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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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Rust in Linux lead retires rather than deal with more “nontechnical nonsense” (arstechnica.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Linux people doing Linux things, it seems.

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (24 children)

"It’s herding cats: introducing Rust effectively is one part coding work and ninety-nine parts political work..."

All software development in a team is. More like 20/80 or 40/60 if you're lucky.

[–] [email protected] 87 points 3 months ago (23 children)

Except in this case, it was a bunch of old C devs who aren't just resistant but openly hostile to change, and they'd rather bully people into silence than try to progress.

[–] kautau -5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Ironically the majority of the rust memory management ruleset is called ownership, and they are unwilling to release any of it, and claiming all of it, so there's an out of memory error.

[–] Nibodhika 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I didn't understood your criticism, what are they unwilling to release? What are they claiming all of? Why would ownership rules cause an OOM?

Sharing stack memory is a bad practice in C as well btw.

[–] kautau 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Lol the out of memory error was a joke. A reference to that two people both trying to do the same thing will fill the heap since there’s unnecessary work.

I tried to make a code joke but it failed.

As far as what are they unwilling to release? Control. Ownership of any bit of the kernel they control

kernel maintainer Ted Ts'o, emphatically interjects: "Here's the thing: you're not going to force all of us to learn Rust."

Lina tried to push small fixes that would make the C code "more robust and the lifetime requirements sensible," but was blocked by the maintainer.

DeVault writes. "Every subsystem is a private fiefdom, subject to the whims of each one of Linux’s 1,700+ maintainers, almost all of whom have a dog in this race. It’s herding cats: introducing Rust effectively is one part coding work and ninety-nine parts political work – and it’s a lot of coding work."

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