Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Steps Down As Upstream Apple Silicon Maintainer
Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Steps Down As Upstream Apple Silicon Maintainer
Some of the comments on that article made me realise I'm a bit out of the loop: what makes Asahi linux "woke"?
It is sad though that there is so much drama around linux development. It's easy for me to say this, but I do think it's important that there is a switch to a newer language like Rust away from C eventually.
Classic. But yeah, that's how I'm reading the situation as well.
I saw someone saying AI "Apparently AI goes hand in hand with wokeism."
Meanwhile, I've seen quite a few complaints from the types this person dismisses as "woke" about AI. Is there more left-leaning approval from AI than I think there is, and more right-leaning disdain for it than I think there is?
The Phoronix comments are notoriously toxic - I went to the article mostly to witness the incoherent rage in the comments and wasn't too disappointed.
It's dumb culture war bullshit, but instead of revolving around black characters in media, it's about a programming language. While there are legitimate critiques of both Rust and interoperating it with a legacy C codebase like Linux (and some people did in the mailings, even if a bit poorly communicated), It almost always boils down to how memory safety supposed to make development much easier, or the dreaded "Code of Conduct".
The biggest programming language culture warriors are often not even mainline C devs, but Javascript/Python devs that idolize the suffering of system devs. Others are just people who tell you to use Python if you want an "easy and productive" language instead of dealing with programming language jank that was needed in the 70's when RAM was extremely limited.
The anti-CoC crowd barely even codes. At least when Walter Bright and co. started to throw out chud adjacent people from D, it's popularity decline reversed, although it also coincided with other changes in the language governance. It seems like the nazis didn't even code, just were around to push D as a rival to Rust as a memory safe language, even if D's memory safety features are more opt-in in nature (safe by default can be achieved by putting @safe: just after the module declaration).
Thanks, this seems like a very thorough description of the situation. My limited understanding of how coding works and has worked through history is like you say "filled with a lot of jank" regarding memory because it was limited but also because compilers weren't as efficient as they are today. So it makes sense that there are purists that believes the only good code is the one where programmers are in total control of every bit of memory themselves instead of leaving anything to automation.
I do think it's important that there is a switch to a newer language like Rust away from C eventually.
The problem is you can't come in swinging to be let into the party, there are processes and tests to be done.
There have been talks and efforts about bringing Rust to Linux for more than a decade. This is not something that has been swift.
What the actual fuck are you on about? This is a technical argument about whether rust should be allowed innthe Linux kernel and the impact of that decision on devs, you absolute troglodyte.
So what?
The downvotes are kind of a proof of what you were talking about. So quick to try to censor your response. Did they even catch the question “what makes it woke?”
Bad for Linux. I see Asahi Linux on Apple hardware as being the "best Linux" for consumer use (and home servers) moving forwards.
I've been a paying supported of Asahi since the Patreon launched. I'm curious to hear why you think it is "best" for consumers and servers?
I've only installed Asahi one time, just to kick the tires. I think I reverted to MacOS after about two days. I'm a MacOS guy first, Linux second, but I love choice and want Linux on Apple hardware, thus I love Asahi. I'm more of a spectator (on Apple silicon; I've run Linux on x86 for a decade), so any insight is appreciated.
I was macOS (desktop) and Linux (servers), but over time it just became cumbersome to cater to the - while Unix - different environment on the Macs all the time. I've now converted over the last Macbook Pro to Linux but what I really want is a Linux distribution really made specifically for the Macs and making full use of their somewhat special hardware.
If you're more at home with macOS then this doesn't apply to you of course :) A lot of the software I use is from the open source community where Mac gets supported because it's possible to compile for it but it's always an afterthought.
(Servers? Yeah that might surprise people - but the performance of Apple Silicon is really very interesting for a lot of tasks where you need "GPU-speedup" without installing a full GPU)
This is a week after someone tried to nerf Rust in the kernel. I hate shit like this.
As someone who dual-boots Asahi & macOS, I really hope they can figure out how to move forward. What they do is essential to keeping Apple Silicon MacBooks’s OS open to user choice.
To be clear I don't know anything about the DMA API, but is it that the rust devs want to change the API to be friendlier to Rust code rather than translate it? Couldn't they make like a library or something instead?
No, this is fallout from a patchset adding exactly the rust library you suggest to use the DMA library. And despite this only having changes in the rust/kernel tree, the maintainer of kernel/dma showed up to NAK the patch just because he doesn't like the idea of rust code in the kernel.
Original Patch Set Thread: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250108122825.136021-1-abdiel.janulgue@gmail.com/
I guess one could have racist and/ or transphobic opinions without knowing the harm it carries. If a person is black, and they happen to behave in a way you don't like (e.g. smoking weed in a park); you don't go saying "oh this black people do this, not all but some and I hope they didn't do that". There's a generalization you need to avoid, and also their behavior is regardless of the color of their skin. I have removed such comments, only than instead of racism about skin color this was about gender. And I am being too 'liberal' here. Giving you the benefit of doubt. But it's clear to me that if you think they're behaving in that way you dislike because of their gender, then that's just plain transphobia. Next comment that goes in that line, may get a 10-day ban. Discuss Rust, Linux, even Apple Silicon... not the personal decisions and life of a given developer.