Redox - Your Next(Gen) OS - Redox - Your Next(Gen) OS
www.redox-os.org
The Redox official website

This isn’t Linux, but Linux-like. Its a microkernel built from the rust programming language. Its still experimental, but I think it has great potential. It has a GUI desktop, but the compiler isn’t quite fully working yet.

Has anyone used this before? What was your experience with it?

Note: If this is inappropriate since this isn’t technically Linux, mods please take down.

  • guitarsarereal@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    21·
    9 months ago

    I’m not against Rust, per se, the idea of a systems programming language with some more advanced memory safety features sounds nice, but what is with the emphasis on creating a Rust version of everything? Like why should we want an OS written only in Rust?

    • mogoh@lemmy.ml
      2·
      9 months ago

      Some thoughts:

      • Testing the capabilities of rust and proving what rust is capable of.
      • Seeing what rust is not capable of and proposing improvements for the rust language and ecosystem.
      • Trying new OS concepts. Linux for example is strongly backwards compatible. Starting a new OS is the opportunity to do things different and maybe better.
      • Maybe it will turn out, that the memory safety will improve OS’. We will only know for sure, if we try it.
    • ExLisper@linux.communityEnglish
      21·
      9 months ago

      People keep saying this but Rust is not only about memory safety. It’s not C with memory safety sprinkled on top. Compare with C and C++ it has better tooling and dependency management, it’s easier to create modules and organize your code, it’s easier to write tests and it has loads of nice, modern language features like algebraic types and typeclasses. Because of all this Rust is growing fast and a lot of people like it. Writing things in Rust is a bet that more people will get behind them and you will be able to add more features faster to them than to existing projects in C. The idea is not to simply do the same but in Rust. It is to have a cleaner, easier to approach codebase that will allow to grow faster in the future.

      • guitarsarereal@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        Yeah, but I don’t know any other language where the fact a program is written in that language is used as a selling point. I never cared that Linux was written in C, I cared that it does its job. I’ve heard about Redox many times, yet never once has there ever been anything said about it other than “it’s written in Rust! :D” Literally, the fact that it’s a UNIXY operating system written in Rust is the first thing about the OS on their home page.

        Hey, Linux started as a learning project, you learn more about programming by writing code, so I’m not saying it’s bad, I just can’t understand why I’d care about something that at this stage seemingly is just a learning project.

    • DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      This is one of my main gripes with the rust community. What programming language you used shouldn’t be of any concern to the end-user, let alone be put in the tagline.

      Rust is a very good and capable language and I enjoy using it. I can’t wait for the day it overtakes C or C++. But I want to know more about the program I’m using other than that it was written in a popular language.

      “Written in rust” is basically a meme at this point.

    • redempt@lemmy.world
      1·
      9 months ago

      I’ve been installing a lot of things written in rust recently, and I’ve noticed a trend between them. They’re all stable, fast, and very user-friendly. I don’t really have to fiddle with them nearly as much. I think there’s a lot that goes into this, but it really boils down to: rust is safer and prevents huge categories of bugs, it’s incredibly stable and requires less debugging and maintenance, it has extremely high level abstractions to make development quick and less verbose, and it has the best tooling I have seen for any language. It enables developers so effectictively that the things that are usually tedious and difficult become easy and potentially mandatory, and so you just get better software.

      I know that sounds pretty abstract and opinionated, but having used the language for several years now, and especially coming from Java, I have really felt an incredible difference - I stopped having to constantly fix breaking Gradle builds and JVM version management, I stopped getting null pointer exceptions, and I had much more powerful tools for building abstractions. When you see how much control and power rust gives you while still keeping you safe, it’s just night and day compared to the especially old languages like C.

      Basically, anything written in rust will be better if it can enable developers to spend their time working on useful features instead of fixing bugs, fiddling with build systems and fragile legacy infrastructure cobbled together from dozens of third party tools.

    • jack@monero.town
      11·
      9 months ago

      The language is newer so it does a lot of things better than C, C++ and even higher level langs like java. It is more probable that people in the future build upon Rust than legacy languages.

      Comparable to how it would be misguided now to start a project that only runs on Xorg