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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: December 16th, 2023

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  • The problem is that the Linux kernel is monolithic so introducing rust into it does have certain repercussions about downstream compatibility between modules.

    Right now the rust code in the kernel uses c bindings for some things and there’s a not-insignificant portion of C developers who both refuse to use rust and refuse to take responsibility if the code they write breaks something in the rust bindings.

    If it was pure C there would be no excuse as the standard for Linux development is that you don’t break downstream, but the current zeitgeist is that Rust being a different language means that the current C developers have no responsibility if their code refactoring now breaks the rust code.

    It’s a frankly ridiculous stance to take, considering the long history of Linux being very strict on not breaking downstream code.


  • Well part of what it does is grab your actual desktop background to use, and there’s a couple different ways to do that on Linux afaik

    Also I guess the file dialogs would open only to the wine prefix? My experience with wine applications and dialogs is mostly through bottles, so I’m not sure of the sandboxing…









  • 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.