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It seems Linux Mint is dropping GNU coreutils in favor of rust-coreutils following Ubuntu.
(blog.linuxmint.com)
this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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Why is this a problem?
One issue with this is that uutils is licensed under the MIT license, instead of coreutils' GPL license. In fact, for reasons I don't quite understand many of these rust rewrites are licensed with the MIT license. This will contribute to long term erosion of the rights granted by the GPL to software projects and users.
I think it's pretty obvious. Corpos are doing the EEE approach in the Linux ecosystem.
Yeah, the 'for reasons I don't quite understand' bit was intended slightly sarcastically.
It's bad that we're in an all-time low percentage of politically minded Linux users, in another era Rust would never be close to the Linux kernel or would pose as a threat to GNU/GPL.
Why is Rust your problem here? It’s a fantastic language. The issue is licensing
The language isn’t the problem. It’s the particular type of programmer it attracts.
It's the tool used to enshitification of Linux, that's my problem. Tech and politics are indivisible. We're in lemmy.ml so thar should be a no brainer.
Also, technically, it's not very stable and there's no alternative compiler.
Rust is the only reason I’m remotely interested in low level programming and potentially contributing to Linux. C and C++ are unreadable and vastly more confusing in terms of ecosystem to be worth dealing with for my own enjoyment. I don’t really understand the rust hate.
The reason was pretty well stated already.
If your contribution were MIT licensed, some would rather you hadn't written a single line of ecosystem destroying code.
Others would say it’s open source who gaf what happens with it, the codes probably already in the training data for llms anyway. Depends on your philosophy of open source. I’d rather have gpl than mit, but I’d rather use rust than c I guess so such is my opinion
Hrmmm. And I wonder what diagnosis you have or should be tested for…
Ah yes a programming language determines the mental state and acuity of the person using it. This might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever read in my entire life. Are you sure you aren’t the one we need to test with such ludicrous ideas?
Not what I meant. The Rust language appeals a particular type of neuro type especially. And with that neurotype, there comes some specific design behaviours.
There’s a “neurotype”… associated with liking a programming language? Are you some kind of nazi or something?
As for Nazi, quite the opposite. If I were one, I would insensitively had just spelled it out and have people yell. This is observation and also spoken about by one in the community who wrote the book I mention in another response.
Look up Steve Klabnik and his book The Rust Programming Language. He goes into details about who the language appeals to and why, and he is not wrong.
Ah yes the programmer who knows lots about psychology with his PhD or PsyD wrote a book about something that makes no sense in this context (the use of the word neurotype unless that’s your doing) must surely know what he’s talking about. As everyone knows if you write a book then it’s true. Seems like you’re just using the book as a convenient way to prop up your bias and stereotypes. Truly I suggest some introspection on the things you’re saying. I’ll bet you have some image of what I look like in your mind and it’d probably be absolutely shattered were you to know what I do look like. Maybe go and actually meet some people who happen to like rust and realize that not everybody whose likes one programming language or another makes it their whole personality. This is like saying someone who prefers using hammers and nails over screws and screwdrivers has a different neurotype. Genuinely weird commentary from you.
The main problem is that it’s just not battle tested like GNU coreutils are. And Canonical has only tested this in one cycle, 25.10, before introducing it in an LTS. Would’ve made more sense to wait until 26.10.
Other find problem with it being MIT licensed.
Mint is the last distro that would push something that isn't battle tested. IIRC they haven't even started working on Wayland support.
Have you read Clem's comment?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG2ZMvBT8W4
4:25
(sorry my third party youtube frontend can't share timestamp links)
tldw:
FYI you can put &t=265 on the end of the URL for the timestamp.
Its two fold for many (not for me): Rust and MIT