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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I agree. C isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but if we don’t start modernizing the kernel now we could end up with a future like the US government is in where all critical systems run on COBOL code and no one wants to touch it for the fear of breaking everything.

    I’m not sure if it was in my above post or not, but the article said we should start modernizing the kernel now before someone does to Linux what Linux did to Unix.

    Redox OS already exists and is functional (meaning it boots and has a GUI, but it’s lacking in various aspects), from what I understand it’s pretty much Linux/Unix rewritten entirely in Rust and looks pretty promising. In 5 or so years it could be a competitor with BSD and then overtake Linux once it has a proven track record.



  • Yeah it is a monumental task, but it’s also the one with the least push back. I don’t mean start from scratch, but convert the C code to Rust in a dev branch or something and release a Linux-Rust kernel image.

    Almost all real-world software development is like this. That’s what we do.

    I’m aware, I’ve written my own software even though I’m a SysEng, all I’m saying is that it’s not an easy process with a potential for disaster. Just look at CrowdStrike (not saying that they were attempting to switch languages but just the scale of the fuck up and the fallout that it caused), we don’t want that to happen with Linux.


  • I’m not rejecting it, I’m just saying that it’s very difficult to completely change the code of a critical piece of software. The long-term goal is for Rust to overtake C in the kernel (from what I understand, I’m a System Engineer, not a software dev. I know Go, not Rust) due it being memory-safe and about 30 years newer. Critical code gets left untouched (a lot of the time) because no one wants to be the one that breaks shit (and get bitched out by Linus 😂) so I’m sure there is tons of code from the early 90s that could be made better with a newer language like Rust, but it’s not as mature as C right now so that’s not going to happen for a while, if at all.



  • part of the problem is that old-time kernel developers are used to C and don’t know Rust," Torvalds said. “They’re not exactly excited about having to learn a new language that is, in some respects, very different. So there’s been some pushback on Rust.”

    Linus hit the nail on the head. If you’ve been a Kernel dev for a decade or more, and have spent decades learning the ins and outs of C, why would you want to switch to something that is similar, but different in a lot of ways, just because a small subset of devs think it’s the best way forward? Let them handle Rust and the majority of devs will keep using C, even though Rust is objectively better.

    As one of the other quotes suggested: fork the kernel project and rewrite it entirely in Rust, that way there isn’t any push back from the C devs. Replacing C with Rust in the upstream kernel is akin to replacing the engine in a car while it’s running or being used every day.












  • I’d say lay off the gaba dealies withdrawals for em can be insomnia

    I’m an insomniac anyway, Id’ rather knock myself out than stay awake for like a day or two straight and be miserable due to lack of sleep. I actually take Gabapentin as well, which helped me not feel like ass in the morning (the usual outcome of taking like 15 mg of Ambien, previous to about 2-3 years ago)

    I feel you on the job thing, when I was 23 it took me many months to find a job in IT, it was awful, I remember the stress of it, I needed it desperately to stay in the country, otherwise I’d be deported to hell.

    Luckily I’m a citizen so I don’t have to worry about that, but yeah, it’s absolutely miserable and demeaning. Half of the time is spent creating an account for something that you’ll never use again, verifying that your resume was parsed correctly, and then answering the same bullshit discrimination questions. 30% of it is spent wading through all the job postings from recruiters with horrible/useless job descriptions, and if you find one you like, talking to them for 20 minutes about the exact same stuff that’s on your resume and you go into detail about it and they stop you because they have no clue what you’re talking about. My mom keeps telling me “you may have to go for something that you don’t want” because she doesn’t understand that getting a helpdesk job takes just as much effort as getting a Linux System Engineer job.