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this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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Linux
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I think that Linus' concerns about posting on social media is completely valid, but I was pretty disappointed that he didn't address Hellwig going full retard. Marcan dealt with this like a spoiled child in the end, but he was 100% right.
This should be worth a Linus rant in my honest opinion.
Hellwig specifically says "where this cancer is a cross-language codebase". He's not wrong. I don't know how you transition languages, but my god, if you want to lose maintainers, make it impossible to maintain because of language incompatibilties. A few people from a downstream project like Asahi or an almost defunct driver like Nouveau would be the least of your worries if you were Linus.
I disagree. Hellwig was not contributing with the discussion. The point is that Rust is being integrated into the kernel, whether Hellwig likes it or not. It passed the point of discussing if it should happen or not. Besides that, R4L is responsible for maintaining the Rust code even if something is broken from the C side of things.
Neither of those sides exist in a vacuum; it's great there's a R4L team, but you still have to eliminate the possibility the problem exists at your end before you throw it in their lap and say "deal with it". And I'll bet half the time it gets tossed back with "your problem" and then the arguments ensue, not to mention the various discussions about how to make them talk to get rid of the bug. It's not anywhere near as simple as the idea that there is a team for that.
Sure Hellwig's probably being an asshole here, but you can be an asshole and still be right. Linus did it for 20 years and built the most successful OS in history.
Yeah, I agree with you that, realistically speaking, Rust people would probably complain when C code brakes their code, but I still think that this was not what Hellwig was talking about.
In my opinion, he was just being unreasonable when he told people that he would be doing everything he can to prevent anything else that's not C code from being merged into the kernel.
I mean, I understand his concerns of not wanting to deal with Rust code, but what he said is not contributing AT ALL to the discussion.
btw, I'm not the one downvoting your comments. I disagree with you but I think you are making some valid points.
Fair enough, I guess I would agree with you on the value it had to that discussion. I've just dealt with partial codebase transitions and it's a horror to fix anything.
And I couldn't give a shit about downvotes, or I'd just dogpile along with the groupthink in every thread like the rest of the Lemmings. I appreciate the discussion.
I'm not sure why you think Asahi is a minor player in the linux community when they're responsible in the entirety for porting Linux to the Arm-based Mac M1+ series, or why you think Nouveau is defunct.
If a single percent of regular Linux users use either of those on a daily basis, I'll eat a bug. And desktop Linux isn't even a significant amount of Linux use in general. So why would the kernel developers give the slightest shit about either of them?
Nouveau is important because Nouveau is the default driver in Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Debian, and ever other distro.
Linux distributions can't easily distribute the proprietary
nvidiadrivers or the slightly less proprietarynvidia-opendrivers so they depend on nouveau as the default nvidia driver. When you install a distro it usually has to use the nouveau drivers before downloading the proprietary blobs from Nvidia.Nouveau is the only reason anyone can use Linux on an Nvidia card long enough to install the other drivers.
It's also actively maintained, receiving updates that get upstreamed almost daily.
I'm not sure what about those things says "defunct".
And the rust developments in Asahi for the M1+ series of CPUs don't just benefit Mac but all the ARM CPUs as well.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/03/nova-a-rust-based-linux-driver-for-nvidia-gpus-announced/
It's days of being the driver that's used long enough to install the proprietary driver that actually works are numbered.
Man you better hope the kernel community gets its shit together then, cause Krummrich (the primary developer for nova and getting those changes upstreamed) is one of guys that got told their project was cancer by the "thin blue line" maintainer (Hellwig) from the article.
This new driver is written in Rust, so it changes nothing about the debate