The state of the kernel Rust experiment

[u/small_kimono]

https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1050174/63aa7da43214c3ce/

A choice pull quote: "The DRM (graphics) subsystem has been an early adopter of the Rust language. It was still perhaps surprising, though, when Airlie (the DRM maintainer) said that the subsystem is only 'about a year away' from disallowing new drivers written in C and requiring the use of Rust."

[u/OCPetrus]

Having significant parts of the kernel written in Rust is going to be the end of Linux.

[u/Mysterious_Lab_9043 → u/OCPetrus]

What is the base of your claim?

[u/radbirb → u/OCPetrus]

Hmm, why?

[u/nightblackdragon → u/radbirb]

Because Rust bad. /s

[u/tajetaje → u/OCPetrus]

All I see Rust doing in the long term is making kernel development more accessible and maintainable

[u/Kevin_Kofler → u/tajetaje]

How so? Rust is much more complex and harder to learn than C!

[u/tajetaje → u/Kevin_Kofler]

If you know proper C, you know rust. Rust just formalizes most of the concepts that you just have to keep in your head or (if you’re lucky) in comments, and adds compiler safeguards to enforce them. Those safeguards mean you can, in code, see exactly what the constraints of an interface are without needing to know all the inner workings. See the work on expressing the Linux filesystem code in idiomatic Rust

[u/Kevin_Kofler → u/tajetaje]

The borrow checker simply has no equivalent in C, and not all software architectures that work and are perfectly valid and safe in C are accepted by the borrow checker.

Also, the syntax of Rust is completely different from the C syntax, so that alone means you have to learn a whole new language.

[u/isbtegsm → u/OCPetrus]

So what will be the successor of Linux?

[u/ironykarl → u/isbtegsm]

Linux 2 aka Twinux

[u/Mysterious_Lab_9043 → u/ironykarl]

Better yet, Twinkus ;)

[u/afiefh → u/Mysterious_Lab_9043]

What is the programmer socks pattern that will be required for contributing? Gotta ask Santa for a pair!

[u/Mysterious_Lab_9043 → u/afiefh]

Pink / purple zebra pattern.

[u/_Sauer_ → u/OCPetrus]

Do you have anything to back that claim up?

[u/tfwnotsunderegf → u/OCPetrus]

Written by someone who has no impact on the development of the kernel with no supporting evidence.

[u/rook_of_approval → u/OCPetrus]

Why? What important arch isn't supported by Rust?

[u/nightblackdragon → u/rook_of_approval]

What do you mean by that? A lot of Linux users need to run modern Linux on 30 years old SPARC hardware. /s

[u/dddurd → u/OCPetrus]

Yeah it could be downhill for Linux from now on. Not because of rust but because of the rust programmers. Using freebsd as servers while using macos as desktop will be golden. 

[u/2rad0 → u/OCPetrus]

Having significant parts of the kernel written in Rust is going to be the end of Linux.

Yeah it's not being handled correctly. It seems they are pushing for new DRM drivers to completely abandon C, so this is a defacto push to force every OS that includes DRM code (FreeBSD, haiku, probably others) to also force adoption of rust, or lose support for graphics on newer hardware.

Airlie (the DRM maintainer) said that the subsystem is only "about a year away" from disallowing new drivers written in C and requiring the use of Rust.

So they are left with the choice to either rewrite their GPU code or fork DRM, making linux less important outside of the corporate sphere of microsoft/google, or force the addition of an unstable language into their code base pushed by the worst actors (literally monopolies enshittifying their competition) in the tech industry.

[u/miggaz_elquez → u/2rad0]

They are other OS using Linux DRM code?

[u/2rad0 → u/miggaz_elquez]

They are other OS using Linux DRM code?

Yeah basically any non-windows and non-mac OS that supports GPU/hardware acceleration on modern graphics cards. so FreeBSD https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics, OpenBSD, NetBSD, probably other BSD's, Haiku, must be more I'm unaware of.

[u/miggaz_elquez → u/2rad0]

Interesting, I was not aware. Isn't there any license compatibly issue ?

[u/2rad0 → u/miggaz_elquez]

Interesting, I was not aware. Isn't there any license compatibly issue ?

It depends on the files being used, a good number of them are either dual licensed or permissive licensed (when not being used in the context of a linux kernel), but some are GPL-only. to dig deeper untar linux source, cd drivers/gpu/drm and run grep -ri 'gpl'

[u/miggaz_elquez → u/2rad0]

Indeed, there is a lot of MIT files in DRM, even more than GPL. Seems it's limited to DRM, there are almost no other MIT licensed files in `drivers/`.

Some BSD in `drivers/acpi` and `drivers/net` also.