this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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Linux

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[–] Mouette@jlai.lu 18 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Is there any actual benefit ?

[–] arjache@fedia.io 49 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Code written in Rust has been shown to have significantly fewer security vulnerabilities than code written in C. Distributions like Ubuntu ship a lot of security updates, so by switching to Rust-based utils, they can reduce their workload in the long run.

[–] Harlehatschi@lemmy.ml 1 points 23 hours ago

But looking at the security vulnerability records of gnu coreutils that wasn't really needed. There were like a handful in the last 15 years... So I don't really see a need or benefit here.

[–] lnxtx@feddit.nl 16 points 2 days ago

Ubuntu ship a lot of security updates

After introducing the Pro I don't think so.

[–] UnityDevice@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well the rust project is MIT licensed, so definitely not.

[–] BrilliantantTurd4361@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I thought MIT licensing was a good thing?? What am i missing??

[–] UnityDevice@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The success of FOSS can in large part be attributed to copyleft licenses like the GPL. Without the protections of copyleft clauses, software just gets exploited by large corporations and end users are locked out. For just one example, if GNU software had used MIT, the entire free router movement (i.e ddwrt, openwrt and co.) would probably not exist today.

See: Free Software Foundation, Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc..

Edit: actually, I think by the time of this specific lawsuit, the sources for wrt54g were already released after community pressure, this article details the history a bit better.

[–] Hawk@lemmynsfw.com 0 points 13 hours ago

In large part it's a matter of opinions and different perspectives. A common consensus is libraries should be MIT and entire applications should be GPL. However, this is not held by all community members.

Overall, Rust is easier to read and harder to fuck up, so there's one argument in favour if it, in terms of community engagement. For an example of this, compare ls.c by Apple, GNU, FreeBSd and OpenBSD.

On the other hand, I should imagine most people simply install ripgrep and fd anyway.

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@infosec.pub 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Just security and hype afaik.

[–] asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No, it isn't just hype. The hype is justified.

Outside of security you have some very really world benefits, like performance gains in various scenarios as well as lots more people willing to contribute and a much better type system (more maintainability).

[–] Hawk@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 13 hours ago

Exactly! I would never PR, extend or build off find.c, And I sure as shit I'm not gonna work on C or C++ in my own free time. However, Rust is really fun to use, and it's got a great ecosystem. In this vein, this is a good thing for the community, and it's not just hype.

The Fish blog post discussed this and I think they had a good point when they were talking about how hard it was to get contributors from a large pool when they were working with C++.

Without a doubt, anything you can do in Rust you can do in C and C++, but I think it's fair to say the large majority of people are going to be more productive in Rust or at least have a more enjoyable development experience.

[–] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's been proven faster. That's all I personally know.