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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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One Of The Rust Linux Kernel Maintainers Steps Down - Cites "Nontechnical Nonsense" (www.phoronix.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Wedson Almeida Filho is a Microsoft engineer who has been prolific in his contributions to the Rust for the Linux kernel code over the past several years. Wedson has worked on many Rust Linux kernel features and even did a experimental EXT2 file-system driver port to Rust. But he's had enough and is now stepping away from the Rust for Linux efforts.

From Wedon's post on the kernel mailing list:

I am retiring from the project. After almost 4 years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical nonsense, so it's best to leave it up to those who still have it in them.

...

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.

Lastly, I'll leave a small, 3min 30s, sample for context here: https://youtu.be/WiPp9YEBV0Q?t=1529 -- and to reiterate, no one is trying force anyone else to learn Rust nor prevent refactorings of C code."

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[–] ik5pvx 15 points 2 months ago (11 children)

At the cost of sounding naive and stupid, wouldn't it be possible to improve compilers to not spew out unsafe executables? Maybe as a compile time option so people have time to correct the source.

[–] it_depends_man 51 points 2 months ago (2 children)

At the cost of sounding naive and stupid

It may be a naive question, but it's a very important naive question. Naive doesn't mean bad.

The answer is that that is not possible, because the compiler is supposed to translate the very specific language of C into mostly very specific machine instructions. The programmers who wrote the code, did so because they usually expect a very specific behavior. So, that would be broken.

But also, the "unsafety" is in the behavior of the system and built into the language and the compiler.

It's a bit of a flawed comparison, but you can't build a house on a foundation of wooden poles, because of the advantages that wood offers, and then complain that they are flammable. You can build it in steel, but you have to replace all of the poles. Just the poles on the left side won't do.

And you can't automatically detect the unsafe parts and just patch those either. If we could, we could just fix them directly or we could automatically transpile them. Darpa is trying that at the moment.

[–] ik5pvx 14 points 2 months ago

Thank you and all the others that took time to educate me on what is for me a "I know some of those words" subject

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