Wedson Almeida Filho is a Microsoft engineer who has been prolific in his contributions to the Rust for the Linux kernel code over the past several years. Wedson has worked on many Rust Linux kernel features and even did a experimental EXT2 file-system driver port to Rust. But he’s had enough and is now stepping away from the Rust for Linux efforts.
From Wedon’s post on the kernel mailing list:
I am retiring from the project. After almost 4 years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical nonsense, so it’s best to leave it up to those who still have it in them.
…
I truly believe the future of kernels is with memory-safe languages. I am no visionary but if Linux doesn’t internalize this, I’m afraid some other kernel will do to it what it did to Unix.
Lastly, I’ll leave a small, 3min 30s, sample for context here: https://youtu.be/WiPp9YEBV0Q?t=1529 – and to reiterate, no one is trying force anyone else to learn Rust nor prevent refactorings of C code."
Oof, that video… I don’t have enough patience to put up with that sort of thing either. I wonder how plausible a complete Rust fork of the kernel would be.
It’s always been this way. Except that it was kernel developers arguing with kernel developers over C code. Now it’s relative newcomers arguing with kernel developers over Rust code that the kernel devs don’t necessarily care about. Of course it’s going to be a mess.
A fork is of course possible, but operating systems are huge and very complex, you really don’t want to alienate these folks that have been doing exclusively this for 30 years. It would be hard to keep the OS commercially viable with a smaller group and having to do both the day to day maintenance, plus the rewrite. It’s already difficult as it is currently.
Rust will be a huge success in time, long after the current names have lost their impetus. This is not a “grind for 4 years and it’s done” project.
folks that have been doing this exclusively for 30 years
And yet the number of people I hear “just switch to Linux!” When the other person has been using Windows for 30 years blows my mind.
Inertia is a hell of a drug.
I wouldn’t tell a Windows developer with 30 years experience to just switch to developing for Linux.
Users are different. Most people who have used Windows for 30 years never touch anything outside of the desktop, taskbar and Explorer.
That person in the audience was really grinding my gears. Just let the folks you’re talking to answer you; no need to keep going on your diatribe when it’s based on a false assumption and waste the whole room’s time.
I wonder how plausible a complete Rust fork of the kernel would be.
It sounds highly impractical, and it would probably introduce more issues than Rust solves, even if there were enough people with enough free time to do it. Any change must be evolutionary if it’s going to be achievable.
NOT a fork of Linux, but Redox is aiming for a Unix-like OS based on Rust – but even with “source compatibility” with Linux/BSD and drivers being in userspace, my guess would be hardware drivers are still going to be a big speed bump
All you need nowadays for a decent Unix-like is compatibility with a handful of Linux softwares and a web browser. Hell, if you could get WINE working on your kernel you could maybe support as many Windows apps/games as Linux for free.
The big issue, as I see it, is performant drivers for a wide range of hardware. That doesn’t come easy, but I wonder if that can be addressed in a way I’m too inexperienced to know.
But projects like Redox are a genuine threat to the hegemony of Linux - if memory safety isn’t given the true recognition it deserves, projects like Redox serve to be the same disrupting force as Linux once was for UNIX.
Redox also takes some inspiration from Plan9 and https://doc.redox-os.org/book/ch05-00-schemes-resources.html is interesting. Also reading https://drewdevault.com/2022/11/12/In-praise-of-Plan-9.html made me a bit more interested in things trying to be more Plan9-like than Unix-like.
There’s certainly a history of Unix and Unix-like forks; which is rather simple compared to the Linux distro forks (go right to the big pic).
