David Airlie, Red Hat kernel maintainer, about the Rust-for-Linux drama: "if people start acting as active roadblocks to work, rather than sideline commentators who we can ignore, then I will ask Linus to step in and remove roadblocks"

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I think some people, including David Airlie, are mixing apples with oranges in an attempt to distinguish between the advocates of using Rust as yet another (!) programming language that can be useful and even helpful in some cases, including in the Linux kernel, and those who frankly do nothing but threatening those whom David calls "roadblocks", themselves turning into "roadblocks", using his own definition.

E.g., Wedson A. Filho, that Rust-for-Linux guy, who with no particular argumentation except in frustration with "nontechnical nonsense" stepped down the project. WTF?! What can I say after watching his and Kent's heated argument with T'So - come on guys, provide more reasonable arguments as T'So did with re: Rust bindings for C. No, what we heard was only complaints that he was tired... Childish... For the sake of Christ, can you imagine such a behaviour and situation back in the days of Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie?!

My personal subjective opinion on Rust is it gradually turns into a ~~tumor~~ tool artificially imposed by the Rust community (or may be ~~NSA~~ other guys around the block, who knows?). No matter what a programming language is, it ain't gonna solve all the problems. Rust is a PL with single implementation, with no particular standard yet. Why don't the Rust guys simply not start making something of their own from scratch or even forking the Linux kernel, if it is so "safe a language"?! Why do they get involved in existing projects only to destablise them?! And now they are threatening the people... Pathetic...

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small_kimono@reddit (OP)

I think some people

Tried mightily to parse this run on sentence. Afraid I just couldn't.

E.g., Wedson A. Filho, that Rust-for-Linux guy, who with no particular argumentation except in frustration with "nontechnical nonsense" stepped down the project. WTF?!

You may not realize this, but an argument is not required to resign from maintainership of a FOSS project.

My personal subjective opinion on Rust is it gradually turns into a tumor tool artificially imposed by the Rust community (or may be NSA other guys around the block, who knows?).

I think your meds may need to be adjusted...

Why do they get involved in existing projects only to destablise them?! And now they are threatening the people... Pathetic...

Because they have been invited in?

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Chibblededo@reddit

One hopes that the context makes the meaning of the following clear.

Throwing out toy without defining what you mean(even with a definition, it's still not a great word choice), is not exactly a great look here. [Sic.]

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Helmic@reddit

Just look at what he was replying to. Extremely rude and demeaning comment minimizing the value of other people's work, dressed up to "sound nice." No wonder he got that response.

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perkited@reddit

I think if people start acting as active roadblocks to work, rather than sideline commentators who we can ignore, then I will ask Linus to step in and remove roadblocks, but so far we haven't faced actual problems that education and patience can't solve.

Adding the rest of the quote so it's not quite so click and rage-baity.

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PorgDotOrg@reddit

That omission really annoys me because it makes it clear that this topic was meant to stir shit.

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Karma_Policer@reddit

I tried to add the rest but the 300 character limit didn't allow me.

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TheLinuxMailman@reddit

Did you try running it through xz first?

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ThomasterXXL@reddit

Thank you for being born 🥰

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WileEPyote@reddit

I prefer zstd 19.

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TheLinuxMailman@reddit

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Good point! zstd 19 wins.

Always benchmark folks.

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i860@reddit

There’s a reason the rest of the quote wasn’t included. Once again, agenda driven drama originating out of a community that enjoys this kind of crap.

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Shished@reddit

The reason is the reddit post title lenght is limited to 300 characters.

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mina86ng@reddit

People act as if the quote was clicbaity but in reality context was clear. The quote starts with ‘if people start acting…’ so it’s easy to conclude that author probably doesn’t think this is the case now.

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perkited@reddit

It's not the context that's changed, but the tone. One is more defiant/headstrong, while the other is more instructive/cooperative.

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blackcain@reddit

It's good that you added the rest. Much appreciated.

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sparky8251@reddit

Yes, Rust is feasible.

The NVMe driver works fine and the interfaces needed for it are going through review, though it's an uphill battle politically: as you said there are a few very loud voices in FS/Block that seem to be overwhelmed by their work loads.

The NVMe performance graphs looked very encouraging to me! A proof-of-concept driver with no explicit optimizations is identical to the C performance, except in 2 cases: one where it's within roughly 2%, and in another was faster.

This is honestly an incredibly good sign of what rust can offer. No performance losses really (evens out worst case) yet nearly all memory and concurrency related bugs just vanish.

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crusoe@reddit

No aliasing is a huge win for optimization for the compiler. That's what rust gets you.

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flying-sheep@reddit

I’ve been excited for this for a long time* but so far I haven’t seen a place where these gains materialized in a big way. Do you know one?

*because I heard that one of the reasons linear algebra code still uses old FORTRAN libs is this: Nobody wants to rewrite super hairy error prone FORTRAN code in C. And with Rust, C could be skipped.

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rszdev@reddit

Both C and Rust developers are amazing guys and must work together for the betterment of the Linux Platform ❤️

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T8ert0t@reddit

I don't do contribute jack to the kernel. But I served time in structural bureaucracy. I get that no likes extra homework. But it's about how you sell the future and are willing to promise reciprocity.

Hopefully, they can reach an understanding.

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rszdev@reddit

👍

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Accomplished-Sun9107@reddit

David Airlie is a gem, - he's been around on the AMD front as long as I can remember. (Decades!?)

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mmcgrath@reddit

Yes he is :)

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Accomplished-Sun9107@reddit

Just wanted to say, as a visually impaired user, his work way back, was the reason I could independently use a computer. AMD’s kernel drivers from graphics have been flawlessly stable for a long while now. Everything just works. Hopefully he knows he’s appreciated.

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MooseBoys@reddit

I will ask Linus to step in and remove roadblocks

Somehow I suspect Linus would be more likely to erupt in a tirade of slurs against the rust community and side with the c devs on this one. But who knows - maybe his time away from the project to cultivate emotional growth and interpersonal skills will prove me wrong.

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epicshawty@reddit

Didn’t Linus explicitly say Rust adoption into the kernel was too slow and expected it to be quicker? I think he’d actually come out in favor of the Rust community

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cp5184@reddit

Does that point to him being unhappy with a lack of rust code or being unhappy with rust being introduced in the first place but then becoming unused?

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CrazyKilla15@reddit

"The very slowly increased footprint of Rust has been a bit frustrating. I was expecting uptake to be faster, but part of it – a large part of it, admittedly – has been a lot of old-time kernel developers are so used to C and really don't know Rust, so they're not excited about having to learn a whole new language that is, in some respects, fairly different. So, there's been some pushback for that reason." -- Linus Torvalds

https://diginomica.com/kubecon-china-33-and-third-linux-long-player-so-why-does-linus-torvalds-hate-ai

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Somehow I suspect Linus would be more likely to erupt in a tirade of slurs against the rust community and side with the c devs on this one. But

linus has been somewhat positive on rust surprisingly