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What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

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Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#171

Post by zozbot234 »

jjmarr wrote: post #48
pizlonator wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if Rust wants to evolve even more aggressively than C++ evolves, then that is a chasm that needs to be crossed. In lots of domains, having a language that doesn't change very much, or that only changes very carefully with backcompat being taken super seriously, is more important than the memory safety guarantees Rust offers.

In my view, this is a good thing. As a C++ developer, I regularly deal with people that think creating a compiled object file and throwing away the source code is acceptable, or decide to hide source code for "security" while distributing object files. This makes my life hell. Rust preventing this makes my life so much better.

Rust does not prevent you from creating a library that exports a C/C++ interface. It's indistinguishable from a C or C++ library, except that it's written in Rust. cbindgen will even generate proper C header files out of the box, that Rust can then consume via bindgen.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#172

Post by bayindirh »

DeathArrow wrote: post #170
bayindirh wrote: post #154

Also, Ubuntu using a non-GPL licensed userland means they can pull all kinds of tricks to allow more TiVoization in the Linux ecosystem. Combine this with what Amutable (systemd guys) are building, and you can have monolithic, closed source, non-user-modifiable Linux distributions or flavors. Ubuntu and companies which embed Linux into their products will love this from a business perspective. Consider: An end to end…

If that means that the massive fragmentation stops and we will have an OS 95% percent of linux users install, It might not be that bad.

I run and develop on various Linux distributions and fail to see that fragmentation for that last couple of decades, sorry.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#173

Post by zozbot234 »

pizlonator wrote: post #64
sagarm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no existing safe ABI, so this cannot be an adoption barrier.

Lots of reasons why it is. I'll give you two. 1) It can't be that replacing 20 C/C++ shared objects with 20 Rust shared objects results in 20 copies of the Rust standard library and other dependencies that those Rust libraries pull in. But, today, that is what happens. For some situations, this is too much of a memory usage regression to be tolerable. 2) If you really have 20 libraries calling into one another using…

Many Rust core/standard library functions are trivial and inlining them is not really a concern. For those that do involve significant amount of code, C ABI-compatible code could be exported from some .so dynamic object, with only a small safe wrapper being statically linked.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#174

Post by PlatoIsADisease »

bayindirh wrote: post #154

Also, Ubuntu using a non-GPL licensed userland means they can pull all kinds of tricks to allow more TiVoization in the Linux ecosystem. Combine this with what Amutable (systemd guys) are building, and you can have monolithic, closed source, non-user-modifiable Linux distributions or flavors. Ubuntu and companies which embed Linux into their products will love this from a business perspective. Consider: An end to end…

To be fair, no one should be using Ubuntu. They are the free CD people from the 2000s. They are the Apple of Linux, marketing wins, but low quality.

They used outdated linux (Debian-family) because its lower cost to maintain.

All around, never use debian-family outside servers. Fedora is the future. Maybe OpenSUSE too. (Note these are not Arch or related to Arch)

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#175

Post by billyjobob »

overfeed wrote: post #136
dabinat wrote: post #118

I think an issue hindering Rust adoption is ecosystem immaturity. So many crates are pre-1.0, or just basic wrappers around a C library. There are good crates for core things like cryptography, but finding something production-ready for something like SAML is tough.

> There are good crates for core things like cryptography Speaking of cryptography, I've given up on setting up a Termux Python dev environment on an old Arm tablet, because some package has a dependency on the 'cryptography' module, which apparently requires the whole Rust toolchain to build. In a Python project. On a platform with limited storage. The documentation suggests pre-built binaries are an option, but I c…

Sometimes it works if you install an old version of the cryptography package from before they introduced Rust.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#176

Post by egorfine »

> They are “looking to minimize discontinuity with the old ways”

Perhaps one of the best ways to achieve that goal is to not introduce any discontinuity? Like, take coreutils. It's one of the most stable pieces of Linux infrastructure. It's as solid as it gets. No one asked for rewrite of those in any language. No one wanted a rewrite. No one needed a rewrite. The rewrite serves no purpose[1].

[1] Credit where it's due: this rust slop prompted a creation of test suite for coreutils, which is truly a great achievement, hands down.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#177

Post by egorfine »

stabbles wrote: post #19

Just today I found that rust-coreutils makes installing cuda toolkit impossible, related to use of `dd`: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/cuda-runfile-wont-extr...

There is no need for rust coreutils existence, thus one of the first things to do with a fresh ubuntu (like removing transparent peels on new devices) is to install the real coreutils, sudo and the rest.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#178

Post by egorfine »

bbkane wrote: post #3

Really good references to "crossing the chasm" between early adopter needs and mainstream needs. In addition to the Ubuntu coreutils use case, I wonder what other chasms Rust is attempting to cross. I know Rust for Linux (though I think that's still relegated to drivers?) and automotive (not sure where that is).

> what other chasms Rust is attempting to cross

Rust is undoubtedly excellent. What tarnishes the picture is a small group of people that rewrite solid pieces of code into Rust, hijacking the original brand names (eg. "sudo") for the sole purpose of virtue signaling. And the later is why the come after the most stable pieces of software that warrant no rewrite at all, like coreutils.

It seems to me that the right approach would be to ignore those and still love Rust for what nice of a language it is.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu is all in on virtue signaling.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#179

Post by pjmlp »

bayindirh wrote: post #154

Also, Ubuntu using a non-GPL licensed userland means they can pull all kinds of tricks to allow more TiVoization in the Linux ecosystem. Combine this with what Amutable (systemd guys) are building, and you can have monolithic, closed source, non-user-modifiable Linux distributions or flavors. Ubuntu and companies which embed Linux into their products will love this from a business perspective. Consider: An end to end…

It used to be GNU/Linux for a reason, Android/Linux is surely not GPL userland and there are others as such.

There is also a reason why all the GNU/Linux competition on embedded space, including Linux Foundation's own Zephyr, aren't GPL licensed.

People seem to forget Linux is only a kernel.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#180

Post by bayindirh »

pjmlp wrote: post #179
bayindirh wrote: post #154

Also, Ubuntu using a non-GPL licensed userland means they can pull all kinds of tricks to allow more TiVoization in the Linux ecosystem. Combine this with what Amutable (systemd guys) are building, and you can have monolithic, closed source, non-user-modifiable Linux distributions or flavors. Ubuntu and companies which embed Linux into their products will love this from a business perspective. Consider: An end to end…

It used to be GNU/Linux for a reason, Android/Linux is surely not GPL userland and there are others as such. There is also a reason why all the GNU/Linux competition on embedded space, including Linux Foundation's own Zephyr, aren't GPL licensed. People seem to forget Linux is only a kernel.

> People seem to forget Linux is only a kernel.

I certainly don't and that's why I'm advocating the userspace shall stay GPL. The freedom has two pillars. Kernel and userspace. If you mow one of the two down, you lose everything.

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