Combine this with what Amutable (systemd guys) are building, and you can have monolithic, closed source, non-user-modifiable Linux distributions or flavors.

Ubuntu and companies which embed Linux into their products will love this from a business perspective.

Consider: An end to end signature-enabled, verified, attestable, Linux environment with completely closed source util-linux and userland packages, down to the "ls" and "cd". Deliciously apocalyptic.

We're two stops away from this, and there are no shortage of momentum or funding to enable teh future.

Dynamic linking with a safe ABI, where if you change and recompile one library then the outcome has to obey some definition of safety, and ABI stability is about as good as C or Objective-C or Swift.

Until that happens, it'll be hard to adopt Rust in a lot of C/C++ strongholds where C's ABI and dynamic linking are the thing that enables the software to get huge.

https://github.com/canonical/firefox-snap/blob/90fa83e60ffef...

Jon made the provocative comment that we needed to revisit our policy around having a small standard library. He’s not the first to say something like that, it’s something we’ve been hearing for years and years

It sounds to me like you "cross the chasm" a little too early. As a user I don't care about your "chasms" I care about high quality durable systems. This isn't the first time I've heard the "we'll change the std lib later" logic. I've yet to see it actually work.

Yes, there’s always a couple of people who really push the boat out…

Replacing solid code with vibe code basically, in the name of safety.

sudo-rs for example which is specifically mentioned has a drastically worst safety record than the C sudo.

A lot of bug fixes/exploits are _CAUSED_ by the C+ core, but still... Tried & true vs new hotness?

After all, they said, why not just add dependencies to your Cargo.toml? It’s easy enough. And to be honest, they were right – at least at the time.

They weren't? Isn't it obvious that it's not easy because the challenge isn't literally adding dependencies to a file, but before that - finding/evaluating which of the alternative dependencies to add?

But anyway, that's a very shallow and wrong summary of what happened, the link itself has plenty of grounded non-hateful objections to the proposal, which would be as valid now as they were then.

- SNAP which is only managed and supported by them

- Tried to reinvent the wheel with sudo-rs

- They are heavily focused into cloud, servers and business

- Following the Rust hype train

I used Ubuntu for 13y or so, it is a Windows within Linux world. Bloated, kernel panic, heavy, privacy issues.

Debian still the king to be used as servers, Mint Cinnamon is the king for desktop, gaming, video editing, 3D design, coding,it just works.

They are “looking to minimize discontinuity with the old ways”

Perhaps one of the best ways to achieve that goal is to not introduce any discontinuity? Like, take coreutils. It's one of the most stable pieces of Linux infrastructure. It's as solid as it gets. No one asked for rewrite of those in any language. No one wanted a rewrite. No one needed a rewrite. The rewrite serves no purpose[1].

[1] Credit where it's due: this rust slop prompted a creation of test suite for coreutils, which is truly a great achievement, hands down.

Ubuntu was always "let's just fuck up what just works in Debian" but this is another level, I have no idea why they are rushing it

Distros using Ubuntu as base should reconsider.

This means Canonical can offer proprietary patches on top of these packages and sell them as part of their "enterprise" offerings and this gives me the ick.