Following arguments on the Linux kernel mailing list the past few days over some Linux kernel maintainers being against the notion of Rust code in the mainline Linux kernel and trying to avoid it and very passionate views over the Linux kernel development process, Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin has removed himself from being an upstream maintainer of the ARM Apple code.
I wish rust ppl would listen to the maintainers of the 30+ year old c project.
They have decades of experience maintaining and patching contributions made by people who are no longer active and the small request that those contributions be in the language of the project isn’t something to fight against.
It’s really a bummer when skilled developers fall back on stuff like “if shaming on social media doesn’t work, what am I supposed to do?”
Dunno man, when what the dev of 30+ years said was more or less “fuck off”, it seems that advice was in fact heeded
The system works
When the contributions not in C are explicitly approved by the project owner, it seems that the 30+ year maintainers shouldn’t try to blockade any progress from actually happening. Working multi-language projects isn’t that much of a nightmare, if code governance and boundaries are well-defined and enforced.
Definitely a case of “everyone sucks here”. The maintainer being a dick and sabotaging R4L without technical justification and Hector putting it on blast.
What sort of advise are they giving? I’m out of the loop
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250108122825.136021-1-abdiel.janulgue@gmail.com/
Here’s the whole thread if you wanna read for yourself.
My take away is that rust people are generally fine and try to abide by the norms of the kernel development process but Martin acts like a jerk and it would be okay if he didn’t come back.
See the comment far, far down in the thread implying that he’s somehow a more serious commenter or developer because he’s funded by donations as opposed to a company.
The holy and sage advice of the dino developers is to not do Rust. You know, not do a thing that Saint Linus himself authorized. Except Saint Linus is apparently not willing to walk the walk in this particular case.
We’re overdue for a Linux fork anyway.
Not a fork of course but there is Redox
https://www.redox-os.org/
Maybe im wrong but with ARM being the new cpu architecture, rust being new, wayland coming into maturity, etc, it appears as though there might end up being a more x86/x11/C focused legacy kernel and a forked ARM/Wayland/Rust focused new generation one.
Which honestly im fine with. And kinda makes sense. Especially if we get into an era where stuff like x86 starts to get phased out entirely. Which i think we will in the next decade or so. Remains to be seen if thatll happen but i think theres a decent chance at this point.
RISC-V is the “new” CPU architecture
Is there anything in the kernel that makes it compatible with X11 or Wayland over the other? I know that there’s a graphic driver discussion in the background, but still.
No. The kernel does not care about X11 vs Wayland. Or rather, both X11 and Wayland use KMS ( Kernel Mode Setting ) and DRM ( Direct Rendering ) these days. That is, both X11 and Wayland call on the same kernel features.
Im not a dev so idk about that tbh. But i know atleast that programs have issues with it. Its pretty good these days but some stuff still has to use Xwayland as a compatibility layer.
The kernel is unrelated to the choice of display manager.
Correct.