Comment by llm_trw
10 months ago
What I don't get is the complaints from the Rust people.
If Rust truly is zero overhead on the C side of things then they should be just able to fork Linux indefinitely without any worry about what upstream does. Just fast forward every change and you're golden.
Then they can write every driver they can imagine to their hearts' content.
The fact they aren't doing this tells me that the promise that this won't impact C people at all isn't much of one.
The problem is that they might want their drivers to actually work on people's existing Linux systems without having to force them to use a forked kernel.
It's like telling people who want JPEGXL in Firefox to "just" fork the browser, ignoring the massive extra effort that you actually have to convince everybody to use your fork instead of the original.
What extra effort? If you match upstream it's a drop in replacement and anyone who cares will use it. If they don't it's because they don't care.
And what if they do care, but they simultaneously need features available in multiple different forks? You can't run two kernels at the same time.
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"if you match upstream"
Talk about aggressively missing the point.
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Linux is the most important open source project ever. The barrier to entry is, actually, shockingly low.