uecker

37 ms·

631.
by uecker 10mo ago
I remember seeing Linux gaining some traction 15 year ago, and Ubuntu focusing on polishing the user experience (with initiatives such as fixing "One hundred paper cuts"), but then this changed instead of keeping this stable the g
632.
by uecker 10mo ago
I agree. My point was only that this hole can easily be patched in X as well. So the argument was essentially "we do not bother to patch it with X, so we must rewrite X".
633.
by uecker 10mo ago
Yes, but I think in the case of Wayland also management had other priorities, i.e. GUI for mobile and/or entertainment systems. But this is all ok, I think the main problem is that somehow too many in Linux community did not see that t
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by uecker 10mo ago
I am not sure what you saw, but on regular Linux processes of the user can spy on each other anyway. In any case, X had the concept of untrusted clients basically forever but nobody cared to invest even the small amount of work necessary t
635.
by uecker 10mo ago
It isn't clear why any of this would require a rewrite.
636.
by uecker 10mo ago
This is cool. What X is really missing though is a little bit of love from the toolkit side, e.g. proper latency hiding using XCB, support for dis- and reconnect or support for moving windows to display on different devices.
637.
by uecker 10mo ago
Not sure whether this is generally true. GCC appears to have similar optimizations and I personally find LLVM's code much more intimidating. But it is certainly true that LLVM seems to see more investment. I assume the license may also
638.
by uecker 10mo ago
The big new thing in C11 was atomics and threading.
639.
by uecker 10mo ago
I split to enforce encapsulation by defining interfaces in headers based on incomplete structure types. So it helps me with he conceptually separated module boundaries. Super fast compilation is another benefit.
640.
by uecker 10mo ago
My personal goal was to replace all of Microsoft in my life. I mostly achieved this 30 years ago with the help of a C program. Now I only have to use Microsoft products when other people I collaborate with insist on using them. So if Rust
641.
by uecker 10mo ago
Regarding "restrict", I don't think one puts it everywhere, just for certain numerical loops which otherwise are not vectorized should be sufficient. FORTRAN seems even more dangerous to me. IMHO a better solution would be t
642.
by uecker 10mo ago
What I meant is that Rust has stricter aliasing rules which make some optimization possible without extra annotations, but this is balanced out by many other issues.
643.
by uecker 10mo ago
This is basically what many functional programming languages do. This always came with plausibly sounding claims that this allows so much better optimizations that this soon will surpass imperative programs in performance, but this never ma
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by uecker 10mo ago
Is it? You just add "restrict" where needed? https://godbolt.org/z/jva4shbjs
645.
by uecker 10mo ago
For your comments I get that you drank the Kool Aid, but I see no argument.
646.
by uecker 10mo ago
I also think that the largest factor is cultural. But my conclusion from this is not that one should import it with a new language while pretending achieving similar results is not possible otherwise. This just gives an excuse for not cari
647.
by uecker 10mo ago
Writing without errors using other languages also doesn't work. And if you go towards formal verification (which also does not completely avoid errors), C has good tools.
648.
by uecker 10mo ago
But there are more than 2000 uses of "unsafe" even in the tiny amount of Rust use in the Linux kernel. And you would need to compare to C code where an equally amount of effort was done to develop safe abstractions. So essential
649.
by uecker 10mo ago
There is a lot of science showing vaccines work. For Rust showing that it is better this is still lacking. And no Google's blog posts are not science.
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by uecker 10mo ago
There is no programming language better than C ;-) Just people not yet experienced enough to have learned this. (Just trolling you back)
651.
by uecker 10mo ago
The implementation itself being sound, yes. And yes, in Rust if you only use sound libraries (in combination), never use unsafe yourself and ignore the known defects in Rust, then it is also guaranteed to be safe. But in system programmin
652.
by uecker 10mo ago
You are right, I do not have a problem with Rust as a language nor with the kernel improving memory safety. My issue is solely with exaggerated claims and aggressive marketing of Rust. (And I am operating network-connected Linux devices si
653.
by uecker 10mo ago
No, in the comment you reply to, I am using safe/unsafe in the Rust sense. E.g. signed overflow changed to trap avoids the UB. Also "If .. are implemented soundly" sounds harmless but simply means there is no safety guarantee
654.
by uecker 10mo ago
As long as the kernel will be developed, there will be CVEs - even with Rust. So at what point the number is so high that we should drop Rust and move to formal verification? And even then, there will be CVEs... This whole argument is non
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by uecker 10mo ago
Yes, but this is the marketing bullshit I am calling out. "Safe Rust" != "Rust" and it is not "Safe Rust" which is competing with C it is "Rust".
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by uecker 10mo ago
Hey, it was my point that the number of CVEs is red herring. And no, I do not care or even believe what Google says. There are so many influencing factors.
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by uecker 10mo ago
You are saying the Rust bug in the kernel was impossible? How did it happen then? Come on guys.
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by uecker 10mo ago
The first misunderstanding is that safety is a property of the language or not. Rust marketing convinced many people that this is so, but C can be safe or unsafe. Fil-C shows that even all of C can be memory safe (but at a substantial cost
659.
by uecker 10mo ago
Giving the size and age of the C ecosystem, the number of bugs is not really a valid argument. We will see an increasing numbers with Rust as Rust is increasingly used. I also do not question that Rust solves some problems. It just solves
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by uecker 10mo ago
First, if "unsafe" worked so well 100% time, why did we have this bug? (and many other) So this already obviously wrong statement. Then yes, you can use dangerous features in C at any time, but obviously you can also use "un

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