[fsckboy]

>It really does seem like there's some old-guard who are utterly determined to now allow this to happen.

unices and then into the linux project have been a massively successful series of massive C library/API/threading/timing/bittwiddling coordination efforts.

some people now want to turn that Ship of Theseus into catamaran, while it's sailing? Rust people could probably more easily just use the Linux sources and rewrite it into a new better system, clean effort.

Coordinating people is time consuming and difficult, and this "project" clearly makes that issue a lot worse in the interim phases. Seems downright Bayesian, if you know what I mean.

[bluGill]

Anybody can write a good kernel for one single computer (not just CPU) in a couple years. What makes linux useful is the vast amount of different hardware combinations it supports, often with "black magic" because some hardware doesn't work unless you do something weird (commonly you have to wait some amount of time after the power comes on before using it). One computer is easy, adding support for a second that is even slightly different is more work. Linux works correctly on millions of combinations by now (most of those combinations have not been tested but they would work)

[bitexploder]

Linux is like 27 million lines of code. The core is several million.

I think efforts like gVisor and other sandboxing technologies are the future. gVisor and friends like it can minimize the attack surface of unsafe code down to some minimum.

Rust in Linux as an experiment should go on. Core functionality can likely be re-implemented in Rust and continue to get some meaningful % of the critical path of code safer, but there will always be some level of "unsafe" code in an operating system kernel.

[znpy]

Indeed, I have a similar feeling.

"Rust people" are annoying because they largely want their stuff upstreamed, and they want it NOW. If you have any form of doubt they'll call you names and mark your word as nonsense. It's just obnoxious.

It's okay to want changes, and I think Rust in Linux is a great thing, but you can't expect people to just drop off everything and give you all the attention you want in the exact specific way you want it, and to give all that attention TODAY.

Otherwise just go ahead, fork Linux and do your thing... If it's any good Linux will pull and merge the changes.