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Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

A star has been born. A Linux alternative needs to be compatible with Linux binaries and also support modern architectures.

If you want Linux to survive, it needs to be re-written from scratch, optimised in Rust and compatible with the existing Linux binaries or drivers.

This project might have a chance.

From: [0]

> TL;DR: I'm writing a Linux clone in Rust just for fun. It does NOT aim to replace the Linux kernel.

A certain someone thought that their hobby OS Minix clone won't be 'big or professional like GNU'.

It's time for 'change'.

[0] https://seiya.me/writing-linux-clone-in-rust

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You think Linux, which the vast majority of web servers run today, is going to die out if it's not rewritten from scratch in Rust?

How on earth have you come to that one?

sigh...

Linux is going to survive. And no it does not need to be re-written from scratch in Rust. Someone lied to you at the church of rust.

But its a fun thing to do, and that's a good enough reason to do it. After all is that not exactly how Linux came into being anyway.

Maybe I will write a TODO app in Rust, should it be on top of HN because is some unoriginal,incomplete,bug filled,toy stuff just because the reason is written in Rust? 1

My assumption is that all titles with Rust get blind upvotes, sure a new kernel is cool but would be more cool if is more then someone toy project, this should probably be posted and upvoted in Rust forums so it gets support from the fans and hopefully the Rust guys will decide what kernel should they focus on and stop promoting every student weekend project here.

I mean, if you had a headline like "Show HN: org-mode in Rust" you'd get a ton of clicks

Linux came into being as a fun hobby project. It was successful because it gained traction with the wider community and got huge commercial backing because it was vastly superior to most of the alternatives from a user perspective ("oh hey, I can run my web servers on this 100% free kernel plus the GNU userland and have a mostly good server for zero software cost on commodity hardware"). But today, Linux itself exists, and while there are underlying technical changes that could improve on it, from an end-user perspective (especially potential commercial backers) anything else would be barely different, if they could tell at all. You'd need some huge compelling advantage - that a user cares about, nicer code and 5 bugs a year instead of 10 bugs a year isn't going to cut it - to actually gain any ground.

It gained commercial tracking because it represented a way for IBM, Oracle and Compaq to reduce development costs on their own systems, and thus started sponsoring Linux development efforts around 2000.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wished one could post soyjaks on HN.

Absolute codswallop. Linux will be here for many, many years to come yet.

Absolutely! But in Rust.

Why do you think the Linux developers are bolting on Rust in the Linux kernel themselves? [0]

It has already been admitted.

[0] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20210704202756.29107-1-ojeda@ke...

They've been writing drivers and such for years now and they've indeed levelled up the tooling integration. Your original post said along the lines of "if linux is to survive". Even if it was a full rewrite in rust (not going to happen) then it's still be Linux, with the same leadership. Most users wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

It'll take decades for Linux to have everything re-written in Rust. Even then it'll take even longer for every machine to run RLinux.

Not with Apache v2 License.

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