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this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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Rust seems to be imperative for security. I hope people in the Linux kernel community put aside their differences and find common ground for the benefit of everyone.
From my perspective as an outsider, there is a lot of apparent hostility and seemingly bad faith engagements going on in this space. Hopefully the reasons are innocuous like them just not wanting to learn a new language, to avoid increasing their workload, or to simply avoid working with the Rust team for whatever reasons they might have.
I would argue that anybody standing in the way of progress and increased security should be moved out of the way. No need for shaming or deep dives, just move the ship forward.
The crucial point is that the people who can work on the kernel now itself are
The moment we get rust in there, the people who can work on the kernel reliably as a whole are
That's a much smaller group than the one above.
Here's the point: THE SAME ISSUE would arise if it were D, or some kind of compiled python, object-oriented bash static objects, if that existed; or anything. Whatever the other language was, it'd present the same risk.
Rust people: it's not about you. It's about splitting the codebase.
I always thought kernel devs were smart people. I'm kind of shocked learning a new language is this big of a barrier to them.
Even “smart people” have resource/time limitations. Learning rust to an extent that will work on that level is not the same as learning C.