Ubuntu VP Says: "Stop Writing Python", Wants Devs "All Day Writing Rust"

Abuntu's vice president, John Seager,

spoke at a keynote for Rust Nation UK

this last week, a big giant Rust

conference, a gathering of the Rust

faithful over in the United Kingdom. And

he told the the congregational members

there uh that he is telling all Abuntu

developers to quote stop writing Python.

Apparently, he's telling them that very

sternly and that he wants developers uh

working on Abuntu to be writing uh Rust

code all day, right? All day writing

Rust code a bunch along with a bunch of

other crazy stuff. Let me read you some

of the most ridiculous quotes uh that I

found from this particular keynote. Um,

we abuntu announced that we were going

to start replacing core system utilities

ls move cpseudo with rust rewrites and

we were just going to do it by default

with no apology. We got plenty of

headlines. The internet got somewhat set

on fire by the idea that we were going

to or by the fact that the Rust people

were coming for GNU.

Yeah, there was a couple of of little

little digs in there at some unnamed

people making headlines about this. Who

knows who those were? Uh, he continues,

"The GNU core utilities have been around

forever. You know, they've been solid.

It's a well- tested codebase. It's

performant. There's nothing wrong with

it." End quote.

Now, th those of you listening to that

quote may be wondering, "Well, that

sounds like a a really good argument for

not replacing all the GNU core utilities

with Rustbased, rewrite, rewritten

clones from scratch that haven't been

tested. They've been around forever.

Solid, well- tested codebase,

performant, nothing wrong with it." It

sounds an awful lot like Abuntu's vice

president is just simply repeating

Lunduke Journal talking points. Um, but

yet he continues as they're just going

to ignore all of that and rewrite it

anyway.

So, to be clear, they have no good

reason to do the rustbased rewrites, but

they're going to do it quote uh what was

it uh uh by default with no apology. End

quote. End quote.

Uh he also continues to say there will

be some people who depend on the kind of

esoteric edges of these code bases who

might see some breakage. End quote. Uh

so basically he's saying yes everything

works now and of course we're going to

break a bunch of things and a bunch of

people are going to see all sorts of new

errors because of what we're doing but

we're doing it anyway and we're not

apologizing for it. At least he's at

least they're at least they're being

open about what they're doing, right?

He's not lying about it. He's saying

flat out, yeah, the GNU core utilities,

they're I mean, they're they're about as

close to perfect as you're going to get.

They're they're well tested. They've

been around for decades in many cases,

and uh there's no good reason to dump

them, but they're going to do it anyway,

and they're not going to apologize for

it. I I mean, I I respect that. I mean,

he's he's declaring that yes, the the

faith of the Church of Rust supersedes

any engineering need, and they're not

going to apologize for that. O, okay.

But then he started talking about

Python, and I thought this was fairly

interesting because it was just a

throwaway comment. Um, but um well, you

you tell me what you think of this.

quote, I have asked the Abuntu desktop

team very politely and quite sternly to

stop writing Python for the

distribution. End quote. Now, those of

you who have been around since the early

days of of Abuntu, Abuntu was Python. I

mean, know that's that's what they did

for better or worse. I mean, there's

there's pros and cons with writing a

whole bunch of of uh desktop tools and

system tools and whatnot in Python, but

but Abuntu really was focused on it. The

whole Abuntu world was very Python

centric. Python and GTK, that was their

that was their thing. Um, but they're

they're saying no, going forward, don't

write Python. Not just write a little

less Python, but stop writing Python

altogether. And again, there's pros and

cons there. Uh but he's apparently quite

stern about it. Uh he continues, "We of

course also have been uh we of course

also have to have a hand in the Rust for

Linux project. We have a huge kernel

team. I think it's about 80 people. Um,

and while they are not people who sit

all day right now writing Rust, I

suspect the future will increasingly

look a bit like that. So, stop writing

Python, spend all day writing Rust. Uh,

the quote, "The opportunities keep

coming up for us to get Rust into new

places."

You don't say.

I appreciate when uh the followers of

the Church of Rust just come out and

just are honest about it. They're

finding nice new places to shoehorn rust

in. They're replacing things that they

agree work great are super performant,

battle tested, and there's no reason to

get rid of them, but we're going to do

it anyway and we're not going to

apologize. Um I do find it funny that he

even had a whole slide about uh

headlines with a little little laughy

emoji and all that. um where he he took

a couple of digs at the the uh anti-rust

headlines that Abuntu made because of

this um which was a little bit of a dig

directed at the London Journal. But uh

you know

I love it that every time

that new news comes out about uh

something going wrong with Rust or uh a

big Linux distribution or a big

developer decides to heavily adopt Rust.

And when you dive into the comments

section, like a good third of the

comments are uh either laughing because

clearly uh the Lunduke Journal is going

to cover something about it or uh

mocking the Lunduke Journal or uh or

just saying, "Oh, someone better check

on Lunduke on because this company is

going to be rewriting some stuff in

Rust." It's it's gotten to a point now

where any discussion around coverage of

Rust inevitably leads back to the

Londuke Journal. I I'm not 100% sure how

that happened, but it happened and I

find it amusing enough. Um let's see

what what else we got here. Uh and

they've made a point. He made a point as

he was closing out the keynote to

declare that they are not finished yet.

Uh and he and he highlighted not

finished, right? and he wants to make it

very clear that the process of replacing

everything with Rust code is just at the

beginning phases. And he he talked about

a a large number of different projects.

Uh let me scroll up and see if I can

show you some of them here. Uh a number

of different projects that they would be

moving over to Rust in the very near

future. Uh specifically Mir, which

that's still around. uh Anbox, the kind

of the Android uh emulation environment,

uh DQ Lite, which is a a SQL light uh uh

kind of compatible system and and just a

whole bunch of other tools. They've been

talking about replacing as many of these

things as possible with Rust over the

the months ahead. And uh it's it's

fascinating to watch how they're

justifying it because they've stopped

justifying it. Now they're just saying

flat out what they're replacing is

great. H but they're going to do it

anyway. So that's neat. Also, stop

writing Russ. Uh thank you to the Luke

Journal subscribers for allowing me to

uh watch that incredibly boring keynote.

You're welcome. Uh go to luke.com and

click on all those links. Those are

amazing. They're the best links in the

entire world. Uh hrefs galore. Thank you

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