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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

#221

Post by kibwen »

theamk wrote: post #108
kingstnap wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can curl stuff and run it just gotta have hashes in place.

In theory, yes. In practice, very rarely. Lots of 'curl | sh' do secondary fetches, and those don't come with hash checks. And even if they come with hash checks _today_, there is no guarantee next version won't quietly remove them.

> And even if they come with hash checks _today_, there is no guarantee next version won't quietly remove them.

...But you could say this about literally every security measure in literally every codebase. At any point, anyone could quietly remove anything that enhances security, or quietly add anything that reduces security. So what's your point?

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#222

Post by bigfishrunning »

superkuh wrote: post #218
bayindirh wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use Ubuntu anywhere, so there's no actions I need to take. > Upstream debian has been much more stable for as long as Ubuntu has existed... Well, I use Debian before Ubuntu has existed, and it was never unstable to begin with. I understand the value of more eyes looking into something and its advantages, but let's say, Ubuntu has acted with selfish reasons towards Debian in some cases. I personally taken side…

Meandwhile the Canonical employee who's responsible for some aspects of apt has decided to insert rust code. Because of this, and just this, Debian dropped 4 entire architectures. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2025/10/msg00285.html >I plan to introduce hard Rust dependencies and Rust code into APT, no earlier than May 2026. This extends at first to the Rust compiler and standard library, and the Sequoia ecosy…

further down that thread

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2025/10/msg00288.html

``` Rust is already a hard requirement on all Debian release architectures and ports except for alpha, hppa, m68k, and sh4 (which do not provide sqv). ```

It seems to me that the APT change was just a nail in the coffin of these older architectures, which would have eventually been sunset anyway, due to sqv not being available. If you really want to run some kind of Linux on these very old machines, godspeed, but you can't expect them to be maintained by a project with it's fingers in so many pies forever.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#223

Post by tmtvl »

bayindirh wrote: post #172
DeathArrow wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've only used GNU/Linux since 2012, but I do think we have to face the fact that there is a fair amount of ~~choice~~ fragmentation in the ecosystem. Deb/RPM/Flatpak/Snap/PKGBUILD/Nix, GNOME/KDE/Cosmic/Cinnamon/Xfce/LXQt/MATE/Budgie/Sway/Hyprland, AppArmor/SELinux, GTK/Qt/Electron/Tauri/WxWidgets there's even distributions which use musl libc instead of GNU libc or non-systemd inits. Sure, you can just pick one and focus on it, but if someone else picks something else then they may need to duplicate some effort to get things working on their preferred setup.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#224

Post by kibwen »

themafia wrote: post #67

> Jon made the provocative comment that we needed to revisit our policy around having a small standard library. He’s not the first to say something like that, it’s something we’ve been hearing for years and years It sounds to me like you "cross the chasm" a little too early. As a user I don't care about your "chasms" I care about high quality durable systems. This isn't the first time I've heard the "we'll change the…

> This isn't the first time I've heard the "we'll change the std lib later" logic.

I'm not sure what this is referring to, but surely it's not referring to Rust. Adding things to the stdlib is way easier than "changing" the stdlib. And Rust adds stuff to the stdlib all the time, like, go read any blog post for a new release and see that there are usually 10+ new additions to the stdlib, which adds up to hundreds of new additions per year due to the six-week release schedule.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#225

Post by zozbot234 »

ninkendo wrote: post #208
zozbot234 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can’t even express an Option via the C ABI But you can express Option for a concrete Foo. Do you really need any more than that?

> But you can express Option for a concrete Foo I don’t think that’s true? https://users.rust-lang.org/t/option-is-ffi-safe-or-not/2982... You could maybe say that a pointer can be transmuted to an Option because there’s an Option-specific optimization that an Option uses null as the None value, but that’s not always guaranteed. And it doesn’t apply to non-references, for instance Option ’s None value would be indist…

You're right that there isn't a single standard convention for representing e.g. Option, but that's just as true of C. You'd just define a repr(C) compatible object that can be converted to or from Option, and pass that through the ABI interface, while the conversion step would happen internally and transparently on both sides. That kind of marshaling is ubiquitous when using FFI.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#226

Post by banku_brougham »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #213
einr wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but util-linux and the BSDs won't suddenly cease to exist. If you don't like what Ubuntu is doing, just don't use it. And then websites and applications stop working if you're not using a verified, attested, locked-down OS and you're stuck with your nice free software system that will not do your online banking, let you chat with your friends, or access your company resources.

At that point I'll just move into the woods with a typewriter and chat with my friends via HAM radio Edit: Also, why would some userspace components in a slightly-less-free license cause this to happen? if the powers-that-be want to shut you out of the internet, they can do it now; lots of proprietary software already exists.

This resonates. The after effects of age verification and the general exclusion of freedom loving coders is going to leave me standing here in the tumbleweeds with my 90s toyota and laptop with solar panels and unregulated radio frequencies my only communication with the outside world.

Its like those movies coming true. I've already had casual user accounts frozen just for accessing via VPN, or some other inscrutable reason.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#227

Post by bayindirh »

tmtvl wrote: post #223
bayindirh wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've only used GNU/Linux since 2012, but I do think we have to face the fact that there is a fair amount of ~~choice~~ fragmentation in the ecosystem. Deb/RPM/Flatpak/Snap/PKGBUILD/Nix, GNOME/KDE/Cosmic/Cinnamon/Xfce/LXQt/MATE/Budgie/Sway/Hyprland, AppArmor/SELinux, GTK/Qt/Electron/Tauri/WxWidgets there's even distributions which use musl libc instead of GNU libc or non-systemd inits. Sure, you can just pick one and…

When you put down your project in a sound and standards compliant way, packaging doesn't matter much. RPM and DEB automatically builds your code and packages it. DEB also has a lot of tools which allows you to make sure that everything is done correctly. I'm sure RPM has similar tools, but I didn't use them a lot.

Desktop environment doesn't matter much, because GTK and Qt works on every Linux Desktop. I'm using KDE, but I don't know which tools I use are GTK, which are Qt, etc. Qt and GTK teams collaborate a ton both in window management and desktop underpinnings side. Also there are tons of standards, and things just work if you follow them. Even the standard libraries of programming languages and Linux userland gives the tools to utilize these standards.

C libraries are mostly interoperable. I operate with GNU's C library, but aside from interesting behavioral differences, the API is not different.

If you're not writing daemons, you have no business with your init system in 99% of the cases, unless you want to utilize a special feature of any of them. You can just ship the service files. daemon() function is part of libc, not your init system.

In total, after your code builds, you can add these layers step by step, one at a time, and have a codebase which works everywhere with minimal effort.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#228

Post by einr »

banku_brougham wrote: post #226
bigfishrunning wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that point I'll just move into the woods with a typewriter and chat with my friends via HAM radio Edit: Also, why would some userspace components in a slightly-less-free license cause this to happen? if the powers-that-be want to shut you out of the internet, they can do it now; lots of proprietary software already exists.

This resonates. The after effects of age verification and the general exclusion of freedom loving coders is going to leave me standing here in the tumbleweeds with my 90s toyota and laptop with solar panels and unregulated radio frequencies my only communication with the outside world. Its like those movies coming true. I've already had casual user accounts frozen just for accessing via VPN, or some other inscrutable…

I'm with you and the only solace in this dystopia is the fact that I increasingly feel like I just don't care. I don't really like using computers anymore. I liked them when they represented freedom and creativity.

So fine, exclude me from all your platforms, there's nothing there for me. It's all bad content from bad people (or increasingly: not even people) running on bad software. I'm not giving up my freedom to partake in that, I'd rather just stop using your shit.

(But I would very much like to be able to pay my bills and buy my train tickets, so I'll play your game and have a smartphone. Fine. You win this round.).

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#229

Post by superkuh »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #222
superkuh wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meandwhile the Canonical employee who's responsible for some aspects of apt has decided to insert rust code. Because of this, and just this, Debian dropped 4 entire architectures. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2025/10/msg00285.html >I plan to introduce hard Rust dependencies and Rust code into APT, no earlier than May 2026. This extends at first to the Rust compiler and standard library, and the Sequoia ecosy…

further down that thread https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2025/10/msg00288.html ``` Rust is already a hard requirement on all Debian release architectures and ports except for alpha, hppa, m68k, and sh4 (which do not provide sqv). ``` It seems to me that the APT change was just a nail in the coffin of these older architectures, which would have eventually been sunset anyway, due to sqv not being available. If yo…

Yep. And nothing you've linked or pointed out changes the claim I made: that re: rust, Canonical employees are making the decisions, not Debian.

Re: What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust

#230

Post by bigfishrunning »

einr wrote: post #219
bigfishrunning wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but again, the bsd userspace already has a permissive license. if the mustache twirling villains want to lock down stuff, they can do it now. they don't need any push forward.

Yeah, but people don't really want to use the BSD userspace. A lot of the Linux stuff people want to build on assumes a GNU userland and it's not trivial to build a BSD/Linux that actually does relevant computer stuff. But in places where that stuff isn't relevant, we already see a lot of locked-down devices like the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation based on BSD precisely because they can leverage free software but st…

People give away their freedoms all the time. Most people are walking around with facebook and tiktok tracking their every move. they don't care.

Some linux users aren't going to stop this sort of thing from happening. If Chase Bank wants to only allow MacOS and Windows 11 computers to access their website, the 1% of their userbase that uses something else isn't going to move the needle, and 99% of their users won't care (or even notice).

If this was going to happen, it would have already happened. The pieces are all there already.

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