• 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, accord

    From Jeffrey Walton@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 16:50:01
    Subject: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C,
    according to Greg Kroah-Hartman , <https://www.zdnet.com/article/greg-kroah-hartman-linux-kernel-rust/>.

    And in contrast, Rust is only stable on a handful of platforms: <https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support.html>. Most platforms are not guaranteed to build or work as expected by users.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Robert Heller@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 17:20:01
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C,? according to Greg Kroah-Hartman


    At Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:39:50 -0400 noloader@gmail.com wrote:


    'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C,
    according to Greg Kroah-Hartman , <https://www.zdnet.com/article/greg-kroah-hartman-linux-kernel-rust/>.

    And in contrast, Rust is only stable on a handful of platforms: <https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support.html>. Most platforms are not guaranteed to build or work as expected by users.

    And rust can be incredibly frustrating. I ported several C++ libraries/programs to rust. I eventually was successful, but it was a major pain and required a lot of finagling to deal with the borrow checker, including duplicating data structures (basicly create parallel classes -- one read-only that could be "shared" and one mostly write-only that was not "shared". The resulting code is "safe", but clunky in some ways. (Maybe I am just not any good at programming in rust? Maybe the programs could be coded in a completely different way?) And as for GUI programming -- at this point forget it... There isn't really a GUI binding for rust that is really mature enough to use, at least I could not find one that worked for me (actually I have long since given up GUI programming in C or C++ -- I use Tcl/Tk for GUI programming these days).

    https://github.com/RobertPHeller?tab=repositories&q=&type=&language=rust&sort=





    --
    Robert Heller -- Cell: 413-658-7953 GV: 978-633-5364
    Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services
    http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services
    heller@deepsoft.com -- Webhosting Services


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Andy Smith@3:633/10 to All on Monday, July 20, 2026 18:10:01
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    Hi,

    On Mon, Jul 20, 2026 at 10:39:50AM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
    Rust is only stable on a handful of platforms: <https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support.html>. Most platforms are not guaranteed to build or work as expected by users.

    If you took the total number of computers running Linux right now,
    surely by number most of them would be on platforms that are in the tier
    1 list there?

    Sure, if you took a list of every platform that Linux can run on, there
    may be many weird ones not present.

    Thanks,
    Andy

    --
    https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Teemu Likonen@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, July 23, 2026 10:00:01
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    * 2026-07-20 11:10:43-0400, Robert Heller wrote:
    And rust can be incredibly frustrating. I ported several C++ libraries/programs to rust. I eventually was successful, but it was a
    major pain and required a lot of finagling to deal with the borrow
    checker, [...]
    I found that fun part of learning Rust. The compiler forced me to learn
    those concepts of ownership and borrowing mutably or immutably and the
    compiler is helpful in that. It gives pleasure to know that I the result
    it safe and quite good code.
    --
    /// Teemu Likonen - .-.. https://www.iki.fi/tlikonen/
    // OpenPGP: DD3B8E8ABD28B98176E6A7CCCC9A5E615FCC1D93


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Franco Martelli@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, July 23, 2026 20:30:02
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    On 20/07/26 at 16:39, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
    'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C,
    according to Greg Kroah-Hartman , <https://www.zdnet.com/article/greg-kroah-hartman-linux-kernel-rust/>.

    And in contrast, Rust is only stable on a handful of platforms: <https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support.html>. Most platforms are not guaranteed to build or work as expected by users.


    It's really impressive how much work the developers are putting in for
    coding in Rust:

    ~$ apt-cache search librust-* | wc -l
    3252

    and the speed at which the standard library is growing up:

    ~$ LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 apt-cache search libstd-rust-1 | sort
    libstd-rust-1.85 - Rust standard libraries
    libstd-rust-1.86 - Rust standard libraries
    libstd-rust-1.87 - Rust standard libraries
    libstd-rust-1.88 - Rust standard libraries
    libstd-rust-1.89 - Rust standard libraries
    libstd-rust-1.90 - Rust standard libraries
    libstd-rust-1.91 - Rust standard libraries
    libstd-rust-1.92 - Rust standard libraries
    libstd-rust-1.93 - Rust standard libraries
    libstd-rust-1.94 - Rust standard libraries

    ---
    ~$ LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 apt changelog libstd-rust-1.85 2>/dev/null | head -10
    Get:1 https://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org rustc 1.85.0+dfsg3-1
    Changelog [79.7 kB]
    rustc (1.85.0+dfsg3-1) unstable; urgency=medium

    * backport fix for gix-features CVE-2025-31130
    * rust-lldb: fix lldb version (Closes: #1100950)
    * cherry-pick fix for crossbeam-channel RUSTSEC-2025-0024

    -- Fabian Grnbichler <debian@fabian.gruenbichler.email> Thu, 24 Apr
    2025 17:47:57 +0200

    rustc (1.85.0+dfsg2-3) unstable; urgency=medium

    ~$ LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 apt changelog libstd-rust-1.94 2>/dev/null | head -10
    Get:1 https://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org rustc
    1.94.1+dfsg1-1~bpo13+3 Changelog [90.2 kB]
    rustc (1.94.1+dfsg1-1~bpo13+3) trixie-backports; urgency=medium

    * cherry-pick fixes for CVE-2026-5222 and CVE-2026-5223

    -- Fabian Grnbichler <debian@fabian.gruenbichler.email> Thu, 28 May
    2026 21:06:12 +0200

    rustc (1.94.1+dfsg1-1~bpo13+2) trixie-backports; urgency=medium

    * Rebuild on buildds.

    ---
    ten releases in approx one year, I'm tempted to buy a book to learn
    coding in Rust :-)

    kind regards,
    --
    Franco Martelli

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From tomas@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, July 23, 2026 21:30:01
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    On Thu, Jul 23, 2026 at 08:28:17PM +0200, Franco Martelli wrote:
    On 20/07/26 at 16:39, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
    'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C,
    according to Greg Kroah-Hartman , <https://www.zdnet.com/article/greg-kroah-hartman-linux-kernel-rust/>.

    And in contrast, Rust is only stable on a handful of platforms: <https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support.html>. Most platforms are not guaranteed to build or work as expected by users.


    It's really impressive how much work the developers are putting in for
    coding in Rust:
    [...]
    ten releases in approx one year, I'm tempted to buy a book to learn coding
    in Rust :-)
    Dunno. "Implementation speed" doesn't count as a quality criterion,
    at least IMHO.
    Cheers
    --
    t


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Franco Martelli@3:633/10 to All on Friday, July 24, 2026 20:20:01
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    On 23/07/26 at 21:20, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
    On Thu, Jul 23, 2026 at 08:28:17PM +0200, Franco Martelli wrote:
    On 20/07/26 at 16:39, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
    'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C,
    according to Greg Kroah-Hartman ,
    <https://www.zdnet.com/article/greg-kroah-hartman-linux-kernel-rust/>.

    And in contrast, Rust is only stable on a handful of platforms:
    <https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support.html>. Most
    platforms are not guaranteed to build or work as expected by users.


    It's really impressive how much work the developers are putting in for
    coding in Rust:

    [...]

    ten releases in approx one year, I'm tempted to buy a book to learn coding >> in Rust :-)

    Dunno. "Implementation speed" doesn't count as a quality criterion,
    at least IMHO.

    Cheers

    maybe, however something good it should be real otherwise packages like "sudo-rs" they wouldn't be made. Another thing I forgot to say, those
    data comes from Trixie (stable) I don't know what is happening now in
    testing at Rust libraries?

    Kind regards,
    --
    Franco Martelli

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From tomas@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 06:30:01
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    On Fri, Jul 24, 2026 at 08:16:48PM +0200, Franco Martelli wrote:
    On 23/07/26 at 21:20, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
    [...]
    Dunno. "Implementation speed" doesn't count as a quality criterion,
    at least IMHO.

    Cheers

    maybe, however something good it should be real otherwise packages like "sudo-rs" they wouldn't be made. Another thing I forgot to say, those data comes from Trixie (stable) I don't know what is happening now in testing at Rust libraries?
    Yes, but my question above: is it better?
    Somehow this wave reminds me of the last wave of Rust brigading. It
    tends to happen with new languages. I'll stay out of the way until
    it settles.
    Cheers
    --
    t


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From CGS@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 17:20:01
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    On 2026-07-25, tomas@tuxteam.de <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:

    Yes, but my question above: is it better?


    As we know from Darwin, things evolve. They don't evolve toward
    "betterment"; there is no evolutionary goal. There is only adaptation to environmental constraints.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Robert Heller@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 17:30:01
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C,? according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    At Sat, 25 Jul 2026 15:15:25 -0000 (UTC) CGS <etphonehomefrance@gmail.com> wrote:


    On 2026-07-25, tomas@tuxteam.de <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:

    Yes, but my question above: is it better?


    As we know from Darwin, things evolve. They don't evolve toward
    "betterment"; there is no evolutionary goal. There is only adaptation to environmental constraints.


    And following this analog the question really is:

    Will Rust survive and carve out its own nitch? And if it does, will it take over any of the nitches occupied by any of its competitors? (C, C++, Java, Python, Lisp, Tcl, etc.)


    --
    Robert Heller -- Cell: 413-658-7953 GV: 978-633-5364
    Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services
    http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services
    heller@deepsoft.com -- Webhosting Services


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Stefan Monnier@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 18:00:02
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    tomas@tuxteam.de [2026-07-25 06:25:30] wrote:
    Yes, but my question above: is it better?
    Somehow this wave reminds me of the last wave of Rust brigading. It
    tends to happen with new languages. I'll stay out of the way until
    it settles.

    I think programmers should learn more (and more diverse) languages,
    regardless what language they end up using when they write code.
    Rust is very definitely among the top of the list of the languages that
    are worth learning for that reason (along with Prolog, Haskell, Scheme,
    C, ...). Javascript and Python come *way* further down the list
    (because they don't have very many noteworthy features not already
    present in most other languages).

    I have strong reservations w.r.t the Rust "ecosystem", but that
    shouldn't be confused with the Rust language itself.


    === Stefan

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From tomas@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 19:40:01
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    On Sat, Jul 25, 2026 at 11:58:18AM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
    tomas@tuxteam.de [2026-07-25 06:25:30] wrote:
    Yes, but my question above: is it better?
    Somehow this wave reminds me of the last wave of Rust brigading. It
    tends to happen with new languages. I'll stay out of the way until
    it settles.

    I think programmers should learn more (and more diverse) languages, regardless what language they end up using when they write code.
    Definitely. Learning Lisp has made my C better. Learning diverse
    OO languages has made my C better.
    Rust is very definitely among the top of the list of the languages that
    are worth learning for that reason (along with Prolog, Haskell, Scheme,
    C, ...). Javascript and Python come *way* further down the list
    (because they don't have very many noteworthy features not already
    present in most other languages).
    Hm. Javascript is somewhat interesting in that it kind of delivers
    on Self's promise of the 1980ies that you can write a language as
    a naive interpteter and somehow do the efficient compiling later.
    With that fly in the ointment that said compiler is so intimidatingly
    complex and slow that you end up having to have (at least) two of
    them in practice: one compiling quick and doing a sloppy optimisation
    job, the other, which you only use when "you've seen that code spot
    already a couple of times".
    I have strong reservations w.r.t the Rust "ecosystem", but that
    shouldn't be confused with the Rust language itself.
    I feel exactly the same wrt. the first. As to the second... I
    don't know. This affine types thing is neat, but for managed
    languages (Common Lisp, I'm looking at you!) turns out to
    solve a non-problem -- and don't tell me modern GCs are slow.
    For very small embedded systems... but then I'd stick to C.
    C is somewhat of a nightmare for huge monoliths with many cooks
    stirring the soup (someone said Linux kernel?), so there the
    important thing is to enforce compartmentalisation and clearly
    defined interfaces at the boundaries, so more of an architecture
    thing.
    Rust has yet to prove itself at this level. Paint me sceptic.
    I am fatally reminded of an anti-pattern I've seen in many
    corporate contexts which I've come to call "redemption by tool".
    Cheers
    --
    t


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Stefan Monnier@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 20:00:01
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    I feel exactly the same wrt. the first. As to the second... I
    don't know. This affine types thing is neat, but for managed
    languages (Common Lisp, I'm looking at you!) turns out to
    solve a non-problem -- and don't tell me modern GCs are slow.

    For very small embedded systems... but then I'd stick to C.

    I see you haven't yet learned Rust. ?

    While ownership and borrowing came from the desire to have the same kind
    of safety as with GCs (but without the need for an actual GC, which can
    be significant for realtime tasks or embedded systems), while learning
    Rust you will discover that it can be useful elsewhere, e.g., they also
    solve the problem of avoiding race conditions in shared-memory concurrency.

    C is somewhat of a nightmare for huge monoliths with many cooks
    stirring the soup (someone said Linux kernel?), so there the important
    thing is to enforce compartmentalisation and clearly defined
    interfaces at the boundaries, so more of an architecture thing.

    C also makes it very difficult to write and use libraries (among other
    things because of the amount of info about how to use it that can't be expressed in the language, so is relegated to the docs&comments when
    you're lucky, but is otherwise kept in the original author's head as
    choices that are so obvious that they didn't realize they made them).

    Rust makes all that a lot easier, because you're encouraged (and often
    even forced) to clearly encode the constraints in the type information.


    === Stefan

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Nicolas George@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 20:40:01
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    CGS (HE12026-07-25):
    As we know from Darwin, things evolve.

    Living things evolve. Rust is engineered.

    Regards,

    --
    Nicolas George

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Nicolas George@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 21:00:02
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    Teemu Likonen (HE12026-07-23):
    I found that fun part of learning Rust. The compiler forced me to learn
    those concepts of ownership and borrowing mutably or immutably and the compiler is helpful in that. It gives pleasure to know that I the result
    it safe and quite good code.

    That was my reaction at first, when I tried Rust when people started
    talking about it.

    Then I was stuck multiple times because the borrow checker was not smart
    enough to accept obviously safe operations, like passing distinct parts
    of the same structure to different functions. And I found that the
    mindset of the language and its community was not to use `unsafe` in
    these cases but to gate-keep the substructures using refcounting.

    In short, I was excited to get a super-C with static checks and metaprogramming, and what I found was a super-Java with some static optimization. A few years later I reimplemented the project in Perl
    (also an occasion to use Gtk+2 instead of Gtk+3, because Gtk+3 sucks).

    Add to that the bloated binaries (no dynamic linking, especially no
    dynamic linking to Rust compnents) and the packaging nightmare (granted,
    all ?®?modern?¯? language are a packaging nightmare), I must say I am
    not very sympathetic to Rust.

    Regards,

    --
    Nicolas George

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Nicolas George@3:633/10 to All on Saturday, July 25, 2026 21:00:02
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    Franco Martelli (HE12026-07-24):
    maybe, however something good it should be real otherwise packages like "sudo-rs" they wouldn't be made.

    The multiple security flaws due to logic errors confirmed my first
    reaction: sudo-rs is a publicity stunt bu Ubuntu bu not extremely
    competent people more than something the world needed.

    Regards,

    --
    Nicolas George

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From CGS@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, July 26, 2026 16:20:01
    Subject: Re: 'Rust makes coding fun again': Why Linux is moving away from C, according to Greg Kroah-Hartman

    On 2026-07-25, Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> wrote:
    CGS (HE12026-07-25):
    As we know from Darwin, things evolve.

    Living things evolve. Rust is engineered.

    It's called an analogy.

    YMMV.

    Regards,


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)