this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
842 points (95.5% liked)

linuxmemes

21570 readers
731 users here now

Hint: :q!

Sister communities:

Community rules (click to expand)

1. Follow the site-wide rules

2. Be civil
  • Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
  • Do not harrass or attack members of the community for any reason.
  • Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
  • Bigotry will not be tolerated.
  • These rules are somewhat loosened when the subject is a public figure. Still, do not attack their person or incite harrassment.
    • 3. Post Linux-related content
  • Including Unix and BSD.
  • Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of sudo in Windows.
  • No porn. Even if you watch it on a Linux machine.
    • 4. No recent reposts
  • Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
    •  

    Please report posts and comments that break these rules!

    Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't fork-bomb your computer.

    founded 2 years ago
    MODERATORS
    poopsmith
    zephyr
    rtxn
    842
    Linux rule (lemmy.world)
    submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/linuxmemes
    57 comments fedilink hide all child comments
     
    you are viewing a single comment's thread
    view the rest of the comments
    [–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

    Lol. If Rust fans want a Rust kernel, no one is stopping them from building one.

    [–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    It's hard to overcome the Hurd problem though. Although it would be fascinating to see how it would diverge on the design of the Linux kernel. How much can you still act like Linux while not being Linux? Or would it just be a direct algorithmic translation, basically doing the same processes under the hood with the same architecture? I'm sure there's more than a few things Linux is doing in C that the Rust compiler would frown upon.

    [–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

    Main issue is drivers. One of the best places to take advantage of rust's memory safety is in hardware drivers, and those would be hard to share between separate kernels.

    That entire talk, and the complaint that Ts'o responded to was that to continue with rust, there needs to be some responsibility from the guys working on the underlying C bindings to not break downstream dependencies if they refactor code.

    The answer from some of the Kernel developers, and vocally by Ts'o was: lol no fuck you and your toy language.

    [–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    Yeah. The idea of an automated C to Rust replacement of the Linux kernel is fascinating. As you say, there's probably stuff in the Kernel that Rust's compiler won't allow.

    I imagine it wouldn't work at all, out of the box, but it might reduce the cost curve enough to make a dedicated team of very clever engineers able to cross the last mile, given time.

    As cynical as I am of both Rust and AI generated code, it honestly feels like trying an automated conversion might be less of a long shot than expecting the existing Linux kernel developers to switch to Rust.

    And I'm sure a few would kick in some thought cycles if a promising Kernel clone could be generated. These are certainly interesting times.