Linux creator Linus Torvalds has reportedly committed to bringing Rust to the operating system.
In an email received by ZDNet(opens in a new tab), Torvalds said the programming language will be updated to version 6.1 of the Linux operating system "unless something strange happens."
This isn't the first time Linux has been rumored to adopt Rust, with some saying it will upgrade to 5.20. This time around, Torvalds' commitment seems bigger, but he notes that "it will only have the basic infrastructure (meaning no serious use cases yet)."
oxide for linux
Initial concerns were reportedly raised about Rust's implementation of requiring non-standard extensions, but Torvalds explained that Linux "has been using exceptions to the C standard for decades," suggesting that society is now ready to adapt.
Linux 6.0 is the current offering from the project, which has been available for testing since August 2022, but details of the next version are already being uncovered, including the operating system's ability to tell you if your CPU is faulty.
According to a CircleCI report on the most popular coding languages, Rust just peaked at number 25 in 2021 after dropping out of the top 25 the year before. Even so, Rust is favored for its high performance and has the support of Google to develop its Android operating system (which itself is an extremely popular Linux distribution).
In a post on the Google Security blog (opens in a new tab) in April 2021, Wedson Almeida Filho, a member of the Android team, said that Rust was ready to join C" as a practical language to implement the core". Filho goes on to explain that Rust "can help reduce the number of potential bugs and security vulnerabilities in privileged code while playing nice with the core kernel and preserving its performance characteristics.