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Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

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Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#101

Post by kjs3 »

minimaxir wrote: post #59
encyclopedism wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Written by AI and not nearly as impressive at all. Such a shame because I thought someone had spent real time and effort producing this. The output is commoditised and now neither important nor precious. Damn near anyone could repeat it.

To paraphrase another comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48900086 ), this project is fun and fun should be encouraged, as experimentation is what leads to more innovative things. The existence of this project doesn't take away from anything.

I have many times chastised commenters about shitting on other peoples toy/hobby/side projects, but like many others I'm a bit lost on the fun of iterating on "get the Linux 0.whatever source code and rewrite it in rust..." and then crowing "LOOK WHAT I DID!" on HN. If the OP had documented "this is how I prompted the code generating LLM du jour to produce an equivalent to this early Linux kernel, this is the AI workflow I used, and this is how I overcame the problems along the way..." or some such, I'd be all in on this being interesting. As it is, it's Yet Another LLM generated bit of self promotion avoiding saying 'AI did this' and disguised as 'innovation', just like the other ten thousand 'I took something people did all the hard work on and had AI gen up a clone in rust/go/python/whatever in an afternoon...aren't I clever'.

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#102

Post by oalae5niMiel7qu »

josephg wrote: post #12
prologic wrote: post #4

I just compared this Rust implementation against the original C sources. Some ~50k SLOC (Rust) compared to maybe ~8-12k SLOC of C (depending on if you count headers). Why is the Rust implementation so much more complex and onerous?

If the readme is anything to go by, this doesn't look like it was written by hand. Codex if I were to guess. I wonder the coding agent "improved" the code. The readme hints at the prompt: > It keeps the original system's semantics — what it does — while rethinking how it's expressed: stronger types, clearer module boundaries, idiomatic abstractions everywhere. "idiomatic abstractions" would certainly bloat the line c…

That's odd. Abstractions in other programming languages reduce the line count.

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#103

Post by oalae5niMiel7qu »

kelnos wrote: post #84
josephg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the readme is anything to go by, this doesn't look like it was written by hand. Codex if I were to guess. I wonder the coding agent "improved" the code. The readme hints at the prompt: > It keeps the original system's semantics — what it does — while rethinking how it's expressed: stronger types, clearer module boundaries, idiomatic abstractions everywhere. "idiomatic abstractions" would certainly bloat the line c…

If that's the case, I don't really get the purpose of this. It's presumably not a useful system for day to day computing. The main reason I could see someone wanting to build this would be as an educational exercise, and using an LLM to do it completely fails at that.

The purpose of this project is probably to create something that can be pointed to while saying "This is evidence that the entire Linux kernel could be rewritten in Rust! So now you have to agree to rewrite the modern kernel!"

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#104

Post by broodbucket »

trollbridge wrote: post #92
encyclopedism wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Written by AI and not nearly as impressive at all. Such a shame because I thought someone had spent real time and effort producing this. The output is commoditised and now neither important nor precious. Damn near anyone could repeat it.

I wish people who do this stuff could at least write their own docs.

I can't help but glaze over any AI written documentation. If it wasn't worth the time to write then it's surely not going to be worth the time to read

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#105

Post by nineteen999 »

penguin_booze wrote: post #83

I'm wondering if anyone's attempting to revitalise the old Minix. Minix started out an educational software, from which, Torvalds admitted, he drew inspiration. Since then, they had higher ambitions. And now, from the last I heard, it has evolved into neither here nor there.

Beginning with ME (Management Engine) firmware version 11 (found on Skylake CPUs and newer), Intel utilizes a customized version of the MINIX 3 microkernel operating system.

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#106

Post by [deleted] »

oalae5niMiel7qu wrote: post #102
josephg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the readme is anything to go by, this doesn't look like it was written by hand. Codex if I were to guess. I wonder the coding agent "improved" the code. The readme hints at the prompt: > It keeps the original system's semantics — what it does — while rethinking how it's expressed: stronger types, clearer module boundaries, idiomatic abstractions everywhere. "idiomatic abstractions" would certainly bloat the line c…

That's odd. Abstractions in other programming languages reduce the line count.

[deleted]

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#107

Post by egorfine »

Aurornis wrote: post #50
mjhay wrote: post #19

I used to like rust, but I feel like I’m being Pavlovian-conditioned to recoil at its mention now.

This is Linux 0.11 from 1991. Someone is having fun with a side experiment that has no practical real-world implications. This stuff is supposed to be fun and we should celebrate when other people are doing fun, pointless things like this. If you're interested then ignore it and move on. There's no need to get involved or comment if a project of no consequence is uninteresting to you personally

Someone recently had a fun side experiment [1] that ended up killing a product.

[1] https://bun.sh/blog/bun-in-rust

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#108

Post by egorfine »

anthk wrote: post #91
block_dagger wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite feeling; I am liking Rust more and more and thinking most of the world's C code should be rewritten. It seems like a sweet spot of enforced memory safety, performance, and human/agent readability.

Rust and C++'s overcomplex syntax are a nightmare to maintain and set. Go should have been the C succesor long ago, at least for 64 bit machines. In the end It's from the same people of Unix/C/Plan9, so they know their flaws and reasons. For C++ like performance, sadly there's nothing close to Rust, but Zig and Nim can be close and good enough. Inb4 "mah objects", just use Java or C# and forget C++ forever for OOP pr…

Problem with C++ is that it allows an overcomplicated code.

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#109

Post by dijksterhuis »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #88
minimaxir wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To paraphrase another comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48900086 ), this project is fun and fun should be encouraged, as experimentation is what leads to more innovative things. The existence of this project doesn't take away from anything.

except it’s not really fun .

addendum because that was admittedly a bit of a low effort reply.

throwing a token generator at an idea is not really fun. there’s a reason show hm rules say something about not posting quick one offs (pretty sure this was originally posted as a show hn?). the fun for someone like me is in the appreciation of the effort, not the result.

quirky idea? sure. but not fun

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#110

Post by egorfine »

block_dagger wrote: post #31
mjhay wrote: post #19

I used to like rust, but I feel like I’m being Pavlovian-conditioned to recoil at its mention now.

I have the opposite feeling; I am liking Rust more and more and thinking most of the world's C code should be rewritten. It seems like a sweet spot of enforced memory safety, performance, and human/agent readability.

Be careful. People are known to be lost once they start allowing poisonous thoughts like "most of the world's C code should be rewritten".
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