Comment by cevious

Kind of tells you something about how timidly and/or begrudgingly it’s been accepted.

IMO the attitude is warranted. There is no good that comes from having higher-level code than necessary at the kernel level. The dispute is whether the kernel needs to be more modern, but it should be about what is the best tool for the job. Forget the bells-and-whistles and answer this: does the use of Rust generate a result that is more performant and more efficient than the best result using C?

This isn’t about what people want to use because it’s a nice language for writing applications. The kernel is about making things work with minimum overhead.

By analogy, the Linux kernel historically has been a small shop mentored by a fine woodworker. Microsoft historically has been a corporation with a get-it-done attitude. Now we’re saying Linux should be a “let’s see what the group thinks- no they don’t like your old ways, and you don’t have the energy anymore to manage this” shop, which is sad, but that is the story everywhere now. This isn’t some 20th century revolution where hippies eating apples and doing drugs are creating video games and graphical operating systems, it’s just abandoning old ways because they don’t like them and think the new ways are good enough and are easier to manage and invite more people in than the old ways. That’s Microsoft creep.