karolherbst 🐧 🦀 (@karolherbst@chaos.social)
chaos.social
I'm formally stepping down as a nouveau kernel maintainer. I want to stress out this is only for the kernel side of things and has and will not have any impact on my involvement in mesa. Don't really want to add too much here, just that things need to change. Recent events (tm) is just another example of the deep disagreement. I won't be able to convince people I made up my mind on my own here, so I won't bother with it anyway. Full upstream and public statement here: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/nouveau/2025-February/046677.html

Following the R4L debacle “you are cancer, you are the problem, we are the thin blue line”, another maintainer steps down from the Linux Kernel

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.mlEnglish
    481·
    6 days ago

    it’s a shame it has come to this. there needs to be some tough conversations on how the Linux kernel wants to be run over the next 5 years

    • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
      243·
      6 days ago

      Yup. But based on Linus’ response to marcan’s concerns, it sounds like Linus just wants to ignore the problems.

      • jevans ⁂@lemmy.mlEnglish
        181·
        6 days ago

        Yeah, this looks like trying to avoid conflict by shutting down a person pushing back against bad behavior, instead of trying to mediate the situation to come to a just resolution. It’s shallow and gross and not sustainable.

        • merthyr1831@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          3 days ago

          I think it’s a big flaw of the mailing list system of the kernel development. Marcan’s reaction led to everyone trying to “protect the thread” from being “derailed” and ignore the actual comments that in themselves should’ve been discussed properly.

          Even leads to people here saying Marcan overreacted when I think on other social media platforms this would’ve been its own conversation separate to the conduct of other users.

          I say this purely speculatively since I havent ever held a longrunning group convo in a mailing list intentionally.

          • jevans ⁂@lemmy.mlEnglish
            151·
            6 days ago

            Linus is definitely not American. That is no excuse he way he just ignored the dma maintainer’s behavior and that is no excuse for why nobody in leadership did or said anything even after the connotation of the phrase was explained by another in the thread. The only thing that brought enough attention for any comment was marcan’s responses, and Linus just basically came in and said to stop making noise.

      • proton_lynx@lemmy.world
        171·
        6 days ago

        I think that Linus’ concerns about posting on social media is completely valid, but I was pretty disappointed that he didn’t address Hellwig going full retard. Marcan dealt with this like a spoiled child in the end, but he was 100% right.

        If you want to make Linux impossible to maintain due to a cross-language codebase, do that in your driver so that you have to do it instead of spreading this cancer to core subsystems. (where this cancer explicitly is a cross-language codebase and not Rust itself, just to escape the flameware brigade).

        This should be worth a Linus rant in my honest opinion.

        • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
          518·
          6 days ago

          Hellwig specifically says “where this cancer is a cross-language codebase”. He’s not wrong. I don’t know how you transition languages, but my god, if you want to lose maintainers, make it impossible to maintain because of language incompatibilties. A few people from a downstream project like Asahi or an almost defunct driver like Nouveau would be the least of your worries if you were Linus.

          • proton_lynx@lemmy.world
            17·
            6 days ago

            I disagree. Hellwig was not contributing with the discussion. The point is that Rust is being integrated into the kernel, whether Hellwig likes it or not. It passed the point of discussing if it should happen or not. Besides that, R4L is responsible for maintaining the Rust code even if something is broken from the C side of things.

            • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
              58·
              6 days ago

              Neither of those sides exist in a vacuum; it’s great there’s a R4L team, but you still have to eliminate the possibility the problem exists at your end before you throw it in their lap and say “deal with it”. And I’ll bet half the time it gets tossed back with “your problem” and then the arguments ensue, not to mention the various discussions about how to make them talk to get rid of the bug. It’s not anywhere near as simple as the idea that there is a team for that.

              Sure Hellwig’s probably being an asshole here, but you can be an asshole and still be right. Linus did it for 20 years and built the most successful OS in history.

              • proton_lynx@lemmy.world
                12·
                6 days ago

                Yeah, I agree with you that, realistically speaking, Rust people would probably complain when C code brakes their code, but I still think that this was not what Hellwig was talking about.

                In my opinion, he was just being unreasonable when he told people that he would be doing everything he can to prevent anything else that’s not C code from being merged into the kernel.

                I mean, I understand his concerns of not wanting to deal with Rust code, but what he said is not contributing AT ALL to the discussion.

                btw, I’m not the one downvoting your comments. I disagree with you but I think you are making some valid points.

                • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  32·
                  6 days ago

                  Fair enough, I guess I would agree with you on the value it had to that discussion. I’ve just dealt with partial codebase transitions and it’s a horror to fix anything.

                  And I couldn’t give a shit about downvotes, or I’d just dogpile along with the groupthink in every thread like the rest of the Lemmings. I appreciate the discussion.

          • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
            81·
            6 days ago

            A few people from a downstream project like Asahi or an almost defunct driver like Nouveau

            I’m not sure why you think Asahi is a minor player in the linux community when they’re responsible in the entirety for porting Linux to the Arm-based Mac M1+ series, or why you think Nouveau is defunct.

            • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
              38·
              6 days ago

              If a single percent of regular Linux users use either of those on a daily basis, I’ll eat a bug. And desktop Linux isn’t even a significant amount of Linux use in general. So why would the kernel developers give the slightest shit about either of them?

              • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
                10·
                5 days ago

                Nouveau is important because Nouveau is the default driver in Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Debian, and ever other distro.

                Linux distributions can’t easily distribute the proprietary nvidia drivers or the slightly less proprietary nvidia-open drivers so they depend on nouveau as the default nvidia driver. When you install a distro it usually has to use the nouveau drivers before downloading the proprietary blobs from Nvidia.

                Nouveau is the only reason anyone can use Linux on an Nvidia card long enough to install the other drivers.

                It’s also actively maintained, receiving updates that get upstreamed almost daily.

                I’m not sure what about those things says “defunct”.

                And the rust developments in Asahi for the M1+ series of CPUs don’t just benefit Mac but all the ARM CPUs as well.