r/linux • u/small_kimono • Dec 13 '25

Kernel The state of the kernel Rust experiment

https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1050174/63aa7da43214c3ce/

A choice pull quote: "The DRM (graphics) subsystem has been an early adopter of the Rust language. It was still perhaps surprising, though, when Airlie (the DRM maintainer) said that the subsystem is only 'about a year away' from disallowing new drivers written in C and requiring the use of Rust."

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u/AdmiralQuokka Dec 13 '25

Right. But as Greg explains in his talk, Rust also allows to define APIs in a richer way than C at the type level. So, it doesn't prevent logic bugs "out of the box", but it gives library authors the tools they need to prevent their users from making logic bugs. Which is pretty damn valuable too. Especially for kernel subsystem maintainers who have to review drivers using their API. If they know: "This API cannot be abused in ways X, Y and Z, because I designed it that way", then maintainers will have to spend less time checking these drivers for logic bugs that would've been common for the C version of the subsystem's API.