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What was acceptable in 1995 is not what is acceptable today. Linux took literal decades + in the billions of dollars to build. It's ridiculous to suggest a rust
by rowanG077 2y ago
What was acceptable in 1995 is not what is acceptable today. Linux took literal decades + in the billions of dollars to build. It's ridiculous to suggest a rust project can just catch up to that with a few developers and no funding in any sane timespan. If you think it's reasonable to suggest "Just outcompete this heavily and continuously developed 34 year old project which has the backing of the largest technology firms on earth" I really don't know what to tell you. We live in different realities.
That doesn't even begin to touch on the problem that linux came at just the right time.
- flohofwoe 2y agoSure it's foolish, but so was trying to 'outcompete' industry giants like IBM and Microsoft in the early 90s with a hobby kernel. That didn't stop a certain Finn from just writing a kernel anyway. If that project hadn't taken off, then maybe another one, or another one. Replacing any substantial parts of the Linux project with Rust also would be multi-decade effort, most likely more effort than forking off a separate evolutionary branch (which is probably the most realistic option). Such forks happened all the time in the history of UNIX.
- rowanG077 2y agoIt was considerably less foolish then, then now. It's not even close. The complexity of the operating system kernels has more then increased 50x over the last 34 years. It's not even remotely comparable. No one wants to replace substantial parts of the linux project with Rust. This is a straw man, and the same bad faith argument the set in their ways kernel greybeards are making. People just want to be able to write green field drivers in Rust.