The Linux kernel has remained fairly portable due to its reliance on C, but now the kernel team is seriously adopting Rust to threaten C dominance. The technology Mozilla developed a decade ago has become an important force, offering the same flexibility as classical compiled languages while providing interoperability with C.
Kernel developers have long been discussing the possibility of introducing Rust to Linux, and the Linux kernel now includes a stable Rust compiler, prompting kernel developer Miguel Ojeda to introduce a patch that makes Rust the de facto second official language for kernel teams.
ZDNet's Steve J Vaughan-Nichols spoke to Greg Kroah-Hartman, a senior developer of the Linux kernel, who suggested that Rust code could infiltrate the kernel from the driver level. "Drivers are probably the first place to try this, which is that they are 'branches' of the dependency tree in the kernel source, relying on the core functionality of the kernel while nothing depends on them." Hartman said.
Linus Torvalds agrees, saying the driver is an "obvious" target.
That doesn't mean that there's an effort to rewrite any existing kernel source code with Rust right now, but if new kernel development moves in that direction, we might see a huge inventory of Rust code in the kernel 10 years from now.
