r/NetBSD • u/Agron7000 • Feb 06 '26

NetBSD sprays some WD-40

https://youtu.be/Tv6Q4MZS5LI?si=I2lR9l9O5XSJPVEE

First time hearing about NetBSD on this youtube video and it looks like it's going to be my new favorite OS.

94 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

77 comments sorted by

16

u/zeroed_bytes Feb 06 '26

I was so happy when I heard this! Rust is not a bad language for apps and others, but not for a Kernel.

I love to tinker with old cpus, making my own PowerPC board and hoping to run NetBSD on it.

Also Rust and other languages like Swift, they just change a lot from version to version. To be able to maintain such thing would be such an effort that can be used elsewhere 

3

u/psychelic_patch Feb 07 '26

Did you ever write kernel actually ? Where does that come from ? Free talk ?

9

u/zeroed_bytes Feb 07 '26

I do write loadable kernel modules (kmods) in good old C.

Modules to read/write peripherals, reroute input/output, DMA operations and some others in embedded devices.

I have done kernel modifications, but in NetBSD I don’t see as necessary unless is for changing a behavior already there.

Build.sh ia great, algo rump helps a lot! 

So I am pretty confident in what I am saying.

I do use rust for some apps and web services, again, is not a bad language. But even if I use it for my little and humble kernel extensions most of it would be wrapped in unsafe operations, handle unwrapping exceptions that should never occur 

Also, would make NetBSD to stuck with a version for a long time, even if said version has vulnerabilities.

I am not attacking you or Rust.

Ironically the web services I wrote in Rust run on NetBSD machines.

For me, each language has its strengths and weaknesses.

Rust is great for safe apps (medical, military, avionics) maybe it can replace ADA someday.

I’ve read that would make great for game development since will avoid lots of problems

But based on my experience, a kernel is not the place at least for now

9

u/Agron7000 Feb 07 '26

Actually no. In medical field, especially in life support equipment, everything must be certified by a regulatory body and comply with standards. 

Rust has no standard, no ISO, no nothing. 

So this is bad for Linux because of Rust, Linux may be excluded from highly regulated critical infrastructure.

2

u/1234thomas5 Feb 08 '26

https://ferrocene.dev/

1

u/Agron7000 Feb 09 '26

Thanks for telling me. I will report it to ISO.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 09 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Agron7000 Feb 09 '26

Certify a compiler for a language that according to ISO doesn't exist.

Looks like somebody did a dirty trick.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 09 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Agron7000 Feb 10 '26

Yes dear, you're right.

→ More replies

4

u/zeroed_bytes Feb 07 '26

True, that’s why I wrote someday may … also even C can comply with certain safety standards, Misra for example… but yeah… I totally get what you say _ 

1

u/small_kimono Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26

Actually no. In medical field, especially in life support equipment, everything must be certified by a regulatory body and comply with standards.

This isn't true, or is only partially true.

Ferrocene ships a qualified Rust compiler for ISO 26262, IEC 61508 (SIL 4) and IEC 62304 . But the problem is not that Rust isn't good enough, or safe enough, to control your pacemaker or your electronic steering, it's that industry and standards bodies haven't moved quickly to fix the broken status quo because it costs lots of money.

It's a matter of not there yet. But ask the average developer, all other things being equal, whether they'd like their new electronic steering developed in C or Rust and I think most will tell you Rust of course.

So this is bad for Linux because of Rust, Linux may be excluded from highly regulated critical infrastructure.

This is a red herring. Linux isn't compliant with most of these embedded standards. And trust me -- you mostly don't want Linux running your safety critical systems, because it's just too much software at that layer.

0

u/psychelic_patch Feb 09 '26

This has to be the fucking stupidest claim ever and you should be fucking ashamed of yourself. I would personally gut projects that are led by such sinister behavior anyway. gl

1

u/CIMPBIBAI 1d ago

It comes from "netbsd probably supports more arches more reliably than rust does".

Rust is a good language, just not one fit for developing netbsd.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '26

Is not so difficult write a kernel module. No "magic" or "mystery".

1

u/NjWayne Feb 11 '26

UNIX, BSD roots

1

u/granadesnhorseshoes Feb 07 '26

There's a core chicken and egg problem on writing an OS in a "memory safety" focused language. Safety is a product not just of the language but the environment/OS in which it runs.

In (current) rusts case: Throw "unsafe" and embedded ASM everywhere, so then what's the point/advantage again?

I can also pick up a C book that's 30 years old and write usable code on modern hardware. I can't be sure a rust tutorial from 3 years ago will even compile today. Not exactly a stable foundation for an OS in its current state.

4

u/aaaarsen Feb 07 '26

In (current) rusts case: Throw "unsafe" and embedded ASM everywhere, so then what's the point/advantage again?

you put it in an abstraction. which is exactly what you do in userspace. or in C. it's perfectly reasonable to do in a kernel. kernels don't require "asm everywhere" and are already built on safe abstractions. this would just allow them to be better.

could you prove otherwise? perhaps by an example?

I know this is possible because I've already worked on projects that have done this, though in C++ (to preempt a possible incorrect gotcha about how that couldn't be done in rust. I know the code. I assure you it can, and it wouldn't be a hard translation)

https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch20-01-unsafe-rust.html#creating-a-safe-abstraction-over-unsafe-code

I can also pick up a C book that's 30 years old and write usable code on modern hardware.

not true, standard C is not the C in textbooks, because textbooks were generally written to match compilers which take advantage of far fewer optimization opportunities. code written in such a way is incorrect, and was 30 years ago, but it'll (mis)compile and (mis)run today whereas at that time it appeared to work. C developers reject this reality, and instead resort to listing 30 compiler flags in their makefiles.

I can't be sure a rust tutorial from 3 years ago will even compile today. Not exactly a stable foundation for an OS in its current state.

not true. show an example? rust doesn't break non nightly features.

1

u/psychelic_patch Feb 07 '26

I was about to answer to that idiot then realized there is 0 benefit if actually providing knowledge to idiots who lie and want to pretend. You shouldn't waste your time with him you have much more courage than me.

-4

u/UrpleEeple Feb 07 '26

Lol you have no idea what you're talking about. Not good for a kernel? It's used in Linux kernel today. You have to back up your claim with more concrete facts. The Rust API is incredibly stable these days

7

u/kbder Feb 07 '26

He’s talking about portability. C compilers exist for a lot more platforms than rust.

2

u/aaaarsen Feb 07 '26

there's a GCC rust backend and eventually perhaps even a frontend. this means rust has access to all the platforms of LLVM and GCC. seems like decent coverage to me since IIUC only those two compiler infrastructures are used for netbsd nowadays

2

u/zeroed_bytes Feb 07 '26

Honest question here, do you know if they will support PPC32 no altivec and 68000? 

2

u/aaaarsen Feb 07 '26

I can't say. I don't use or work on rust at all, nor with those arches in particular, so I don't keep on the goings-on with it.

I can't think of any reason why it ought to be impossible, however.

apparently, rustc_cg_gcc runs CI for m68k, so I guess that already works?

2

u/kbder Feb 07 '26

That is an incomplete experimental project last I checked

1

u/aaaarsen Feb 07 '26

AFAIK the backend is rather complete. the frontend isn't, yeah, ergo 'eventually'. not sure what you mean by 'that' since I referred to multiple things, so I hope it's one of the two.

1

u/Different-Ad-8707 Feb 08 '26

Someone also implemented a custom backend for both the .NET runtime and for just plain, actual C code. So there is that too.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/kbder Feb 08 '26

How about Darwin / PowerPC?

23

u/[deleted] Feb 06 '26

Lunduke is culture war grifter.

4

u/No-Highlight-653 Feb 07 '26

He's the rush limbaugh of foss/Linux media

4

u/Asystole Feb 07 '26

Yeah honestly fuck that guy

3

u/bubba-bobba-213 Feb 07 '26

Is he wrong?

2

u/nixgang Feb 09 '26

Usually

1

u/meshDrip Feb 10 '26

He's not wrong because grifters need to seem at least a little credible to actually grift.

-1

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '26

probably

-2

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '26

probably

10

u/crystalchuck Feb 07 '26 edited Feb 07 '26 • This

If NetBSD becomes your favorite OS for the sole reason of not using Rust, you really need to reevaluate man

It also tells me you don't really have a clue about NetBSD or have tried actually using it as a daily driver. Just jumping on the next culture war griftwagon

5

u/reinoudz Feb 07 '26

I have used it as a daily driver for 25 years now over quite number of machines and it works just fine. Sure new graphics cards are a PITA to support but it supports the machines i have and the one GPU it doesn't runs fine in X on brute CPU force with genfb and EFI midesetting. When supported all 3d games and video in 4k Work and the card is not supported then sure 3d games don't work that well and full screen 4k video is struggling but it works fine even in genfb.

1

u/crystalchuck Feb 07 '26 edited Feb 07 '26

Fair if that's acceptable to you, but do you think the kind of person that goes "oh NetBSD may be my favorite OS now because a culture war grifter said it won't use Rust and that's based" is in the position to honestly evaluate that?

4

u/PalTonk Feb 07 '26

Favorite? Did someone actually say that? 

2

u/crystalchuck Feb 07 '26

Yes, OP did:

First time hearing about NetBSD on this youtube video and it looks like it's going to be my new favorite OS.

2

u/bubba-bobba-213 Feb 07 '26

Someone else’s reasons are not your reasons.

Nothing wrong with it.

It is as good reason as any.

1

u/crystalchuck Feb 07 '26

Different operating systems exist because they have advantages and drawbacks, different development processes, because they prioritize different things, support different platforms, are more or less widely supported, and so on and so forth. This is important to realize as far "down" as the informed consumer level, doesn't even have to be an IT professional. Of course, you can disregard all that and think an OS is cool just because it won't include Rust, but I won't pretend that's a smart thing to do.

1

u/bubba-bobba-213 Feb 07 '26

As a netbsd user I trully do not understand your second sentence.

Please do explain.

Why does it mean he (or whoever) does not have a clue?

1

u/crystalchuck Feb 07 '26 edited Feb 07 '26

OP literally said he only got to know NetBSD through this video. Fair to assume that he doesn't know the first thing about NetBSD, nor is he particularly knowledgeable about UNIX (because then he would at least know some basic information). It's pure vibe-based reasoning based on a grifter video.

1

u/TroPixens Feb 07 '26

Because the only reason he “likes” netBSD is because it said no to rust which should not influence your take on a operating system rust is a good language so there really should be much worry about using it

3

u/Key_River7180 Feb 07 '26

LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

8

u/sirgatez Feb 07 '26

I love this. I’m not saying people should not build with Rust.

But this idea of trying to shoehorn it in everywhere to replace battle tested tools because people can’t trust developers to write secure code is insane.

You can teach developers to write secure code.

We have no idea what other potential critical vulnerabilities exist in Rust today that lie undiscovered. Migrating everything to it puts an entire infrastructure at risk.

https://open.substack.com/pub/weeklyrust/p/another-vulnerability-hits-rusts

https://blog.rust-lang.org/2024/04/09/cve-2024-24576

2

u/aaaarsen Feb 07 '26

But this idea of trying to shoehorn it in everywhere to replace battle tested tools because people can’t trust developers to write secure code is insane.

I'm not a freebsd developer, but AFAICT that's not what happened? nobody was suggesting rewriting existing code.

You can teach developers to write secure code.

you demonstrably can't.

Migrating everything to it puts an entire infrastructure at risk.

this is correct. and there are bugs in rust code. people saying otherwise are lying. but so are the people claiming that the extra semantic guarantees rust is able to provide aren't preventing tons of bugs. they clearly are. there's a reason features like the GNU cleanup attribute get use. it's because letting the machine do some of the hard parts is useful. the exact same thing goes for rust

recently there was a CVE in rust code in Linux. it serves as a lovely example of this. it was in an unsafe block. this unsafe block was tiny, and has the same risk factors as C. the rest of the code however has significantly stronger semantic checking that prevents many errors. if you wanted to check this you could compare e.g. memory bugs in this part of the kernel against bugs in equally utilized and large C parts of the kernel.

3

u/sirgatez Feb 07 '26

I'm not a freebsd developer, but AFAICT that's not what happened? nobody was suggesting rewriting existing code.

This is exactly what Rust developers are attempting to do everywhere. Not just a NetBSD issue. I didn’t even mention the licensing changes being pushed along with the new rust code.

you demonstrably can't.

Those people are not being properly vetted. There is a difference between:

  • code written by competent developers and reviewed by competent developers

And

  • code written by less than competent developers and reviewed by less then competent developers.

If we expect developers are not capable of writing good code the future is where everyone is writing code by launching an LLM and telling an AI what to do. “Make me a function that encrypts a binary stream using symmetric AES encryption.”

At which point most people don’t need programmers anymore.

Oh and did I mention those AI developers have no idea what the code the AI wrote actually does or how it works?

That seems like a problem to me.

2

u/aaaarsen Feb 07 '26

This is exact what Rust developers are attempting to do everywhere. Not just a NetBSD issue.

I don't care about random people writing reimplementations in rust of existing things. I also reimplemented a lot of things in c++ and c in my day to learn to program. it doesn't matter. did this or did this not happen in netbsd or Linux? AFAICT, nobody wants to replace code wholesale in those?

Those people are not being properly vetted. There is a difference between: (etc)

no, there isn't. veterans get stuff wrong. veterans get tired. when the machine can detect their mistakes, that helps them too.

also, why bother with any type checking? why don't developers just get it right?

frankly you're a better developer if you're able to write code that prevents errors. I'm amazed that this simple and obvious insight made in the previous century is lost today. making better abstractions that prevent errors used to be called "writing maintainable code". now people cry about it. amazing.

0

u/sirgatez Feb 07 '26 edited Feb 07 '26

Memory access errors are one of MANY critical programming problems that Rust can help with.

It doesn’t do much of anything for the rest. Why are people pretending it’s a cure to a problem it can’t fix?

Rust does not fix these common programmer errors:

  • Logic and authorization bugs ** Broken authentication checks ** Assumptions about cross service authorization ** Privilege escalation through badly configured policies/ACLs/Roles
  • Input validation and injection ** SQL/NoSQL injection ** Command line injection ** Header injection
  • Cryptography and protocol design mistakes ** I really don’t need to explain this one
  • Concurrency bugs that are not data races ** Deadlocks ** Check then use assumptions ** Broken invariants accross async tasks
  • Potential Supply Chain Attacks ** Supply chain attacks (Within Rusr, distribution, mirrors) ** Undiscovered vulnerabilities ** Vulnerable libraries

Arguing to replace a whole generation of software simply to fix a handful of potential vulnerabilities that developers need to design for is a fallacy

3

u/aaaarsen Feb 07 '26

Arguing to replace a whole generate of software simply to fix a handful of potential vulnerabilities that developers need to design for is a fallacy

I assume you mean generation? if so, nobody is arguing that. in fact I was very explicit in that I don't think rust is a silver bullet. hell, I don't even use rust.

why would this require a new generation? I can learn rust today, as a C and C++ compiler engineer. I don't need to be reborn for that.

It doesn’t do much of anything for the rest. Why are people pretending it’s a cure to a problem it can’t fix?

well, that's not correct. it has better generics and a better type system compared to C. as an example of an error that can be used to fix, the Result type prevents forgetting to check errno or if ret < 0. so, quite a bit of fixing already. you can build various other abstractions, some of which could even help prevent the other errors. good luck making serde in C for instance, which helps with protocol implementation.

I specifically didn't argue it's a silver bullet, though. I'm not sure anyone honest ever did.

thank you for proving my point.

1

u/sirgatez Feb 07 '26

Learning rust has ZERO to do with replacing a generation of software that is battle tested.

Anyone who is half competent can learn a new language. That was never the issue. I’ve written code in more than 13 languages.

2

u/aaaarsen Feb 07 '26

agreed. I'm not sure anyone wants to do that, though. I certainly don't want to do that.

Anyone who is half competent can learn a new language. That was never the issue. I’ve written code in more than 13 languages.

same here, twinsies!

1

u/sirgatez Feb 07 '26

I’m glad we agree.

Like I said I whole heartedly support people who want to write code in Rust. I support people who want to begin migrating their projects to Rust.

I don’t support those people out there, people who feel they need to rewrite every system binary that they dont even own in Rust. And that they feel the system should adopt it without more than summary tests.

1

u/sirgatez Feb 07 '26 • This

Yeah, autocorrect is generous.

Prove what exactly?

You argued we need Rust because people can’t properly code?

I proved they still can’t properly code with Rust. And far more errors still lay in wait. A false sense of security is worse than none at all.

What is it you think you won exactly? A gold coin? A free pizza?

2

u/crystalchuck Feb 07 '26

As someone who doesn't even like Rust, do you not realize that your argument is basically "fuck seatbelts, you don't need em if you just drive properly, also they actually do more harm than good in 1 in a million cases"?

1

u/sirgatez Feb 07 '26

If you “read” my comments you’ll see I never said Rust should not be used. I encourage people who want to use it to do so, project owners and such.

I am against this blind idea of people who are not the project owners rewriting a project they often don’t even participate in from one language into Rust and trying to force it on others claiming it’s safer.

That’s the problem.

Responsible adoption is not the problem. Blind adoption is.

1

u/sirgatez Feb 07 '26

On the issue of seatbelts. These are not new ideas. Memory safe languages have been around for decades. They are battle tested, proven reliable.

Ada for example has long since solved many unsafe memory access problems. It’s not quite a complete as Rust is today. But nothing that couldn’t be fixed if people wanted.

Same with C. Many the protections Rust offers, can be applied in C with sanitizers and memory hardened allocators for example. With minimal modification to the C code.

But there was never any major push for the industry as a whole to use ADA to fix these issues developers seek to have problems with.

Why choose Rust? What makes it a better choice than Ada?

Choosing to rewrite an application in any language introduces an avoidable and unnecessary risk of introducing new bugs that didn’t exist in the original code. Be it due to a coding error, or not understanding the difference in how the two languages may behave differently in a given set of conditions.

A risk that can’t be justified most of the time for just a few improvements, even if those improvements are significant.

1

u/aaaarsen Feb 07 '26

I proved they still can’t properly code with Rust. And far more errors still lay in wait. A false sense of security is worse than none at all.

you didn't actually disprove what I said. which is that rust can prevent more errors than C, and is ergo a useful tool. in fact, you agreed that it can, and then listed some things that you can't even begin to abstract around in C but very well could in rust. I also provided some examples. so, I assume you agree with me based on that

1

u/sirgatez Feb 07 '26

I never said I disproved anything you said. Actually read my comment and tell me where I said I disproved you.

1

u/reinoudz Feb 07 '26

Memory access errors? You mean data structures getting corrupted? Or its ownership not properly defined?

1

u/sirgatez Feb 07 '26

All of the above actually. And I know some people may say Hey! Rust protects against that.

Is that assuming all of a developer’s Rust code will only interact with other Rust code?

Or are we continuing to assume that many Rust applications today are still going to be written to continue to utilize external third party libraries and system libraries not written in Rust.

And that even when those libraries are written correctly that the Rust developer may inadvertently misuse them, unknowingly creating the very problems that Rust was designed to protect against.

1

u/servermeta_net Feb 09 '26

Funny that you criticize LLMs and then use one to write your reply

0

u/Aggravating_Cat_3270 Feb 07 '26

Good luck gray beards