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The ISRG wants to make the Linux kernel memory-safe with Rust
The Internet Security Research Group (ISRG)—parent organization of the better-known Let's Encrypt project—has provided prominent developer Miguel Ojeda with a one-year contract to work on Rust in Linux and other security efforts on a full-time basis.
As we covered in March, Rust is a low-level programming language offering most of the flexibility and performance of C—the language used for kernels in Unix and Unix-like operating systems since the 1970s—in a safer way.
Efforts to make Rust a viable language for Linux kernel development began at the 2020 Linux Plumbers conference, with acceptance for the idea coming from Linus Torvalds himself. Torvalds specifically requested Rust compiler availability in the default kernel build environment to support such efforts—not to replace the entire source code of the Linux kernel with Rust-developed equivalents, but to make it possible for new development to work properly.
Using Rust for new code in the kernel—which might mean new hardware drivers or even replacement of GNU Coreutils—potentially decreases the number of bugs lurking in the kernel. Rust simply won't allow a developer to leak memory or create the potential for buffer overflows—significant sources of performance and security issues in complex C-language code.
Previously: Linus Torvalds: Don't Hide Rust in Linux Kernel; Death to AVX-512
Related: Microkernel, Rust-Programmed Redox OS's Devs Slam Linux, Unix, GPL
Following Layoffs, Mozilla and Core Rust Developers Are Forming a Rust Foundation
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @10:03PM (12 children)
The problem with these millennial languages is that their proponents are easily distracted by the next exciting new language and then there's no one to support them. Meanwhile, C++ has been chugging along with only minor changes since the late 1800s.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @10:11PM (9 children)
Anyone who's resistant to change has no place in IT.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @10:21PM (7 children)
Change your gender, or else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @10:31PM (4 children)
They already have, and you now asking them to change it back is tantamount to violence.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @11:29PM (3 children)
Holy Jesus Fucky McFuckface - there are 1024 (and counting) genders to choose from! He can do a new gender every day for 2.8 years, and never have to repeat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @12:01AM (2 children)
Isn't that a plan for when Potato Gender [thepostmillennial.com] stops working?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @12:15AM (1 child)
If a tater masturbated on zoom, how would you know?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 23 2021, @02:20AM
Mayo on the keyboard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @10:32PM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by shortscreen on Wednesday June 23 2021, @12:42AM
gender changes -> medical industry profits
software changes -> IT industry profits
You see? There is a difference.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @10:32PM
The words of a punk who unironically believes that "only the Sith believe in absolutes" thought-terminating garbage quote -- and who also believes that a developer who has a good point and defends that good point is toxic and meritocratic, while a bunch of purple-haired Jewish* trannies arguing about pronouns all day while China and corporate America are slipping bugs by them left and right is totally acceptable for an OS with more than its share of annoying security braggarts. Linux is a perfect example of how Judeo-Globalism can destroy good societies in only the span of a few years.
* It's totally fine for Jewish developers to be rude, annoying, racist, and otherwise pointlessly discriminatory though!
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday June 22 2021, @10:34PM
Heh. I can't tell if this is clever satire of another Slashdotter came wandering in over here. Funny either way, tho.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dltaylor on Wednesday June 23 2021, @04:15AM
I've worked on embedded stuff, UNIX and Microsoft kernels and drivers and application low-level utilities and libraries over the course of decades of programming.
My only difficulty with C++ is that I've only ever met less than a handful of programmers that actually know how to write in that language. At best, there is always half the performance and 2 to 4 times the amount of run-time code as "C". Just the simplest feature of base and derived classes seems to be beyond them. I have seen multiple instances of empty base classes and the "derived classes" made by "copy, paste, and tweak" from the first working instance. Wrapping as many as 8 layers of classes over just about every byte of data memory is common, too. That's the part of Rust that gives me pause: micromanaging references. Good as modern CPUs may be, winding down some daisy-chain of references is a performance hit. Yes, Virginia, there are layers of references in the Linux kernel, but type-unsafe as it may be (is, probably), I've seen the compilers streamline the object code.
Perhaps I'll rewrite one of the drivers I worked on in Rust and see how for myself if I'm avoiding a pitfall no longer present.