The Linux kernel was always written in C, and during its entire existence its author and sole owner Linus Torvalds has always rejected all and every single suggestion of replacing it or adding support for other programming languages. Unsurprisingly, over the decades there have been literally dozens of such suggestions, and many of the suggested programming languages would have been completely adequate for the job, and with safety features that C lacks. Invariably, Torvalds summarily rejected all of those suggestions.
(One of the major officially stated reasons for this is that C is the de facto embedded systems programming language, and the amount of C experts, who know the language inside and out, and know how to use it for something like the Linux kernel, is staggering. Thus, changing to a completely different programming language would severely limit and diminish the pool of potential contributors and maintainers, and the number of people reviewing and auditing the code for bugs and exploits.)
Yet, completely out of the blue, and against all historical precedent, Torvalds accepted Rust as the new language to be supported by the Linux kernel, regardless of all of the previous reasons to reject all other languages, no matter how good and how "safe".
I don't think anybody knows why. I don't think even Torvalds himself knows why. (Every single reason that can be given could equally well be given to at least a half dozen other programming languages that had been previously summarily rejected. I have no idea why suddenly Rust is different from all those other ones.)
This is, by far, not a unique situation. A lot of big open source projects, including ones that have existed for 30+ years and have been battle-tested, reviewed and audited for all that time, are being rushed to be completely rewritten in Rust, for no discernible reason. The same story repeats: Such rewritings with other programming languages have been suggested in the past, all of them always summarily rejected, yet now for some inexplicable reason everybody has gone crazy and is rushing to reimplement everything in Rust.
And this very much includes code that has been pretty much proven to be bug-free, robust, safe, secure, and efficient.
Indeed, there's a strange ideology among the Rust cult. The ideology is that everything is better if written in Rust, even if doing so does not provide any tangible benefit, does not make the code safer, more robust, or more efficient. In fact, in their view the code becomes better if written in Rust even if it lacks features that the original code had. Even if the program only offers 50% of the features than the original, and is twice as slow, it's still "better" because it's written in Rust. (Yes, this is pretty much a direct quote from big-name Rust advocates. It's not just reading between the lines.)
Although it might sound like a completely different topic, it's actually surprisingly related because both communities have an almost 100% overlap. And that's the situation with X.org vs. Wayland.
X.org is a modern implementation of the X11 protocol, which is the latest version of the so-called "X windowing system", which was a protocol and specification for a graphical user interface for Unix systems (essentially "Windows desktop for Unix").
A bit over a decade ago a completely new specification and protocol was created for the same purpose, named Wayland, designed to replace X.org as the new "better" alternative for this purpose.
X.org and Wayland are completely incompatible because they approach the task completely differently (there exists a "compatibility layer" that translates X11 system calls to equivalent Wayland system calls, allowing X11 programs to run on Wayland, but it's limited.)
For some strange reason the primary "owners" of the X.org project decided to completely kill that project in favor of Wayland, and started to actively sabotage it. Their own very words, not something that has merely been implied or "read between the lines". Top maintainers have directly written that they have done a lot of work to literally kill (their own word) X.org, in favor of Wayland.
Not only did they completely stop updating X.org in their official site, but moreover they purged thousands of pending merge requests that contained that many improvements and bug fixes. All the merge requests were denied automatically without any explanation. In fact, they have even announced that they will be doing more than that, more particularly, they are planning to rebase the entire project to an even more antiquated version, purging even more merge requests that had already been accepted before.
And they threw an absolute hissy-fit when someone just forked the X.org project and applied all of the pending merge requests to it, throwing tantrums and claiming that "you don't own the X.org project" (even though as an open source project anybody is completely free to fork it and do whatever they want with it.)
What's strange is that both the Rust cult and the Wayland cult have gone completely political about it. Indeed, they are defending their projects using politics, and purging anybody (including the guy who forked X.org) using political excuses. When it comes to Wayland in particular, it seems that because they didn't manage to make it the only and sole windowing system for Linux, they are now trying to do so by resorting to political tactics, political shaming, and shunning, purging and banning dissenters using political rhetoric.
Yes, indeed, somehow they are trying to create a world where if you support eg. X.org, you are labeled a "right-wing extremist", as insane as that sounds. This even though that software project has absolutely nothing to do with politics, left-wing, right-wing, or any other sort of politics. They are literally weaponizing modern politics in order to try to force Wayland to become the only and sole windowing system used in Linux distributions.
For some reason the Rust programming language and the cult that has formed around it is also starting to weaponize modern politics to force their pet language into everything. More and more of them are talking as if opposing Rust makes you a "fascist" and a "right-wing extremist". And yes, it's as insane as it sounds.
Recently the XFCE desktop environment announced that they would be stopping support for X.org, and would be rewriting the project in Rust. Both the Wayland and Rust communities celebrated this announcement widely, and not just in the sense of "you have made the right decision", but in the sense of "welcome to the woke side". Again, their own words, not just speculation or reading between the lines.
Indeed, both the Rust cult and a lot of Linux software projects are deemed to be "woke" and politically kosher, and anybody who chooses to support those are likewise "woke". They are literally trying to force their projects and programming languages into Linux by weaponizing modern politics.
Linus Torvalds is also the original author and owner of the versioning system software "git", and just like with the kernel, he has always been 100% stubborn about it being written in C, and has summarily rejected all other languages. Yet, now the next version of git will require a Rust compiler in order to compile it. And they are really rushing to reinvent the wheel in Rust.
Why? Nobody knows.
Why now, all of a sudden, from among literally dozens of possible capable programming languages? Nobody knows.
Why has Linus, who has summarily and very aggressively rejected every single alternative programming language now out of the blue so enamored with Rust that he wants to rush everything he has created to be rewritten with it? Nobody knows.
And mind you: There has not been a single official reason given for why git must suddenly be rewritten in Rust. There are no existing problems that the rewrite is going to fix. It's being rewritten purely for the sake of being rewritten. Why? Nobody knows.
Why has not only an entire literal cult been formed about that particular programming language, and how has it become so immensely and very aggressively adopted? Nobody knows.
Why has a programming language now been mixed with left-wing politics? Nobody knows.
It's extremely strange and insane.
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