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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Are there any advantages of using Rust instead of C in the Linux kernel? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Will there be performance and security improvements?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Aside from that I think C is more performant than C++ (indeed when you use the bells and whistles that C++ offers), you are comparing the libraries with each other.

The fact that the implementation of one random std::Sort is faster than the implementation of qsort() is comparing libraries, not the languages. You are comparing the algorithm of the Rust Sort with quicksort (which is obviously the qsort you are referring to.

I am certain there are sort implementations in C which outperform Rust.

Having said that, I immensely enjoy Rust because it forces me to think about the error handling and it does not give me the quirks of C/C++ (index out of bounds, memory corruption).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

you are comparing the libraries with each other.

It's not the libraries that make the difference, but that C++ templates allow you to write generic code that is easy to use and easy to optimized for the compiler due to having all the real data types readily available, while C has to fiddle with void* and function pointer to get similar flexibility, which are much harder to optimize, as none of the type information is there.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

while C has to fiddle with void* and function pointer to get similar flexibility, which are much harder to optimize, as none of the type information is there.

I thought we were discussing speed, not ease of use?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you manually hand optimize every line of code, C and C++ are identical. That's a worthless discussion to have. The point is that you can write in C++ high level code that would require substantial code duplication to match the speed in C, as C just doesn't offer the tools for that level of abstraction.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

...so now we are discussing not speed again but ease of use.

Not everything with an R in it is faster than C. Read up about it. Everyone says so.

I'm out.