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Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

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Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#861

Post by lukaslalinsky »

rekoil wrote: post #376
ChocolateGod wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but at the time of my reading did not clarify what his actual stance is here. Whatever he says is guaranteed to piss off at least one side of the argument.

Yeah it's not an easy discussion for sure, but he has to say something. At the rate we're going here the existing kernel devs will alienate any capable new blood, and Linux will eventually become Google Linux(TM) as the old guard goes into retirement and the only possible way forward is through money.

Do you really think there are no young people wanting to work on an operating system written in C? I'm very skeptical that all young people interested in operating systems see Rust as the future. I personally feel it's the other way around, it's Google and companies like that who really want Rust in Linux, the young kernel devs are a minority.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#862

Post by prmoustache »

bayindirh wrote: post #191
seba_dos1 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just that "people are hard" - it was clear that this will end up this way the moment marcan started ranting on social media about having to send kernel patches via e-mails. Collaborating on software development is a social activity and stuff like convincing maintainers to trust you and your approach is just as important part of it (if not more important) as writing code. Not realizing that is a sure road to…

> Not realizing that is a sure road to burnout (and yes, I'm just as guilty of that myself). Humans are shaped by experience. This is both a boon and a curse. I have been also been on the hot end of the stick and burned myself down, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. Understanding that I don't want to go through this anymore was the point I started to change. > Collaborating on software development is a social act…

It really depends what kind of code and for which usage.

People might also live their hobby dev experience better if they were really coding for themselves without any expectation except pushing the code to a repo. As a hobby dev, you don't have to make package, you don't have to have an issue tracker, you don't have to accept external contributions, you don't have to support your users if you aren't willing to have this on your shoulder. You don't even need a public git repo, you could just put a release tarball when release is ready on your personal website.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#863

Post by prmoustache »

debeloo wrote: post #683
bmacho wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually they have a device support page: https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support I can't imagine then what's his problem. I don't get offended by people that can't even read . I don't normally call them people let alone entitled :\ Set up a bot that links them the device support page, and problem solved? I don't get it

> I don't get it. I think that might be the problem. It's comments like these that causes people to wear out.

It is the need of personal gratification and having a public and active online persona that makes hobby devs wear out from other users feedback.

You don't get negative feedback if you don't open communications channels for that.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#864

Post by kennysoona »

diggan wrote: post #175
nindalf wrote: post #93

Marcan links to an email by Ted Tso'o ( https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250208204416.GL1130956@mit.ed... ) that is interesting to read. Although it starts on a polarising note ("thin blue line"), it does a good job of explaining the difficulties that Linux maintainers face and why they make the choices they do. It makes sense to be extremely adversarial about accepting code because they're on the hook for maintaining…

> And then he can't help himself. After being so reasonable, he throws shade on Rust. Shade that is just unfortunately, just false? Many discussions online (and offline) suffer from a huge-group of people who just can't stop themselves from making their knee-jerk reactions public, and then not thinking about it more. I remember the "Filesystem in Rust" video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiPp9YEBV0Q&t=1529s ) whe…

> You can literally shove facts in someone's face, and they won't admit to being wrong or misunderstand, and instead continue to argue against some points whose premise isn't even true.

This is like probably 80% of people and fundamentally why the world is a hellscape instead of a utopia.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#865

Post by bayindirh »

rowanG077 wrote: post #509
bayindirh wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not by time, but by weight. The code you write is worthless if you can’t communicate it or what you did.

You are implying that if you can communicate but have nothing backing it up that's worth 95%? If anything code can still be taken as is and understood by someone else. So to me it's always most important to be able to produce anything before being able to communicate.

In a sense, yes. I'm contributing to a small but crucial part of a big project, as a coordinator of a four person team. The dynamics of the project form the team as "band of equals", in other words, everybody has approximately the same capabilities, and roles are divided organically, and I ended up as the "project manager" for that group somehow.

Even before we started coding, there was an RFC written by us. We have talked about it, discussed it, ironed it out with the chief architects of the project. When everything made sense we started implementing it. Total coding hours is irrelevant, but it's small when compared all the planning and it's almost finished now.

The code needs to tap and fit into a specific place in the pipeline. Finding and communicating this place was crucial. The code is not. Because you can write the most sophisticated code in the most elegant way, but if you don't design and implement it to fit to the correct place, that code is toast, and the effort is a waste.

So yes, code might be the most enjoyable (and sometimes voluminous) part, but it's 5% of the job, by weight, at most.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#866

Post by follower »

gsck wrote: post #139

I'm not sure about why they are upset with the issue of upstreaming the changes into the kernal. They want to upstream drivers for a device that the creator of clearly has no interest in allowing others to use outside of their walled garden. The knowledge around it is from a massive , albeit impressive, RE effort. Who is going to support it? Where is the demand for it? It would be different if Apple were to provide p…

> Where is the demand for it?

There was at least one person who said[0]:

"I'd absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux.. [...] I've been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time. The new Air would be almost perfect, except for the OS."

Seems like the same person has even used Asahi to make a Linux kernel release[1][2].

But Linux presumably doesn't have the resources to go chasing hardware platform support based on the whims of a singular Linux kernel developer/maintainer/creator.

----

[0] https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=196533&curpost...

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wgrz5BBk=rCz7W28Fj_o02s0X...

[2] via: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/linus-torvalds-uses-...

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#867

Post by darthrupert »

tcmart14 wrote: post #857
caycep wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not develop a distro based on BSD/darwin kernel then?

Probably a few reasons. For Darwin, there are a few small projects but I think they are all functionally dead. The benefit with Linux, or even the BSDs here is, sure you gotta port to the hardware, but you should get a good set of user land stuff running for 'free' after that. Lots of programs just need to be compiled to target arm64 and they will at the very minimum function a little bit. Then you can have package m…

Why insist on developing in Rust? I mean, I see how it's much cooler and actually better than something like C, but people are hugely underestimating how difficult it is to change the established language of a 3 decade old project.

If Rust is the point you get up from the bed in the morning, why don't you focus on Redox and make it the new Linux? Redox today is much more than Linux was in 1991 so it's not like you would be starting from scratch.

You're probably not as good as Linus in, well, anything related to this field really. The only way to find out whether you actually are is to do the work. Note that also he spent a lot of time whining to people who were perceived as the powerful in the field. But in addition to whining he went and did the work and proved those people wrong.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#868

Post by lemper »

lenova wrote: post #140

This part of the post is being overlooked: Then 2024 happened. Last year was incredibly tumultuous for me due to personal reasons which I won’t go into detail about. Suffice it to say, I ended up traveling for most of the year, all the while having to handle various abusers and stalkers who harassed and attacked me and my family (and continue to do so). This is _not_ ok in any form, what the actual hell?

pretty sure he's one of kiwifarm's lolcows. so he's quite not ok, i'd imagine.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#869

Post by follower »

qiqitori wrote: post #172

"we were still stuck without DP Alt Mode (a feature which required deep reverse engineering, debugging, and kernel surgery to pull off, and which, if it were to be implemented properly and robustly, would require a major refactor of certain kernel subsystems or perhaps even the introduction of an entirely new subsystem)." Few maintainers care about the platform in question (to whom it's more a curiosity like maybe 68…

> Few maintainers care about the platform in question (to whom it's more a curiosity [...]) and don't have the hardware to test any submitted patches.

Yeah, from some very brief research I could only find a singular Linux kernel developer/maintainer/creator who said[0] "I'd absolutely love to have [the new 2020 Air], if it just ran Linux".

Who knows if that one person has even used Apple hardware before or has access to the necessary hardware to put toward a practical use such as a "development platform" while travelling, or, "doing test builds and boots and now the actual [Linux kernel] release tagging"[1][2], let alone be supportive of experimenting with Rust in the Linux kernel[3].

The history of Linux demonstrates the project doesn't have the resources to go chasing support for a hardware platform just because Linus cares about the platform in question...

...even if at least "173 people, and many more" "contributed both to the Linux kernel side but also to the upstream Rust side to support the kernel's needs" in the initial merge[3].

----

[0] https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=196533&curpost...

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wgrz5BBk=rCz7W28Fj_o02s0X...

[2] via: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/linus-torvalds-uses-...

[3] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#870

Post by saghm »

rdtsc wrote: post #378
nrabulinski wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s not ok. Then entertain his question and tell us what is? Bringing up people’s attention to the matter to finally somehow resolve the situation is his last resort, after spending years trying to upstream even trivial patches. You can eat your cake and have it too - you can’t say you want rust in the kernel and then sabotage any upstreaming efforts

> Then entertain his question and tell us what is? In this particular case, Hector himself with the blog post hints at it, but a lot of damage has been done already: "I am working on personal issues currently, I'd like to step back for a while and will not be contributing. Thank you, all". > Bringing up people’s attention to the matter to finally somehow resolve the situation Not everything has a clear and fast resol…

> Not everything has a clear and fast resolution. I think Hector's team were hoping the resolution to be "Shut up everyone, we're doing Rust now, this is all merging in and that's that.!". But it could have been "Shut up everyone, we're not doing Rust any longer". They would have been even more upset saying "this is a leadership failure, they're on the wrong side of history" and so on.

I'd argue that we're basically at the point where that _is_ what the de facto policy is, except without it being actually stated. There's a subsystem maintainer blocking any Rust code from being merged (even to be imported as a dependency from outside their subsystem) who said they will do "everything in their power" to stop Rust from being merged into any part of the kernel, and when people asked Linus to clarify whether he still thought it was viable to have Rust in the kernel, he said nothing. Hector made the infamous comment about social media, and _then_ Linus stepped in to say that we needed technical debate rather than social media brigading, which gives the not-so-great precedent that invoking social media was actually more effective at getting some sort of response than the technical debate that he actually said he wants. So now, the status quo is that someone with the power to completely block any progress towards actually including any amount of Rust in the kernel will presumably continue to do so, but Linus still is sticking to the line that we can have "technical debate" about it even though the outcome is predetermined to end in failure.

You're right that not everything has a clear and fast resolution, but given that the only possible ways for this to end other than just making the "no Rust in the kernel" policy explicit is either for Linus overrule the maintainer blocking any Rust code from being merged or every single patch containing any Rust code to be blocked, it seems pretty clear to me that the way things are now is just a slower, less clear version of the negative outcome, so having a clear and fast resolution with an undesired outcome would be far better. This seems like the real cause of frustration that Hector has; it's hard not to feel like the reasons for this path to "resolution" was picked over just admitting that it's essentially official policy that Rust isn't allowed for reasons that are ultimately purely social rather than technical. The correct resolution in my opinion would be if Linus said something like "regardless of my opinion on whether Rust should be allowed in the kernel, I'm not willing to overrule the decision of the subsystem maintainer in this case, so the current status quo will remain unless someone is able to convince people to merge things on their own". My best guess for why he didn't want to do that is that it would essentially paint a target on any maintainers refusing to merge Rust code, which is understandable but seems like it will just cause more frustration in the long run than simply ending acknowledging the reality of the current situation.

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