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Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

marcan.st

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Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#221

Post by SadTrombone »

ThatGuyRaion wrote: post #187

Marcan brings up plenty of good points regarding contributing to kernel.org being stuck in the 1990s. However, he's got no social skills nor does he have what it takes to man up and understand he won't get his way. Additionally I doubt that he really is dealing with stalkers to the degree that he is implying; real people don't talk about their stalkers so much. When I was stalked and harassed I kept the details light…

> This idea that conflicts need to be resolved quickly and in the favor of a golden boy is a millennial/zoomer issue.

This is a strawman with no support behind it in the actual blog post. Marcan's issue wasn't that he wasn't "getting his way", his issue (from his viewpoint) was with Linus and co. claiming to support Rust on Linux while doing nothing to aid in adoption and in the case of some maintainers, actively sabotaging its implementation.

If you're going to do something, then do something. Don't say you're going to do something, then do nothing while your underlings actually do the opposite.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#222

Post by Ntrails »

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…

That's useful context because as a complete laymen I thought his message was largely reasonable (albeit I am not unsympathetic to the frustration of being on the other side)!

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#223

Post by internet_points »

thehias wrote: post #204

[flagged]

> 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).

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#224

Post by jstimpfle »

Certhas wrote: post #171
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…

It's also not truthful because many of the Rust maintainers are long time C contributors. Marcan also linked to this resignation of a Rust Maintainer: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20240828211117.9422-1-wedsonaf@... which references this fantastic exchange: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiPp9YEBV0Q&t=1529s I am not a C person, or a kernel level person, I just watch this from the sideline to learn something every now…

It's practically impossible to document all your assumptions in the type system. Attempting to do so results in code that is harder to read and write.

You have a choice between code that statically asserts all assumptions in the type system but doesn't exist, is slow, or a pain to work with, and code that is beautiful, obvious, performant, but does contain the occasional bug.

I am not against static safety, but there are trade offs. And types are often not the best way to achieve static safety.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#225

Post by diggan »

mietek wrote: post #199
Certhas wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also not truthful because many of the Rust maintainers are long time C contributors. Marcan also linked to this resignation of a Rust Maintainer: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20240828211117.9422-1-wedsonaf@... which references this fantastic exchange: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiPp9YEBV0Q&t=1529s I am not a C person, or a kernel level person, I just watch this from the sideline to learn something every now…

Your charitable reading is too charitable. One of the benefits of using types to help guarantee properties of programs (e.g. invariants) is that types do not get out of sync with the code, because they are part of the code, unlike documentation. The language implementation (e.g. the compiler) automatically checks that the types continue to match the rest of the code, in order to catch problems as early as possible.

I'm not a kernel developer, and never done anything of the sorts either. But, I think the argument is that if they have two versions of something (the C version + the Rust bindings), the logic/behavior/"semantics" of the C version would need to be encoded into the Rust types, and if a C-only developer changes the C version only, how are they supposed to proceed with updating the Rust bindings if they don't want to write Rust?

At least that's my understanding from the outside, someone please do correct me if wrong.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#226

Post by Scaevolus »

bayindirh wrote: post #134
galoisscobi wrote: post #13

> But then also came the entitled users. This time, it wasn’t about stealing games, it was about features. “When is Thunderbolt coming?” “Asahi is useless to me until I can use monitors over USB-C” “The battery life sucks compared to macOS” (nobody ever complained when compared to x86 laptops…) “I can’t even check my CPU temperature” (yes, I seriously got that one). This sounds so rough. I can't imagine pouring your…

[Putting my dusty Linux Distro Maintainer Hat on] First of all, I wholeheartedly applaud Marcan for carrying the project this far. They, both as individuals and as a team proper, did great things. What I can say is a rest is well deserved at this point, because he really poured his soul into this and worn himself down. On the other hand, I'll need to say something, however not in bad faith. He needs to stop fighting…

Marcan's career as a developer includes lots of development on hostile systems where he's jailbreaking various consoles to allow homebrew.

Asahi Linux is similar, given how hostile and undocumented Apple Silicon is, but it has a great amount of expectations of feature completeness and additional bureaucracy for code changes that really destroys the free-wheeling hacker spirit.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#227

Post by ThatGuyRaion »

SadTrombone wrote: post #221
ThatGuyRaion wrote: post #187

Marcan brings up plenty of good points regarding contributing to kernel.org being stuck in the 1990s. However, he's got no social skills nor does he have what it takes to man up and understand he won't get his way. Additionally I doubt that he really is dealing with stalkers to the degree that he is implying; real people don't talk about their stalkers so much. When I was stalked and harassed I kept the details light…

> This idea that conflicts need to be resolved quickly and in the favor of a golden boy is a millennial/zoomer issue. This is a strawman with no support behind it in the actual blog post. Marcan's issue wasn't that he wasn't "getting his way", his issue (from his viewpoint) was with Linus and co. claiming to support Rust on Linux while doing nothing to aid in adoption and in the case of some maintainers, actively sab…

If you actually follow the exchange, he threw temper tantrums until he got suspended off Mastodon. I don't know, but that's not what I would expect from a professional developer.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#228

Post by yencabulator »

unethical_ban wrote: post #211
yencabulator wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, stop accusing people who's work you don't know of being wishy-washy. The challenge is not dictating from high above some criteria; the challenge is discovering the criteria that will let the Linux project continue development as well as can be arranged. This is why you'll hear Linus say it's a learning experience, and not just make proclamation of how things shall be (at this stage).

I don't think it's reasonable to read my original comment as an "accusation". I said "it sounds like" as part of a casual conversation about the subject. There was no hostility in my comment. Would you say that the Asahi team wasn't receptive to the pace at which the needed criteria were being developed? My point is that between these two groups there seems to be a misunderstanding of expectations. And being the upst…

The framework is "we will discuss it and a consensus may emerge". Linux is an open source project, not a company trying to remain profitable for the next quarter. If some outsider stumbles in and expects something else, well, they didn't understand what they were getting into.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#229

Post by cornstalks »

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…

> Rust has a stability guarantee since 1.0 in 2015. Any backwards incompatibilities are explicitly opt-in through the edition system, or fixing a compiler bug.

Unfortunately OP has a valid point regarding Rust's lack of commitment to backwards compatibility. Rust has a number of things that can break you that are not considered breaking changes. For example, implementing a trait (like Drop) on a type is a breaking change[1] that Rust does not consider to be breaking.

[1]: https://users.rust-lang.org/t/til-removing-an-explicit-drop-...

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#230

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

galoisscobi wrote: post #13

> But then also came the entitled users. This time, it wasn’t about stealing games, it was about features. “When is Thunderbolt coming?” “Asahi is useless to me until I can use monitors over USB-C” “The battery life sucks compared to macOS” (nobody ever complained when compared to x86 laptops…) “I can’t even check my CPU temperature” (yes, I seriously got that one). This sounds so rough. I can't imagine pouring your…

It's fair criticism. Asahi is paraded around like a real alternative, well where are the features?

> we brought the platform from nothing to one of the smoothest Linux experiences you can get on a laptop.

Despite the accomplishment this overselling irks me.

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