Rust in the 6.2 kernel [LWN.net]

Rust in the 6.2 kernel

Posted Nov 18, 2022 8:58 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (guest, #2582)
Parent article: Rust in the 6.2 kernel

In the real world, Asahi Linya has been writing a kernel GPU driver for M1 Macs in Rust, and has made remarkable progress in a matter of weeks . Here's atwitter thread from early October. Clearly it uses much more than the minimal Rust framework code that is being upstreamed so far. Perhaps LWN can ask her for a guest post with some details on this?

to post comments

Rust in the 6.2 kernel

Posted Nov 18, 2022 13:30 UTC (Fri) by Darkstar (guest, #28767) [Link] (10 responses)

I tried watching one of her streams once. Got an immediate headache because of the fake voice she's using :-D If anyone interviews her, please do it in text-only

Rust in the 6.2 kernel

Posted Nov 18, 2022 13:57 UTC (Fri) by lwn@pck.email (guest, #121154) [Link]

This is a mean thing you're going entirely out of the way to say, particularly given how entirely unrelated it is to the original request for her to _write_ a guest post.

If you choose to post again here, I personally would appreciate it if you would choose to stay remotely on topic and to be a nicer person :-D.

Rust in the 6.2 kernel

Posted Nov 18, 2022 15:24 UTC (Fri) by Lumia (subscriber, #161010) [Link] (8 responses)

What an unpleasant thing to say.

Rust in the 6.2 kernel

Posted Nov 18, 2022 21:15 UTC (Fri) by beagnach (guest, #32987) [Link] (6 responses)

It's not actually... the complaint is about a very high-pitched machine-generated fake voice that the developer of the M1 GPU driver adds to their YouTube videos. So not a personal attach.

I also find it unbearable.

Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG9xUxIf73o

Rust in the 6.2 kernel

Posted Nov 18, 2022 22:00 UTC (Fri) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link]

Which is, again, not relevant when discussing _writing_and article. It should ever be here on LWN, which we all consider a civilised place.

Rust in the 6.2 kernel

Posted Nov 18, 2022 22:00 UTC (Fri) by gspr (subscriber, #91542) [Link] (3 responses)

Has LWN done a lot of voice interviews? No. The comment clearly brought up something completely irrelevant in order to be mean.

Rust in the 6.2 kernel

Posted Nov 18, 2022 22:09 UTC (Fri) by ssokolow (guest, #94568) [Link] (2 responses)

Unless "you" was being used in the broader sense of "anyone who chooses to interview her", rather than LWN specifically.

Rust in the 6.2 kernel

Posted Nov 19, 2022 13:37 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Or they don't do email interviews and it has to be a video ... if they're a vlogger they might insist ...

Anyways, I consider it useful information to know that their videos are unwatchable ... there might be better ways to do it (I don't see how in this instance) but just telling the truth is not being nasty. Yes it can be told in a nasty way, but here it was just to inform ...

Cheers,
Wol

Rust in the 6.2 kernel

Posted Nov 19, 2022 15:07 UTC (Sat) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]

It is, of course, possible that this content is effectively generated as anime-style content and a synthetic voice to preserve someone's
identity for some reason. There aren't many folk contributing to the kernel or other projects entirely pseudonymously but there are
a few, usually to prevent an obvious conflict of interest - maybe to preserve the ability to work on something as their own rather than as their employers' work - or to prevent themselves being marginalised for some other reason.

The synthetic-sounding voice *is* annoying but the content is useful.

Disclaimer: I only watched a few short segments of the video but I could certainly see that the voice would grate after a while.

Rust in the 6.2 kernel

Posted Jan 4, 2023 18:07 UTC (Wed) by sammythesnake (guest, #17693) [Link]

If it were me doing those videos, I would certainly have aimed for a clearer choice, as well as one that's less piercing. I doubt I could cope with that voice for 8 hours(!)

It's worth noting that the (auto-generated) subtitles are usable, even if not perfect, so you could watch with the audio turned down, though that wouldn't work well with having it on in the background of some other task and dipping in when something piques interest.

I wonder if there's an audio filter that approximates the inverse of whatever was used to mask the voice in the first place - that might provide a more natural sounding option that at least *my* ears would find kinder.

For now, I'll stick to reading her excellent blog posts as and when they get lunk to here on LWN :-P

Rust in the 6.2 kernel

Posted Nov 19, 2022 6:23 UTC (Sat) by eean (subscriber, #50420) [Link]

they're a vtuber so it actually isn't that bad, ha. it's cool that people are making content like this for different audiences.

Rust in the 6.2 kernel

Posted Nov 18, 2022 14:26 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses)

There's an awful lot of Rust infrastructure that has been posted in the past, including complete drivers; it's just not being pushed upstream yet. I've been fairly deliberately looking closely at the code as it heads toward the mainline just because it breaks the problem down into manageable pieces. The whole Rust-for-Linux patch set is a fair amount to absorb all at once.

Rust in the 6.2 kernel

Posted Dec 2, 2022 18:32 UTC (Fri) by ejr (subscriber, #51652) [Link]

And I very much thank you for the work. I'm trying to understand Rust's advantages and disadvantages, and this step-wise approach is hugely helpful to me.