Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

lkml.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 1001 posts

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#451

Post by zymhan »

sandywaffles wrote: post #417
josefx wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik Linus tried Github in the past, but had several significant complaints about it hiding information, messing with basic git operations, generating bad commit messages, etc. . So it is not as if they wouldn't use something better, there just isn't anything that has feature parity with a workflow they have been optimizing for decades.

> [..] a workflow they have been optimizing for decades. it sounds the opposite of optimized to me. Unless we're optimizing for something other than developer experience and efficiency?

> Unless we're optimizing for something other than developer experience and efficiency?

It's almost like there are more important goals wrt software development.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#452

Post by mmooss »

bonzini wrote: post #429
mmooss wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People should read it: "... I come at this from the perspective of having worked on Linux since around December of 1991. I first met you and Tove in 1995 at the Free Software Conference at MIT that Stallman sponsored. ... Probably the last technical contribution of my career is leading an initiative to provide the Linux community a generic security modeling architecture. Not to supplant or replace anything currently…

I don't know, dropping 17000 lines of code is probably not the best way to solicit technical discussions ( https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20240826103728.3378-1-greg@enje... is the patch set in question)

That's version 4. Here's version 2, which looks like the first patch submission:

https://lore.kernel.org/linux-security-module/20230204050954...

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#453

Post by nialv7 »

AndyKelley wrote: post #422

I've been saying this for years now: the rust4linux folks are putting so much effort into trying to upstream their work, seems like they should instead put that effort into maintaining a fork. Arguably it would be less hours spent porting than arguing with humans. Certainly more pleasant! Then one of two things will happen: * Rust will prove its worth and their fork will be the better operating system. Distros will s…

Projects don't just live or die purely on technical merits. There are so many examples across history of this.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#454

Post by roca »

alberth wrote: post #268
mplewis9z wrote: post #10

Marcan certainly can be abrasive (I mean lol, so can Linus), but all the things he points out in the message below are 100% valid - I highly recommend for anyone here to try to contribute something even very small and logical to the Linux kernel or git (which use similar processes), it’s an eye-opening experience that’s incredibly unapproachable, frustrating, and demoralizing. https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/2…

And Linus’ immediate reply https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/CAHk-=wi=ZmP2=TmHsFSU... (not taking either side, just interesting to read the reply)

This part of the reply exemplifies one of the big problems in the kernel community:

> You think you know better. But the current process works.

Regardless of how badly broken the kernel development process is, Linus and others observe that Linux continues to dominate and conclude that therefore the development process "works". Success in the market blinds the successful vendor to their defects. Sound familiar?

If Linux carries on down this path then eventually something else that has been subject to more evolutionary pressure will displace Linux, and we'll all be telling stories about how Linux got complacent and how it was obvious to everyone they were heading for a fall.

And honestly, with maintainers like Hellwig maybe that's what needs to happen.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#455

Post by apatheticonion »

gpm wrote: post #427
AndyKelley wrote: post #422

I've been saying this for years now: the rust4linux folks are putting so much effort into trying to upstream their work, seems like they should instead put that effort into maintaining a fork. Arguably it would be less hours spent porting than arguing with humans. Certainly more pleasant! Then one of two things will happen: * Rust will prove its worth and their fork will be the better operating system. Distros will s…

I think you're discounting the very real damage that would be done by Linux a project controlled by Linus and a community being replaced by Linux a project controlled by Google/Samsung/Redhat/Microsoft. I'm afraid that this is what is going to happen with the Linus tree effectively rejecting rust drivers by subjecting anyone attempting to upstream rust code to persistent bullying, but I don't want it to happen.

Does Linux have the ability to load drivers dynamically (like Windows)? Is there a reason why developers don't develop drivers outside of the kernel and have users simply install them post-install?

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#456

Post by bonzini »

mmooss wrote: post #452
bonzini wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, dropping 17000 lines of code is probably not the best way to solicit technical discussions ( https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20240826103728.3378-1-greg@enje... is the patch set in question)

That's version 4. Here's version 2, which looks like the first patch submission: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-security-module/20230204050954...

7000 is not a lot better.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#457

Post by soraminazuki »

lonjil wrote: post #419
melodyogonna wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would he make such blanket decision on something he does not completely understand? The maintainers of core subsystems are the people he trusts, at least trusts as much as you can in this space. He'll take their opinions before anyone else, since they know best about the subsystems they maintain. To get Linux to overrule them you not only need to come up with very very convincing technical argument, you have to m…

> The maintainers of core subsystems are the people he trusts, at least trusts as much as you can in this space. He'll take their opinions before anyone else, since they know best about the subsystems they maintain But there were no technical arguments against the Rust wrapper. And in any case, the Rust wrapper isn't in that subsystem, it just uses that subsystem. Hellwig's argument was nothing more than "there shoul…

> Hellwig's argument was nothing more than "there shouldn't be a second language in the kernel".

Which is a valid viewpoint. Let's not pretend that's not a technical argument.

Having different technical views from yours isn't a crime, legally or morally.

> And Linus has already approved Rust in the Linux kernel, so what's the problem?

As an experiment, as clearly stated in the kernel docs. It's still up to the whole community to figure out how exactly to proceed with it.

https://docs.kernel.org/rust/index.html

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#458

Post by sgerenser »

apatheticonion wrote: post #455
gpm wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're discounting the very real damage that would be done by Linux a project controlled by Linus and a community being replaced by Linux a project controlled by Google/Samsung/Redhat/Microsoft. I'm afraid that this is what is going to happen with the Linus tree effectively rejecting rust drivers by subjecting anyone attempting to upstream rust code to persistent bullying, but I don't want it to happen.

Does Linux have the ability to load drivers dynamically (like Windows)? Is there a reason why developers don't develop drivers outside of the kernel and have users simply install them post-install?

It can, but Linux does not have a stable driver ABI. Whoever wrote the out-of-tree drivers would have to constantly update them whenever there was a breaking change to the kernel, which I understand is relatively common.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#459

Post by heavyset_go »

apatheticonion wrote: post #455
gpm wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're discounting the very real damage that would be done by Linux a project controlled by Linus and a community being replaced by Linux a project controlled by Google/Samsung/Redhat/Microsoft. I'm afraid that this is what is going to happen with the Linus tree effectively rejecting rust drivers by subjecting anyone attempting to upstream rust code to persistent bullying, but I don't want it to happen.

Does Linux have the ability to load drivers dynamically (like Windows)? Is there a reason why developers don't develop drivers outside of the kernel and have users simply install them post-install?

Yes, it can load drivers dynamically.

There is a reason why in-tree drivers are preferred, and that's because the Linux driver interface and API changes with kernel API changes. The API is considered unstable in the sense that is it not unchanging.

A driver written for one release of Linux may not work with the next release as the API changes.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#460

Post by zinekeller »

apatheticonion wrote: post #455
gpm wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're discounting the very real damage that would be done by Linux a project controlled by Linus and a community being replaced by Linux a project controlled by Google/Samsung/Redhat/Microsoft. I'm afraid that this is what is going to happen with the Linus tree effectively rejecting rust drivers by subjecting anyone attempting to upstream rust code to persistent bullying, but I don't want it to happen.

Does Linux have the ability to load drivers dynamically (like Windows)? Is there a reason why developers don't develop drivers outside of the kernel and have users simply install them post-install?

Yes, it technically does (kernel modules), but the difference between Linux and NT is that Microsoft guarantees (as much as possible) that its ABIs are stable whereas Linux explicitly does not preserve backwards compatibility in the kernel (only the userspace is the stable interface).
Post reply on HN