Rainer Weikusat via Dng said on Mon, 30 Mar 2026 11:29:15 +0100

>Steve Litt <slitt@???> writes:

>> Wait. Did I miss the notice of administrative mandation? Last I
>> heard, Linus said kernel code could be written in EITHER C or Rust.
>
>This is from a LWN article from 12/13/2025 which paraphrased the Linux
>DRM maintainer (David Arlie) as follows: [...] the subsystem is only
>""about a year away"" from disallowing new drivers written in C and
>requiring the use of Rust.
>
>https://lwn.net/Articles/1050174/

Well THAT'S interesting. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel
about all that and the comments. The referenced article and comments
seem to imply that the long term goal is a pure-Rust kernel and drivers.

>No idea if the link can be accessed w/o a subscription. This has
>greatly reduced my enthusiasm for this language because it if was
>really good for something and not just some people's techno-partisan
>"true love", such mandates wouldn't be necessary.

They'd be necessary if long term you want your kernel and drivers to be
written in only one language. Until 5 years ago, you could only do
Kernel/Driver work in C. Does that mean that C must be bad because if
it weren't, peoples' "true love" would make such a mandate unnecessary?

Of course, more to your point, with an Ada-only kernel, the developers
of the Rust compiler would have an insane amount of power.

SteveT

Steve Litt

http://444domains.com