Rust-for-Linux VS dosbox-staging

At least according to the Github's language breakdown for https://github.com/Rust-for-Linux/linux, C is still 98.3% of the repository, and Rust is in the 0.1% of "others".

Rust is backwards compatible when you stick to stable features, but the kernel uses unstable features that can and do incur breaking changes.

https://github.com/Rust-for-Linux/linux/issues/2

> How would this work?

Don't know exactly what you're asking.

> And why would it be a better idea?

Poorly written device drivers are a significant attack vector. It's one of the reasons Linux is now exploring using Rust for its own device drivers.[0] You may be asking -- why Rust and not some other language? Rust has many of the performance and interoperability advantages of C and C++, but as noted, makes certain classes of memory safety issues impossible. Rust also has significant mindshare among systems programming communities.

[0]: https://rust-for-linux.com

Ctrl-F "rust"

https://rust-for-linux.com/ links to LWN articles at https://lwn.net/Kernel/Index/#Development_tools-Rust that suggest that only basic modules are yet possible with the rust support in Linux kernels 6.2 and 6.3.

Rust-for-linux links to the Android binder module though:

> Android Binder Driver: This project is an effort to rewrite Android's Binder kernel driver in Rust.

> Motivation: Binder is one of the most security and performance critical components of Android. Android isolates apps from each other and the system by assigning each app a unique user ID (UID). This is called "application sandboxing", and is a fundamental tenet of the Android Platform Security Model.

> The majority of inter-process communication (IPC) on Android goes through Binder. Thus, memory unsafety vulnerabilities are especially critical when they happen in the Binder driver

... "Rust in the Linux kernel" (2021) https://security.googleblog.com/2021/04/rust-in-linux-kernel... :

> [...] We also need designs that allow code in the two languages to interact with each other: we're particularly interested in safe, zero-cost abstractions that allow Rust code to use kernel functionality written in C, and how to implement functionality in idiomatic Rust that can be called seamlessly from the C portions of the kernel.

> Since Rust is a new language for the kernel, we also have the opportunity to enforce best practices in terms of documentation and uniformity. For example, we have specific machine-checked requirements around the usage of unsafe code: for every unsafe function, the developer must document the requirements that need to be satisfied by callers to ensure that its usage is safe; additionally, for every call to unsafe functions (or usage of unsafe constructs like dereferencing a raw pointer), the developer must document the justification for why it is safe to do so.

> We'll now show how such a driver would be implemented in Rust, contrasting it with a C implementation. [...]

This guide with unsafe rust that calls into the C, and then with next gen much safer rust right next to it would be a helpful resource too.

What of the post-docker container support (with userspaces also written in go) should be cloned to rust first?

Rust-for-Linux issue tracker

Also, there already exists both issue: https://github.com/Rust-for-Linux/linux/issues/479

Yes, I definitely agree that it's a problem that pr_info implicitly wraps its arguments in unsafe {}. I wrote my own Pull Request with a trival fix.

Note that this template won't work with Linux 6.1, which has very minimal Rust support. You'll want the RustForLinux tree, or maybe Linux 6.2.

> Also we’re bringing NPM style supply chain problems to the kernel now?

Nope. They've thought that through.

(In fact, cargo is only used to build test helpers. https://github.com/Rust-for-Linux/linux/blob/rust/Documentat...)

https://dosbox-staging.github.io/ Latest Staging version is 0.80.

Anyhow whioch dosbox? Well there were non release version somewhere on t he stage but it got fairly bad and https://dosbox-staging.github.io/ is probbaly a better choice.

The version of DOSbox the above games come with is very old, so you may want to look into something like https://dosbox-staging.github.io/, which will run those games much better on newer hardware.

Alternatively, if you decide to play Duke Nukem II in Dosbox Staging, you will need to make sure you set CPU Cycles between 3000 - 4500, otherwise the gameplay will be too fast.

We're always happy to welcome new contributors to https://dosbox-staging.github.io/ :)

Please note, for DOSBox it's much better to rely on FluidSynth built-in DOSBox Staging than on an external process. It will have lower latency, additional filters, optional crossfeed, pop-prevention, etc, etc.

I'm working on a library to make supporting all of these in apps easier. I've got some hacky, in-progress patches for chocolate doom and dosbox-staging to support these.

I recommend switching to DOSBox Staging and adjusting the configuration file like this: