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Linus Torvalds talks AI, Rust, & why Linux is the only thing that matters

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Re: Linus Torvalds talks AI, Rust, & why Linux is the only thing that matters

#31

Post by mrklol »

superfist wrote: post #16
thinkharderdev wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's caused a lot of trouble so far and for what? The "for what" seems pretty obvious, no? It's the same reason you would use Rust over C in any other project. Memory safety and more modern PL features.

In my opinion, in the case of the Linux kernel, Zig (once it reaches 1.0) would be a much better, more natural, and less painful choice than Rust.

Like stated, zig isn’t stable yet. And in general the kit isn’t on a good level yet to replace C in Linux.

And, there’s still no good and fast allocator:

https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/12484

Re: Linus Torvalds talks AI, Rust, & why Linux is the only thing that matters

#32

Post by speed_spread »

dgb23 wrote: post #21
speed_spread wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kneejerk pushback from old timers C-only kernel devs.

I would assume this type of pushback is one of the main reasons a project like Linux is trustworthy in the first place.

Linus has the wisdom to see the writing on the wall - the kernel is becoming too complex to be maintained and extended by newcomers; the pool of C ninjas that can handle it reliably is diminishing. This kind of foresight is what makes Linux trustworthy in the first place. A lot of current individual contributors lack that vision and fail to understand the reason for introducing what they see as unneeded complexity.

The other reason Linux is trustworthy because of the technical meritocracy culture. But since Rust is not a technical choice, as Rust cannot per-se do things that are impossible in C - you can do anything in C - the introduction of Rust falls outside the parameters of the regular rough-but-mostly-fair Linux exchanges. This leading to toxic reactions from the less socially-abled.

Re: Linus Torvalds talks AI, Rust, & why Linux is the only thing that matters

#33

Post by techwizrd »

Zambyte wrote: post #19
steveklabnik wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41386939 A comment there has a link to a video of what seems to be the final straw.

Also linked in the email in the GP. > 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.

A redditor pointed out [0] that this is exactly what they would do to sink Rust adoption. Even if you agree with the substance of the argument, the delivery is rude and unhelpful. I hope this resignation is a wake-up call, and much of the onus is on C devs to be more collaborative.

0: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1f3q0l8/one_of_the_r...

Re: Linus Torvalds talks AI, Rust, & why Linux is the only thing that matters

#34

Post by [deleted] »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #10
speed_spread wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kneejerk pushback from old timers C-only kernel devs.

It's inevitable in any organisations when dealing with change. Identifying resistance and coming up with strategies to overcome is a key part of change management. Telling people their reaction is "kneejerk pushback" usually does not help ;) It's probably more difficult to handle in open source than in a company because authority less powerful and it's more difficult to wave both carrots and sticks...

[deleted]

Re: Linus Torvalds talks AI, Rust, & why Linux is the only thing that matters

#35

Post by computerthings »

cogman10 wrote: post #24
dgb23 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume this type of pushback is one of the main reasons a project like Linux is trustworthy in the first place.

That wasn't the nature of the pushback. He did a presentation on making a fs in rust, the response from this dev was "we won't be converting to your religion. We are going to continue modifying c code and your dumb rust code will always be a second class citizen." Literally just hostility for hostility sake. He wasn't proposing to rewrite everything in rust. He wasn't proposing that everyone learns rust. He was just…

What was literally said didn't include the words "always" or "your dumb rust code". From the subtitles with slight manual fixes:

> I suspect part of the problem here is you're trying to convince everyone to switch over to the religion as promulgated by rust and the reality is that ain't going to happen because we have 50 plus filesystems in Linux, they will not all be instantaneously converted over to rust. Before that happens we will continue to refactor code because we want to make the C code better. If it breaks rust bindings, at least for the foreseeable future the rust bindings are a second class citizen and those file systems that depend on the rust bindings will break and that is the rust bindings problem, not the file system community at large's problem and that's going to be true for a long long time, okay, and I think we just simply need to accept that

That seems rather technical to me. To put words into their mouth because they had a snarky tone, or claim the presenter was "immediately stacked for spreading religion or whatever" hardly is.

Re: Linus Torvalds talks AI, Rust, & why Linux is the only thing that matters

#36

Post by cogman10 »

bitexploder wrote: post #25
mytailorisrich wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's inevitable in any organisations when dealing with change. Identifying resistance and coming up with strategies to overcome is a key part of change management. Telling people their reaction is "kneejerk pushback" usually does not help ;) It's probably more difficult to handle in open source than in a company because authority less powerful and it's more difficult to wave both carrots and sticks...

Well, as an uninvested observer I think it is okay to call it out.

At a talk presenting a personal project? Do you also feel it's OK to go to talks on Java projects to make statements like "Well, why didn't you write this in Go? It's a better language that serious developers are using and nobody will want to contribute to your dumb project using java"

Re: Linus Torvalds talks AI, Rust, & why Linux is the only thing that matters

#37

Post by cogman10 »

computerthings wrote: post #35
cogman10 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't the nature of the pushback. He did a presentation on making a fs in rust, the response from this dev was "we won't be converting to your religion. We are going to continue modifying c code and your dumb rust code will always be a second class citizen." Literally just hostility for hostility sake. He wasn't proposing to rewrite everything in rust. He wasn't proposing that everyone learns rust. He was just…

What was literally said didn't include the words "always" or "your dumb rust code". From the subtitles with slight manual fixes: > I suspect part of the problem here is you're trying to convince everyone to switch over to the religion as promulgated by rust and the reality is that ain't going to happen because we have 50 plus filesystems in Linux, they will not all be instantaneously converted over to rust. Before th…

They literally said "spreading your religion" at the very start of their critique. I think I'm correctly reading the tone of the rest of the comment even if I didn't verbatim quote them.

From the closed captions with minor editing. In response to "we are going to provide API bindings"

> I suspect the problem here is you are trying to convert everyone to the religion as promulgated by rust and the reality is that ain't gonna happen. Because we have 50 plus filesystems in linux and they will not all be instantaneously converted over to rust. Before that happens we will continue to refactor code because we want to make C code better. If that breaks the rust bindings at least for the foreseeable future the rust bindings are a second class citizen. Those file systems that depend on the rust bindings will break and that is the rust bindings problem not the file system community at large problem. And that's going to be true for a long long time, OK. And I think we just simply accept that right because the answer you are not allowed to refactor C code because it would break 5 critical file systems that distros depend on is like not a star, OK.

Re: Linus Torvalds talks AI, Rust, & why Linux is the only thing that matters

#38

Post by pif »

tux3 wrote: post #3

Regretfully a major Rust for Linux maintainer just stepped down yesterday, saying he doesn't have the energy to keep dealing with the constant nontechnical nonsense: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20240828211117.9422-1-wedsonaf@...

Unless the Linux developer community at large requested Rust in the kernel, this is good news.

Re: Linus Torvalds talks AI, Rust, & why Linux is the only thing that matters

#39

Post by computerthings »

cogman10 wrote: post #37
computerthings wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was literally said didn't include the words "always" or "your dumb rust code". From the subtitles with slight manual fixes: > I suspect part of the problem here is you're trying to convince everyone to switch over to the religion as promulgated by rust and the reality is that ain't going to happen because we have 50 plus filesystems in Linux, they will not all be instantaneously converted over to rust. Before th…

They literally said "spreading your religion" at the very start of their critique. I think I'm correctly reading the tone of the rest of the comment even if I didn't verbatim quote them. From the closed captions with minor editing. In response to "we are going to provide API bindings" > I suspect the problem here is you are trying to convert everyone to the religion as promulgated by rust and the reality is that ain'…

> They literally said "spreading your religion" at the very start of their critique.

And that critique is near the end of all the people who asked questions or made comments. So no, the presenter wasn't "immediately stacked" when making that presentation.

Re: Linus Torvalds talks AI, Rust, & why Linux is the only thing that matters

#40

Post by zozbot234 »

techwizrd wrote: post #33
Zambyte wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also linked in the email in the GP. > 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.

A redditor pointed out [0] that this is exactly what they would do to sink Rust adoption. Even if you agree with the substance of the argument, the delivery is rude and unhelpful. I hope this resignation is a wake-up call, and much of the onus is on C devs to be more collaborative. 0: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1f3q0l8/one_of_the_r...

Why do C devs even have to be 'collaborative' about Rust modules? The latter would typically ingest C APIs, most likely via bindgen, making C code the "source of truth" about what the API is - because Rust modules are self-contained and C is the only stable ABI that Rust supports. All the type-checking smarts that the video talks about are purely on the Rust side. If a new 'raw' low-level C API is needed to build better smarts on the Rust side (which seems to be what's involved in some of the fs proposals) that can just be a self-contained proposal, with very lightweight changes on the C side of the code. This whole thing looks like a tempest in a teapot to me - and to be clear, this absolutely includes the Linux dev's complaints, which are extremely poor form.
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