this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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If the Rust maintainers keep dropping like this, I foresee Linux eventually losing its lead as an operating system. The transition to Rust is absolutely necessary, other OSs are catching up slowly but surely.
And unlike AI, this makes an actual positive difference in maintainability and speed.
Which ones are those? Linux is a rock, it doesnt budge it just slowly but surely does its thing. Thats why people use Linux, because it serves its purpose and it has been doing that for a while without Rust.
Redox is advancing, I think it's possible for it to become dominant someday, I don't know the likelihood but if rust in linux dies completely it feels almost inevitable.
would probably be for the best anyway, they're porting wayland and cosmic, would be nice to undo all the technical debt in the long run probably. Not for a very long time though.
Maybe in 10 years someone will invent another new language that will solve everything and then all the Rust code will have to be changed again. The cycle continues endlessly lol
It's not just about rust, it's also just that there's a lot of tech debt in the linux kernel just from the design, they don't change a lot because they don't want to mess anything up, redox has been able to learn from all of that.
rust is also an awesome tool for writing OS's however
https://redox-os.org/faq/#what-features-does-redox-have
Rust isn't necessary. It can be mildly helpful, but it's also hurt in that it's community tends to make it actively unhelpful, just like in this case.
Linux development happened just fine for decades before rust, and while there are benefits to rust from a security point of view, if they can't maintain the code, they'll just go back to C and deal with process and policy for managing memory safety.
Some old fashioned c++ and c developers, like me, feel more entitled to entrench more, and see Rust as a political movement, and not a serious tool.
I’m fairly reactionary against adding more Rust to stable projects. While I’m sure at some of that is me being old and set in my ways, the other gives people like me talking points, which may or may not help.
your description of yourself is that you're an insufferable twat?
Ignoring your rudeness now. It’s more like I’ve seen the same wheel invented a lot of times and can recognize most tech are basically equally functional.
I used to make fun of cobol because it has no stack; I often wondered why such a language was ever popular, why it had so many lines of code. Now, I know there was a reason it worked, why it still is used, and can appreciate how people work with it.
I’ve made a couple of my own languages nobody uses; so new and different languages do not overawe me as much.
Any popular language, new or old, works well enough with it having strengths and weaknesses. Some have superiority in their libraries or ecosystems and not the core. It’s ok to choose a language based on this or that. It’s ok to mix and match languages together in one project because it’s how they talk together which makes it work, and in the larger scope of things it really does not matter which is used.
I personally have nothing against any language, including rust.
It’s a general trend to try to fit a specific language everywhere that irritates me, I tend to see that as a software nerd’s religion or politics instead of how much better that language is.
And so, based on the above, is why proponents of their holy language irritate the crap out of me. And rust is certainly not the first to do that
So... I would recommend at least reading the Wikipedia page for Rust because it's pretty clear that you don't know anything about it at all if you think it is "the same wheel". Rust is the first practical memory safe systems language that doesn't rely on GC for memory safety.
I am happy that you like rust.
I also would like to point out there are many ways to manage memory. Not all of them are badly designed and hacked code done by stubborn people who just need to be saved
Ah the old "I don't make mistakes" classic. Some weapons grade hubris here...
Or maybe you are making some assumptions and really like rust; while lacking experience in memory management.
I’m not saying anything about my code; but there are literally dozens of strategies you probably don’t know about that are used in a dozens of ways, if not hundreds, by millions of coders.
I like rust well enough, but it manages memory based on opinions by some people. These opinions have trade offs. You are not familiar with that, and are attacking me.
This reinforces my own opinions of people who push rust.
Oh please tell me, wise old man! You can't be talking about garbage collection, reference counting, smart pointers, never-free, arenas, defer, or god forbid, the "I am perfect and can do it manually and never make mistakes" method. Because I know about all of those methods.
What are these other dozens of methods that I don't know about that mean Rust is unnecessary? 🙄
I know well enough to quit here lol.
I’m more tickled than mad at your stuff, but even I know when I’m in a losing situation
I'd say that trying to get Rust everywhere is just something that is done in the hope it will help the ecosystem mature faster. It's a bit hard to compete with languages that are 30, 40, or over 50 years old
I think it will grow! One day it will compete that way
There's a lot of irony here for you to invent enemy "holy rust" people in your head while failing to see your own projection of "use my holy C I preach and stop preaching others".
I made no such claim about c nor am I saying it should be used in general, if you read what I wrote more carefully, I am actually against all that
You know, you have the choice to not fall victim to your own cognitive dissonance and instead help these people find common ground instead of being a dismissive stick in the mud right?
Maybe take the time to learn enough rust to see the other sides picture?
Not to mention it's highly unlikely you can link me to any specific project you yourself specifically run where this 'rust religion' has been a problem that actually exists.