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Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

marcan.st

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Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#981

Post by CRConrad »

judofyr wrote: post #263
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…

> "which is actively hostile to a second Rust compiler implementation" - except that isn't true? Historically the Rust community has been extremely hostile towards gccrs. Many have claimed that the work would be detrimental to Rust as a language since it would split the language in two (despite gccrs constantly claiming they're not trying to do that). I'm not sure if it was an opinion shared by the core team, but if…

> > > Hi folks, because threads on gccrs have gotten detailed in the past

Here's guessing they meant "derailed".

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#982

Post by CRConrad »

MrJohz wrote: post #662
uecker wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall, this whole situation seems entirely weird to me. All this stuff such as Unix, Linux, and C ecosystem was build by C programmers and maintained for decades mostly voluntarily, while most of the industry pushed into other directions (with a gigantic influx of money). It is completely amazing that Linux become so successful against all the odds. Certainly it also then had a lot industry support, but I used it a…

I believe the Rust for Linux project was started by a Linux guy, rather than a Rust guy, and many of the Rust for Linux maintainers have come at this from a perspective of "we are Linux maintainers who want to use Rust" rather than "we are Rust users who want our code to be in Linux". I think it's important to be wary of simplistic narratives (such as "C vs Rust"). Maintaining a complex piece of software comes with t…

> many of the Rust for Linux maintainers have come at this from a perspective of "we are Linux maintainers who want to use Rust" rather than "we are Rust users who want our code to be in Linux".

This might be true, but do you have any actual quantifiable evidence for it? Because FWIW, from what I as an outsider see (mainly in threads like this), all the drama looks very much like "we are Rust users who want our code to be in Linux".

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#983

Post by CRConrad »

shortstuffsushi wrote: post #430
citruscomputing wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As important context, it gained popularity in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.

I think you might be mistaking the "thin blue line" concept with the "blue / all lives matter" in this case, thin blue line is neither new nor newly popular with BLM.

Certainly more popular since then; probably swept along by "blue lives matter". Have you seen that black-and-blue version of the American flag, with, what is it, six or seven blue stripes (or lines)? How old is that?

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#984

Post by ActorNightly »

School-Cotton wrote: post #824
ActorNightly wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its sad that they chose Apple, instead of like investing time into the upcoming ARM laptops to make the Linux more optimized on them. That talent should not be wasted on tech jewelry.

The MBP is the best laptop hardware that exists on the market, by far. Why wouldn't someone who prefers Linux over macOS want to run Linux on it? The existence of other ARM laptops is irrelevant; the reason MBPs are so good has little to do with ARM. Yes x86 makes the processor frontend more complicated but this doesn't make a big enough difference to come close to accounting for how much better the MBP is than its c…

>The MBP is the best laptop hardware that exists on the market, by far.

Really?

What is so great about a locked down hardware, locked down software machine, that phones home to Apple all the time?

The only reason to get Macs is if you have a niche case of needing long battery life (most people don't, even if they say they do), but this is where the other ARM laptops are gonna also be good, without all the proprietary crap.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#985

Post by CRConrad »

kllrnohj wrote: post #523
arp242 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really follow what's objectionable about Ted's email, or why it's being singled out. It matches my experience as an open source maintainer pretty accurately. It's also pretty constructive (it goes on to lay out a plan on how to constructively proceed and make everyone happy).

What's objectionable is primarily the phrase "thin blue line" - it's highly politically charged language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_blue_line One would hope it was just a particularly bad gaffe, but it could also be an insight into how he actually views himself as a maintainer which is not great.

The gaffe is on the part of those who read far too much into the expression.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#986

Post by CRConrad »

fastball wrote: post #833
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is most certainly not politically charged language. It's an anodyne statement referring to being a small force keeping bad things from happening. That's all.

The "blue" is specifically about police, so it is not as generic as you make it out to be.

The expression exists in only two colour variants, blue and (the original) red. If he'd used the other, you'd probably have pointed out what a colonialist Victorian asshole T'so is, for identifying with the 19th century British army?

The expression itself is inherently quite generic; all the claims about it being "specifically about" anything are just people reading stuff into it.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#987

Post by CRConrad »

arp242 wrote: post #583
kllrnohj wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's objectionable is primarily the phrase "thin blue line" - it's highly politically charged language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_blue_line One would hope it was just a particularly bad gaffe, but it could also be an insight into how he actually views himself as a maintainer which is not great.

Eh, right. The "far right" seem to appropriate every other thing these days. I can't keep up. In the context of a long-term good faith maintainer in what is clearly a constructive good faith email, assigning bad faith meaning to a simple phrase is in itself a bad faith action IMHO.

> Eh, right. The "far right" seem to appropriate every other thing these days. I can't keep up.

Is it really appropriating anything, though, in this case? Seems this is more people ascribing the expression to a particular political camp in order to taint T'so by association with said camp.

(Sorry, if you were being ironic or sarcastic in your wording, I failed to pick it up.)

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#988

Post by CRConrad »

mschuster91 wrote: post #719
fluoridation wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, so you boot your custom OS, and you can... I guess display a terminal and maybe talk to the disk? How do you use the hardware without drivers? Did Apple document their hardware interfaces?

The fact that Apple re-uses components from very long time ago in their SoCs is what enabled Asahi Linux to be where it is in the timeframe it took with the staff they had. Obviously marcan, lina and the others involved are damn geniuses, but even they built on the research of others like iPodLinux that laid foundational groundwork.

> Obviously marcan, lina and the others involved

Make that just "marcan and the others". Because judging from a few other threads here, marcan is apparently "lina".

> are damn geniuses

So that's one fewer geniuses than you may have thought.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#989

Post by CRConrad »

dmix wrote: post #434
weinzierl wrote: post #112

Reading this I cannot help thinking about what Linus Torvalds said more than 20 years ago[1] in an interview. When asked if he feared competition for Linux his answer was that few liked writing device drivers and as long as no one "young and hungry" came along that could write device drivers and liked it he'd be safe. There you have him, Hector Martin, young[2] and hungry and loves writing drivers. No surprise he cla…

They aren't competing with Linux though.

But maybe they should be.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#990

Post by p_l »

CRConrad wrote: post #980
p_l wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the purposes of linux kernel, there's essentially a custom superset of C that is defined as "right" for linux kernel, and there are maintainers responsible for maintaining it. While GCC with few basic flag will, in general, produce binary that cooperates with kernel, kbuild does load all those flags for a reason.

> For the purposes of linux kernel, there's essentially a custom superset of C that is defined as "right" for linux kernel Superset? Or subset? I'd have guessed the latter.

Superset. ANSI/ISO C is not a good language to write a kernel in, because the standards are way more limiting than some people would think - and leaves a lot to implementation.

So it's a superset in terms of what's defined

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