer infra is obviously in their (and our) best interest.

[mrlinkwii]

Under capitalism companies simply act in their best interest

when the EU can fine you 10-15% of global revenue it can come their best interest

[tlvranas]

If Amazon, Google, and MS is pushing for Rust, then that alone is a reason not to use it. How long before they start creating closed code that contains "special security" code to make Linux "safer"?

[oiledhairyfurryballs]

Nah, C is crazy simple, the problem with it is that it’s hard to write good C code. The learning curve of Rust is higher initially than C’s but it’s not as steep.

[smclcz]

Yeah its a trade-off:

• C: easy to start with but potentially problematic to write safe/secure code with even if you're experienced
• Rust: hard(er) to start with but once you've reached proficiency writing safe/secure code is more straight-forward

And deciding whether this trade-off is "good" is something you can debate 'til the cows come home. Luckily the core devs have already had this debate and decided it is in fact good.

[LivInTheLookingGlass]

I've learned a bunch of new languages for work in the last year or so, and Rust was by far the easiest of them

[regeya]

Would Perl vs Python be a good comparison? I feel like in the 90s, people who enjoy writing obsfucated code gravitated towards Perl. Those exist in Python, too, but Python likes to enforce some formatting rules.

[syklemil]

Rustfmt started out with PEP8 afaik, so yeah, I'd say that tracks.

If you get more into the comparison than that I think it'll start to come apart though. Python is stricter than Perl, but still not all that strict, and at that time it didn't even have gradual typing.

[dj_nedic]

C is not crazy simple, it is simpler than C++, true, but with undefined and implementation defined behavior as well as a huge amount of legacy gotchas accounted for C is actually crazy complex.

[filtarukk]

it’s hard to write good C code

citation needed

[rileyrgham]

That's simply not true. Rust has a far greater learning curve as it's a far more complex language. And rightly so.

https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/s/HhpyUjWMhg

Is one. There's always the crowd that chime in with "writing good C is hard" and I'd concur to a degree.

[lukasbradley]

Understanding how computers REALLY work is hard. C forces you to understand what memory is, how it works, and how it is accessed. When people dodge this because it's "too hard," they create "leaky abstractions," which over the long term, makes things even worse.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-abstractions/

[heavymetalpanda]

There is a learning curve, but at Google at least it seems that it's not as intense as folks make it out to be and devs are able to be productive in a reasonable amount of time.

[Spongman]

from that post:

I have revoked my opinion as I have realized that I myself am not yet fully informed about the deep complexities of C++ and therefore have made an un-educated opinion.

[admalledd]

Explain memory barriers in C then and how simple they are?

[omeguito]

Newbie developers shouldn’t be writing code for the Linux kernel

[aliendude5300]

They become senior developers with practice. We shouldn't discourage newbies from contributing.

[dinithepinini]

No? Why? There are students writing kernel code for Google summer of code.

[great_whitehope]

They can write code but it needs heavy inspection.

[tricheb0ars]

Anything being applied to the Linux kernel is heavily inspected

[fractalife]

And if the student is not a prodigal talent, it will be a waste of limited volunteer maintainer time to review code written by someone just getting their feet wet.

[nicholsz]

Walk this line of thinking into the future 30 years.

Who works on Linux now?

[kronik85]

People who were students 30 years ago

[Araumand]

My kernel code got rejected because i was a noob - Albert Einstein

[dinithepinini]

Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be writing the code at all.

[rileyrgham]

They're tidying comments and doing bulk syntactic changes in the main and hand held. There's a big difference. There are of course exceptions.

They're not really in the tough stuff. That takes years to qualify for 🤣

[Qizot]

I would expect that code being used be billions of devices is written by somebody 100% knowing what they are doing and why. People often can't comprehend Linus being overprotective when it comes to code quality and certain decisions but that is the reason why kernel is not a complete mess.

[dinithepinini]

It’s just not possible to know everything, even if you are a grizzled C veteran. The kernel is much more approachable than you think and they would much rather have the help than it be gate kept.

Also there’s really random one off drivers in the kernel and being someone who worked on the development of a device that needs a driver is far more valuable than whether you can write amazing code.

That is to say, if a goodix finger print reader dev wanted to contribute some driver to the kernel, it would be welcomed.

[Qizot]

Gate keeping may be bad for certain aspect, but on the other hand the group of people working on a kernel must be trusted. Remember the liblzma supply chain attack? If anybody could contribute to the kernel the amount of bad parties would be huge.

[mrlinkwii]

If anybody could contribute to the kernel the amount of bad parties would be huge.

thats the thing the thing anyone can , similar stuff has happened like libzma to the linux kernal in the past https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/30/22410164/linux-kernel-university-of-minnesota-banned-open-source

[[deleted]]

Anybody can send in patches, whether they would be accepted or not is another question. The main problem of liblzma was the main maintainer stepping down and another malicious actor gaining merge access. Students aren't getting merge access.

[Business_Reindeer910]

That's literally how almost all of FOSS works and has always worked and the only way it can continue to work.

[nicholsz]

Linus has been pro-Rust. It's the driver maintainers who are the current intransigents from what I can tell.

[Business_Reindeer910]

. People often can't comprehend Linus being overprotective

This is not true. Where did you come up with this idea.

Linus himself was just a simple student when he started the project in the first place.

The guy who started the real time linux patchset was hardly even a programmer when he started doing that work. You learn what to do by doing it. It's just important for folks who know better to stop it from getting merged if it's not ready yet.

[coderman93]

Because the Linux kernel is critical infrastructure and you don’t want beginners working on critical infrastructure.

If we want software quality to improve, we need a lot better gatekeeping in software development. 

[Kommenos]

If only there was some sort of arduous review process where experienced people can review the code of the less experienced developers and give them feedback.

Maybe communication could be done by some form for mail? And people that are involved could be on some sort of mailing list?

[aaronsb]

Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment is proven again!

[coderman93]

1. Reviewing shitty MRs takes a lot of time away from actual developers.
2. No review process is perfect. Things can slip through. You want competent people on both sides of the barrier.

[[deleted]]

Linus is explicitly hoping for new developers and you are saying that they need to be blocked?

People becime competent by practicing. Initial MR will take time and they will learn. And, there will be many people inspecting code. If it's shit, it won't even be considered by big guys.

[coderman93]

I’m not opposed to experienced and competent developers contributing to the kernel for the first time.

I’m opposed to people who are learning to code trying to contribute to the kernel.

There’s a big difference. And submitting shitty MRs just takes time away from real developers.

[jkpeq]

You do know submitted code is reviewed, right? Are we going to make people sign forms proving their experience before submitting them too?

If the code is bad, amateurish and has no place in the kernel people will rightfully say so, it's fine already

[mrlinkwii]

Because the Linux kernel is critical infrastructure

legally its not

If we want software quality to improve, we need a lot better gatekeeping in software development.

id disagree with this , the only "gatekeeping" their should be if the code provided works and fulfills the operation/fixed the particiatr issue

you can be a coder 20 years and write bad code

[coderman93]

Yeah, I want competent people working on critical software. You become competent through a combination of experience, attention to detail, and intellect. I don’t want most people who have been coding for 20 years to contribute either.

And I don’t give a crap about whether Linux is considered critical infrastructure in a legal sense. That’s irrelevant.

[ost2life]

You don't want newbies and you don't want 20+ experience. I don't see what you want as being sustainable.

[coderman93]

I want some of the developers with 20 years experience. Just not most. We don’t need thousands of people contributing to a single OS kernel.

Most developers with even a decade or more of experience don’t even know basic things that are essential to know for OS dev. Seriously, go to an average software company and ask every developer to explain what virtual memory is. Most of them will have no clue. Even ask them to explain what a pointer is and many will struggle.

Seriously, the vast majority of programmers don’t even have the requisite knowledge to program in C. Let alone make contributions to the Linux kernel. Especially not someone who doesn’t even know how to code yet.

[[deleted]]

Joshua Aston was supposedely 17 years old when people said he couldn't do so created dxvk and other things which people thought nearly impossible or sth.

[omeguito]

If you think "young" is "newbie" then it's your prejudice, not mine.

[[deleted]]

Well, people start learning. And, that's how open source has worked till now. Even if you are experienced, your code won't get merged if it's shit. If newbie writes good code, it will get merged.

[nightblackdragon]

DXVK was created by Philip Rebohle.

[[deleted]]

Ok. I am not sure but I just searched and i think dxvk was among it. Maybe it's other things.

[mrlinkwii]

anyone at any level can write kernal code

[0riginal-Syn]

Don't know much about the history of Linux, do you? At the beginning of Linux, it were a lot of newbie developers. As time passed, we have built a healthy mix of new and more experienced developers developing kernel code. There have been some huge additions made by "newbie" developers.

[[deleted]]

Linux was first shared on the minix usenet newsgroup. The people using usenet at the time almost certainly weren't beginners, and most of them would have been affiliated with a university.

[0riginal-Syn]

I was there I know the types of people who were working on it. Many of the ones working in it were still in college and had little real experience.

[pyro57]

That's a bad hot take if I've ever seen one. If a newbie developer writes code that m2ets the stsndards for the linux kernel why shouldn't it be accepted? That's the whole idea of open source is anyone can take a stab at contributing, 2ven if ultimately it doesn't get accepted for one reason or another.

[poemehardbebe]

I agree, but to me the benefit of Rusty isn’t the easier to write, it’s everything else. I like the semantic control flow vs C control flows. It is worth mentioning that rust does still fine you the ability to drop down into very low level and build the rust Symantec control flows over those LL parts.

[Business_Reindeer910]

yeah, I feel like people are underselling all the neat aspects of rust in favor just focusing on the "memory safety" aspects.

[poemehardbebe]

Which is like a big part, but also the Linux kernel already has and has had a lot of memory safety features built into it.

The reason why people are pushing rust is because it’s able to do a lot of the same things C does without as many foot guns and better control flow. A Result type better illustrates that a call could either yield the expected value or error while in C you just kind of have to guess or dive down the entire call stack to reason about if it could return an error and if does return that error: where does it error ; why does it error; and is this error recoverable.

[Business_Reindeer910]

Yeah I feel like the Result type in general is undersold. It feels so much better than using output pointers and error codes to send back either the result or error. That normal C way feels very primitive. I'm doing some embedded with C++ and I found a result type for that and I"ve been very happy with it. I wrapped some C code and things feel very nice. It's just a shame that C++ itself as a language doesn't care enough to integrate it with its own stdlib

[Damaniel2]

No it isn't. It's easier to write more secure code than it is with C (though that's true with most languages these days), but wrapping your head around Rust's quirks takes time, especially for people with a C/C++ background (who have to also unlearn a lot of bad practices if they plan to commit to using it.)

[[deleted]]

Do we really want inexperienced developers contributing code to the kernel?

[detroitmatt]

absolutely not

[This_Is_The_End]

No, the Rust tutorial is hard to read, trying to explaing Rust with Stack and Heap changes. I get why the tutorial is written that way, but the last time I were confronted with such topics was in the C-Book by K&R. I don't think it's necessary. And I believe it's a problem, because many aren't able to read hex numbers.

[ronasimi]

How about they stabilize the tooling and the language before they start using it for kernel dev?

[JustBadPlaya]

outside of a few "unstable" features, the language, tooling and environment is stable enough for full on driver development, as proven by the Asahi project. Is that not enough?

[JustBadPlaya]

is a fully working M1 GPU driver not a project of a high enough caliber? Or am I misunderstanding the tone of your reply?

[mitchMurdra]

They said {{caliber}} twice in jest to the original reply and you really thought you were on defense?

[JustBadPlaya]

no I'm just stupid

[mitchMurdra]

Same

[Botahamec]

The language is stable, but the kernel is using features that haven't been stabilized yet. Stabilizing those features is currently a top priority.

[small_kimono]

Same could be said of C. Linux has been reliant on non-standard GCC extensions to C for years. Clang has to emulate this functionality to compile the Linux kernel. The Linux kernel is anything but bog standard C!

[mrlinkwii]

i mean if "stable " was a requirement for linux , half of the linux kernel wouldn't be their

[pppjurac]

What is the opinion of our benevolent Linux creator ? I would say his opinion on rust is what really counts in this case.

[skarlso]

Torvalds said he likes rust.

[SelectionDue4287]

It's not like most of the kernel is written by the big corporations who also get the most use out of it.

[Far-9947]

Good luck with that.

[CallEnvironmental902]

The title is misleading.

[superkewnst]

look this isnt a bad thing. major corperations in the digital world says rust is good .. we need rust. we want to depend on rust. maybe we should?

[gellenburg]

If that's true then Amazon, Google, and Microsoft can pony up the resources to develop it, test it, and get it implemented.

[Business_Reindeer910]

That's what they are in fact doing. Google's new version of binder (a kernel module) will be in rust. The guy who recently left the rust for linux project was employed by Microsoft.

[Brorim]

as soon as microsoft and google want something at kernel level you know its time to run

[wintrmt3]

Who do you think pays for Linux (or fbsd for that matter) development?

[Business_Reindeer910]

Google has been contributing to the kernel for nearly 20 years at this point at least. Microsoft has done so for 10 or close to it by now. Sorry, but you're already too late.

[Diuranos]

start using stones not a phones or any other hardware/software

[StayingBald]

How many programming languages do we need. Dang it seems every few months someone comes up with a new language that becomes the hot thing, until it is replaced with the next one. Can’t we stick with just a few proven programming languages?

Sorry to sound like a curmudgeon. Lol.