[jjice]

It's an optional tool that can be used to implement drivers now, not forced. If you don't like the idea of another language being supported for implementing a subset of kernel modules, I don't think you wouldn't enjoyed having a Linux machine anyways.

[ls-a]

That's not the case. It's using Rust as a selling point. All the noise around using Rust is marketing. The fact that you think linux machines are enjoyed by only a specific group of people makes me happier with my choice

[jjice]

> That's not the case. It's using Rust as a selling point

"Rust as a selling point" was a big thing in 2018-2022ish. You see it a lot less of the "written in Rust" in HN headlines these days. Some people were very excited about Rust early on. What feels more common today are people who unnecessarily hate Rust because they saw too much of this hype and they (justifiably) got annoyed by it.

If there is a new, optional language to be added to Linux Kernel development, Rust makes sense. It's a low level, performant, and safe language. Introducing it for driver development has almost no impact on 99% of users, except maybe it'll safe them a memory related bug fix patch having to be installed at some point. Is Rust the "selling point" here, or is the potential to avoid an entire class of bugs the selling point?

> The fact that you think linux machines are enjoyed by only a specific group of people makes me happier with my choice

If by "specific group of people" you mean "people who will refuse to use an OS based on the implementation language(s)", then I guess so.

I don't mean to be rude (although it reads like it, apologies), but I just think that you're coming at this from a perspective of malice instead of what the goal was, which was to reduce bugs in kernel drivers, and not to pimp Rust as a programming language by getting it into a large software project.

[ls-a]

No worries I didn't take offenses. I just disagree. The title should've been we reduced bugs in the kernel and here is some proof of that. The 2018-2022-ish hype (I call it bullying campaign) is still strong. Google recently did a blog post about Rust speeding up their development, in the age of LLMs, seriously! I can't stop lol'ing at that

[umanwizard]

> It's using Rust as a selling point.

That's just not true. Neither Linus Torvalds, nor the Linux Foundation, nor any major distro, nor anyone else who could conceivably be considered responsible for "marketing" Linux is saying you should use it because a small part of it is written in Rust.

I just went to ubuntu.com and the word "rust" does not appear anywhere on the front page. So what are you talking about?

[ls-a]

> Stay tuned for details in our Maintainers Summit coverage.

I can argue otherwise. Developer advocacy is a form of marketing (specially for a product traditionally targeted towards tech savvy people)