This is a little off topic and admittedly an oversimplification, but people saying Rust's memory safety isn't a big deal remind me of people saying static typing isn't a big deal.

Someone linked the thread from Phoronix forum and the comments are so awful. Imagine having to deal with people like this.

One of them reads:

We need Microsoft people like we need fleas. Why can't they work for projects we don't like, like GNOME?

It is funny because Ts'o works at Google, lol.

Ted Ts'o is a prick with a god complex. I understand his experience is hard to match, we all have something in our lives we're that good at, but that does not need to lead to acting like a fucking religious fanatic.

The comments from that article are some of the most vitriolic I've ever seen on a technical issue. Goes to prove the maintainer's point though.

Some are good for a laugh though, like assertions that Rust in the kernel is a Microsoft sabotage op or LLVM is for grifters and thieves.

Who the fuck is this little shit? Can't they even be a little considerate towards rust? Just because they have 15 years worth of inertia for C doesn't mean they can close their eyes and say "nope, I'm not interested". I do not see how the kernel can survive without making rust a first class citizen

Oof, that video... I don't have enough patience to put up with that sort of thing either. I wonder how plausible a complete Rust fork of the kernel would be.

I admit I'm biased towards C-languages out of sheer personal preference and limited exposure to Rust but I am wondering, are there any major technical barriers to Rust replacing these languages in it's current form anymore?

I know there has been a lot of movement towards supporting Rust in the last 6 years since I've become aware of it, but I also get flashbacks from the the early 00's when I would hear about how Java was destined to replace C++, and the early 2010's when Python was destined to replace everything only to realize that the hype fundamentally misunderstood the use case limitations of the various languages.

There's always going to be pushback on new ideas. He's basically asking people questions like "Hey how does your thing work? I want to write it in rust." and gets the answer "I'm not going to learn rust.".

I think rust is generally a good thing and with a good amount of tests to enforce behavior it's possible to a functionally equivalent copy of the current code with no memory issues in future maintenance of it. Rewriting things in rust will also force people to clarify the behavior and all possible theoretical paths a software can take.

I'm not gonna lie though, if I would have worked on software for 20 years and people would introduce component that's written in another language my first reaction would be "this feels like a bad idea and doesn't seem necessary".

I really hope that the kernel starts taking rust seriously, it's a great tool and I think it's way easier to write correct code in rust than C. C is simple but lacks the guardrails of modern languages which rust has.

The process of moving to rust is happening but it's going to take a really long time. It's a timescale current maintainers don't really need to worry about since they'll be retired anyway.

The video attached is a perfect example of the kind of "I'm not prepared to learn anything new so everyone else is wrong" attitude that is eating away at Linux like a cancer.

If memory safety isn't adopted into the kernel, and C fanaticism discarded, Linux will face the same fate as the kernels it once replaced. Does the Linux foundation want to drag its heels and stuff millions into AI ventures whilst sysadmins quietly shift to new kernels that offer memory safety, or does it want to be part of that future?

I am no visionary but if Linux doesn’t internalize this, I’m afraid some other kernel will do to it what it did to Unix.

Maybe that's not a bad thing? If you ask me the GNU people are missing a trick. Perhaps if they rewrote Hurd in Rust they could finally shed that "/Linux".