Marking a historic shift after the 2025 Kernel Maintainer Summit's approval—detailed in our prior coverage on benchmarks and challenges—Rust is now a permanent fixture in the Linux kernel, with deep roots tracing back to 2019 and ambitious plans ahead.
Discussions on Rust for the kernel ignited in 2019 at the Linux Security Summit, where maintainers noted two-thirds of vulnerabilities arose from memory safety flaws. Rust's features—no undefined behavior in safe code, strict types, and safe/unsafe boundaries—offered a compelling fix.
Momentum built in August 2020 via a Linux Plumbers Conference talk by developers like Miguel Ojeda. Google funded Ojeda full-time in 2021 through the Prossimo initiative. An April 2021 RFC clarified Rust's role: targeting drivers and leaf modules atop the C core, avoiding major rewrites.
At the Tokyo summit, the 'Rust experiment' label was dropped from docs. Ojeda posted on the kernel list: “the experiment is done, i.e. Rust is here to stay.” Not all configs, arches, or toolchains are ready, and work continues on gccrs for GCC kernel builds, with updates expected soon.
Proof points abound: Greg Kroah-Hartman praises Rust drivers' safety and low issues. Android 16 on kernel 6.12 uses a Rust allocator across millions of devices. DRM's Dave Airlie eyes Rust mandates for new drivers in a year.
Looking ahead, kernels will build with Rust from Debian stable, with hard requirements in APT by May 2026. Hurdles remain for arches like s390 and formal specs. This cements Rust's enterprise momentum, countering 2024 survey concerns on adoption.
