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A comment on The end of the kernel Rust experiment. Parent comment

Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by jcranmer on Tuesday December 09, 2025 @11:35PM (#46214125)
There is a set of languages which are essentially required to be available on any viable system. At present, these are probably C, C++, Perl, Python, Java, and Bash (with a degree of asterisks on the last two). Rust I don't think has made it through that door yet, but on current trends, it's at the threshold and will almost certainly step through. Leaving this set of mandatory languages is difficult (I think Fortran, and BASIC-with-an-asterisk, are the only languages to really have done so), and Perl is the only one I would risk money on departing in my lifetime.

I do firmly expect that we're less than a decade out from seeing some reference algorithm be implemented in Rust rather than C, probably a cryptographic algorithm or a media codec. Although you might argue that the egg library for e-graphs already qualifies.

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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by qalmakka on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @02:04AM (#46214931)
We're already at the point where in order to have a "decent" desktop software experience you _need_ Rust too. For instance, Rust doesn't support some niche architectures because LLVM doesn't support them (those architectures are now exceedingly rare) and this means no Firefox for instance.
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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by tormeh on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @02:12AM (#46214985)
A system only needs one programming language to be useful, and when there's only one it's basically always C.
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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by trinix912 on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @03:17AM (#46215357)
A C compiler is also relatively easy to implement (compared to a Rust compiler) if you're making your own hobby OS with its own C compiler and libc.
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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by teruakohatu on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @03:38AM (#46215463)
> There is a set of languages which are essentially required to be available on any viable system. At present, these are probably C, C++, Perl, Python, Java, and Bash

Java, really? I don’t think Java has been essential for a long time.

Is Perl still critical?

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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by SSLy on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @03:51AM (#46215541)
It's extremely hard to build any unixly userspace without perl dependencies.
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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by bmicraft on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @05:05AM (#46216015)
I really do wonder who (as in "which packages") still depends on perl. Surely it can't be that many?

Edit:

On my (Arch) system removing perl requires removing: auto{conf,make}, git, llvm, glibmm, among others.

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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by SSLy on Saturday December 13, 2025 @05:59PM (#46259074)
excuse the late reply, but check what requires perl as a makedep
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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by FieryMechanic on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @04:21AM (#46215737)
From my experience of building LFS it appears to be needed to built as part of the tool chain.

https://linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/development/chapter07/...

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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by johnny22 on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @04:36AM (#46215823)
critical at build time, not runtime
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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by oblio on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @03:45AM (#46215504)
Even Perl... It's not in POSIX (I'm fairly sure) and I can't imagine there is some critical utility written in Perl that can't be rewritten in Python or something else (and probably already has been).

As much as I like Java, Java is also not critical for OS utilities. Bash shouldn't be, per se, but a lot of scripts are actually Bash scripts, not POSIX shell scripts and there usually isn't much appetite for rewriting them.

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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by jfjfnfjrh on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @03:55AM (#46215572)
Debian and Ubuntu enter the chat.....
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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by pantalaimon on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @03:56AM (#46215580)
I don't think Perl comes pre installed on any modern system anymore
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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by pjmlp on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @04:03AM (#46215615)
I am yet to find one without it, unless you include Windows, consoles, or table/phone OSes, embedded RTOS, which aren't anyway proper UNIX derivatives.
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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by bmacho on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @05:21AM (#46216122)
According to the internet (can't check now) Alpine doesn't come with perl installed.
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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by pjmlp on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @05:59AM (#46216374)
So a distribution mostly used to deploy containers.
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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by bmacho on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @09:58AM (#46218400)
"Alpine Linux is a general purpose Linux distribution" https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Tutorials_and_Howtos

I don't agree with "any modern system" but some modern systems certainly don't come with perl.

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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by account42 on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @04:50AM (#46215915)
Java hasn't ever been essential outside enterprise-y servers and those don't care about "any viable system".
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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by eru on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @04:59AM (#46215976)
> Rust I don't think has made it through that door yet, but on current trends, it's at the threshold and will almost certainly step through.

I suspect what we are going to see isn't so much Rust making it through that door, but LLVM. Rust and friends will come along for the ride.

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Re:The end of the kernel Rust experiment by bmicraft on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @05:14AM (#46216080)
Removing Java from my desktop Arch system only prompts to remove two gui apps I barely use. I could do it right now and not notice for months.
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