Weren't the old Linux kernel developers promised the opposite by Linus Torvalds? That they would be able to continue writing in C?

https://lkml.org/lkml/2025/2/20/2066

> The document claims no subsystem is forced to take Rust

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monocasa 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Dave Airlie is saying that the subsystem maintainers are themselves choosing to move to Rust.

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ceteia 3 hours ago | parent [-]

But what about this statement that Linus wrote:

> That's been made clear pretty much from the very beginning, that nobody is forced to suddenly have to learn a new language, and that people who want to work purely on the C side can very much continue to do so.

If any C developer developed drivers in C previously for the DRM subsystem, they might in the future be forced to learn Rust.

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monocasa an hour ago | parent | next [-]

You're confusing the audience here. That's directed at subsystem maintainers, not just 'anyone who wants to submit a patch'. If a subsystem doesn't want to deal with Rust code, they won't be forced to. But there's no restriction on the inverse.

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cwillu 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nothing is happening “suddenly”, and it remains true that “people who want to work purely on the C side can very much continue to do so”.

	▲	ceteia an hour ago \| parent [-]
		But, is this true or false? > If any C developer developed drivers in C previously for the DRM subsystem, they might in the future be forced to learn Rust.