GStreamer 1.28-RC1 Brings A Rust-Based GIF Decoder, Other New Rust Components
On Monday the first release candidate of the GStreamer 1.28 multimedia framework was released. As is a recurring focus in recent releases, more GStreamer code is written in Rust for memory safety especially around decoding content… ⌘ Read more

Rust-Based Fjall 3.0 Released For Key-Value Storage Engine Akin To RocksDB
In addition to the release of Stoolap 0.2 as a modern embedded SQL database written in Rust, Fjall 3.0 is available as another Rust-written database solution. Fjall is a log-structured, embedable key-value storage engine akin to RocksDB but with the benefit of being written in Rust. With Fjall 3.0 its performance is now very competitive… ⌘ Read more

Stoolap 0.2 Released For Modern Embedded SQL Database In Rust
Stooplap v0.2 released today as this SQLite alternative for providing embedded SQL database needs while written in the Rust programming language. Stoolap supports both in-memory and persistent storage models… ⌘ Read more

GNOME Glycin Adds XPM/XBM Support To Address Fedora’s Last Unsandboxed Image Loader
GNOME’s Glycin project as the Rust-based sandboxed and extendable image loading library now supports XPM and XBM images. This is notable since those formats were the last unsandboxed image loading formats used on Fedora Linux… ⌘ Read more

GCC & The GNU Toolchain’s Exciting 2025 With New Languages, More Optimizations
The GCC compiler and the GNU toolchain ecosystem at large had a great year. From new language front-ends for the likes of Algol 68 and COBOL to maturing support for GCC Rust, new performance optimizations from GCC to Glibc, initial AMD Zen 6 “znver6” support merged for GCC 16, and much more. It’s pretty safe to say GCC and the broader GNU ecosystem enjoyed a very successful 2025… ⌘ Read more

Fish 4.3 Brings Scripting & Interactivity Improvements, Enhanced Terminal Support
Fish 4.3 is out today as the newest update to this user-friendly command line shell. Fish 4.0 released at the beginning of this year in porting the codebase from C++ to Rust and now before closing out 2025 they have out Fish 4.3… ⌘ Read more

44% Of GNOME Core Apps Are Written In C, 13% In JavaScript & 10% In Rust
GNOME developer Sophie Herold has shared some interesting end-of-year code stats for the GNOME project. The “GNOME” codebase is up to 6,692,516 lines of code at the end of 2025 with 1,611,526 lines of that being from GNOME apps. Where the data gets interesting is on the programming language breakdown in different areas… ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel Highlights For 2025: Schedulers, Rust & Torvalds’ Commentary
With the end of the year quickly drawing to a close, here is a look back at the most-viewed Linux kernel news of 2025… ⌘ Read more

My little toy operating system from last year runs in 16-bit Real Mode (like DOS). Since I’ve recently figured out how to switch to 64-bit Long Mode right after BIOS boot, I now have a little program that performs this switch on my toy OS. It will load and run any x86-64 program, assuming it’s freestanding, a flat binary, and small enough (< 128 KiB code, only uses the first 2 MiB of memory).

Here I’m running a little C program (compiled using normal GCC, no Watcom trickery):

https://movq.de/v/b27ced6dcb/los86%2D64.mp4

Next steps could include:

• Use Rust instead of C for that 64-bit program?
  
• Provide interrupt service routines. (At the moment, it just keeps interrupts disabled.)

Ubuntu’s Rust Infatuation, New Optimizations & Other Ubuntu Linux 2025 Highlights
It was a very interesting year for Ubuntu Linux. Ahead of the important Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release due out this coming April, Ubuntu Linux this year was expeditiously migrating to new Rust-based system tools like sudo-rs and Rust Coreutils, new performance optimizations continued to be explored for bettering the out-of-the-box Ubuntu performance, better ARM64 support with its desktop ISO, and enhancing the Snapdragon X Elite laptop supp … ⌘ Read more

Nova Driver Progress & Other NVIDIA Linux News From 2025
This year there was a lot of going on in the NVIDIA Linux world from their official driver stack seeing better Wayland support to a lot on the open-source scene from NVIDIA engineers contributing a lot directly to the Rust-based Nova open-source driver that continues taking shape, the Mesa NVK Vulkan driver becoming more performant and capable, and a lot of other happenings. Here is a look back at the most popular NVIDIA content of 2025 on Phoronix… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Says It’s Not Planning To Use AI To Rewrite Windows From C To Rust
Microsoft has denied any plans to rewrite Windows 11 using AI and Rust after a LinkedIn post from one of its top-level engineers sparked a wave of online backlash by claiming the company’s goal was to “eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030.”

Galen Hunt, a principal software engineer responsible for sever … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft To Replace All C/C++ Code With Rust By 2030
Microsoft plans to eliminate all C and C++ code across its major codebases by 2030, replacing it with Rust using AI-assisted, large-scale refactoring. “My goal is to eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030,” Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Galen Hunt writes in a post on LinkedIn. “Our strategy is to combine AI and Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft’s … ⌘ Read more

Rex: Proposed Safe Rust Kernel Extensions For The Linux Kernel, In Place Of eBPF
University researchers presented Rex at this month’s Linux Plumbers Conference 2025 in Tokyo. Rex is designed for “safe and usable” Rust-based kernel extensions that could serve in place of eBPF programs for extending the Linux kernel functionality… ⌘ Read more

This feels useful: Rust’s Block Pattern

Rust’s ‘Vision Doc’ Makes Recommendations to Help Keep Rust Growing
The team authoring the Rust 2025 Vision Doc interviewed Rust developers to find out what they liked about the language — and have now issued three recommendations “to help Rust continue to scale across domains and usage levels.”

— Enumerate and describe Rust’s design goals and integrate them into our processes, helping to ensure they … ⌘ Read more

GotaTun Open-Source Rust WireGuard Implementation Announced By Mullvad
The Swedish VPN service Mullvad announced this week GotaTun, an open-source Rust-based WireGuard implementation that is forked from Cloudflare’s BoringTun… ⌘ Read more

Cloud Hypervisor 50 Released With QCOW2 Compression, Performance Improvements
Cloud Hypervisor 50.0 is out today for this cloud-minded, security-focused and Rust-based hypervisor. Cloud Hypervsior began as an open-source Intel project while in more recent times has shifted to being largely maintained by Microsoft, Crusoe, Cyberus Tech, Rivos, and others… ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel Rust Code Sees Its First CVE Vulnerability
Longtime Linux developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced that the Linux kernel has received its first CVE tied to Rust code. Phoronix reports: This first CVE (CVE-2025-68260) for Rust code in the Linux kernel pertains to the Android Binder rewrite in Rust. There is a race condition that can occur due to some noted unsafe Rust code. That code can lead to memory corrupti … ⌘ Read more

I rewrote all my solutions in Rust (except for day 10 part 2) and these are the runtimes on my i7-3770 from 2013 (this measures CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, not wallclock):

day01/1 [      00.000501311] Result: 1066
day01/2 [      00.000400298] Result: 6223
day02/1 [      00.000358848] Result: 12586854255
day02/2 [      00.000750711] Result: 17298174201
day03/1 [      00.000106537] Result: 17405
day03/2 [      00.000404632] Result: 171990312704598
day04/1 [      00.000257517] Result: 1626
day04/2 [      00.007495342] Result: 9173
day05/1 [      00.000237212] Result: 505
day05/2 [      00.000142731] Result: 344423158480189
day06/1 [      00.000229629] Result: 4076006202939
day06/2 [      00.000279552] Result: 7903168391557
day07/1 [      00.000204422] Result: 1622
day07/2 [      00.000283816] Result: 10357305916520
day08/1 [      00.029427421] Result: 84968
day08/2 [      00.028089859] Result: 8663467782
day09/1 [      00.000310304] Result: 4764078684
day09/2 [      00.015512554] Result: 1652344888
day10/1 [      00.000796663] Result: 375
day10/2 [      --.---------] Result: 15377 (Z3)
day11/1 [      00.000416804] Result: 753
day11/2 [      00.000660528] Result: 450854305019580
day12/1 [      00.000336081] Result: 577
day12/2 [      00.000000695] Result: no part 2

A little under 90 ms total.

On my Samsung NC10 netbook from 2011 with its Intel Atom N455 at 1.6 GHz:

day01/1 [      00.003771326] Result: 1066
day01/2 [      00.003267317] Result: 6223
day02/1 [      00.003902698] Result: 12586854255
day02/2 [      00.006659479] Result: 17298174201
day03/1 [      00.000747544] Result: 17405
day03/2 [      00.002737587] Result: 171990312704598
day04/1 [      00.001263892] Result: 1626
day04/2 [      00.044985301] Result: 9173
day05/1 [      00.001696761] Result: 505
day05/2 [      00.000978962] Result: 344423158480189
day06/1 [      00.001387660] Result: 4076006202939
day06/2 [      00.001734248] Result: 7903168391557
day07/1 [      00.001295528] Result: 1622
day07/2 [      00.001809659] Result: 10357305916520
day08/1 [      00.277251443] Result: 84968
day08/2 [      00.284359332] Result: 8663467782
day09/1 [      00.003152407] Result: 4764078684
day09/2 [      00.071123459] Result: 1652344888
day10/1 [      00.005279527] Result: 375
day10/2 [      --.---------] Result: 15377 (Z3)
day11/1 [      00.003273342] Result: 753
day11/2 [      00.005139719] Result: 450854305019580
day12/1 [      00.002857552] Result: 577
day12/2 [      00.000004421] Result: no part 2

A little over 700 ms total.

I like this. You get performance that’s more or less in the ballpark of C, but without the footguns.

The Arctic Is in Dire Straits, 20 Years of Reporting Show
A new Arctic Report Card recap shows how the Arctic has transformed in just 20 years, warming about twice as fast as the global average and losing most of its oldest sea ice. It’s also triggering cascading impacts from “Atlantification” to permafrost-driven “rusting rivers” and more destructive storms. Scientific American reports: The first Arctic Report Card w … ⌘ Read more

Servo 0.0.3 Browser Engine Brings Better Performance, Embedding Improvements
Servo 0.0.3 is out today as the newest update to this Rust-based, open-source web layout engine. Servo 0.0.3 incorporates many enhancements made over the past month from better performance to enhancing its embedding API and other improvements like context menus for more web content… ⌘ Read more

Rust Coreutils 0.5 Released - Inching Toward Full GNU Compatibility
Rust Coreutils 0.5 is now available as the latest milestone for this Rust-based alternative to GNU Coreutils. Rust Coreutils 0.5 continues moving closer to “full GNU compatibility” with nearly a 90% pass rate on the GNU test suite… ⌘ Read more

I’m seeing crashes in the 3D subsystem. (Gallium? Glamor? Whatever other Mesa thing they have? No idea.) In the logs I find this:

malloc(): unaligned tcache chunk detected

And that’s why I still care about Rust and want to learn more about it, even though it’s giving me so much headache and I’ve given up so many times. Because Rust currently seems to be the only popular systems programming language that tries to eliminate these error classes.

And of course “the Rust experiment” in the Linux kernel has recently been concluded as “successful”, so that alone is reason enough for me:

https://lwn.net/Articles/1049831/

System76 Launches First Stable Release of COSMIC Desktop and Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS
This week System76 launched the first stable release of its Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment, reports 9to5Linux.

Announced in 2021, it’s designed for all GNU/Linux distributions — and it shipping with Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS (based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS):

Previous Pop!_OS releases used a version of the COSMIC desktop tha … ⌘ Read more

Rust in Linux’s Kernel ‘is No Longer Experimental’
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols files this report from Tokyo:

At the invitation-only Linux
Kernel Maintainers Summit here, the top Linux maintainers decided, as Jonathan Corbet, Linux kernel developer, put it, “The consensus among the assembled developers is that Rust
in the kernel is no longer experimental — it is now a core part
of the kernel and is here to stay. So the ‘experim … ⌘ Read more

New Linux Patch Confirms: Rust Experiment Is Done, Rust Is Here To Stay
Rust for Linux lead developer Miguel Ojeda posted the patch a short time ago to “conclude the Rust experiment”. The “experiment” of Rust programming language code in the Linux kernel is over as it’s now accepted to be a success and “Rust is here to stay” in the kernel… ⌘ Read more

System76 Launches Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS With COSMIC Desktop
Back in October System76 announced a planned release date for Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS and the COSMIC Desktop… And they’ve made it! The new Pop!_OS 24.04 is now available for download as the long-awaited update atop an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base while using their Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment… ⌘ Read more

Rust-Based Project Aims To Provide Modern Thumbnails For Audio/Video Files On GNOME
Since Showtime replaced Totem as the default video player of GNOME, the desktop has lacked thumbnail capabilities for audio and video files. But to address that defect, the Rust-based gst-thumbnailers project has been in development to leverage GStreamer and paired with Rust to provide safe thumbnail generation capabilities for audio and video content… ⌘ Read more

Linux I3C Gains “HDR” Support For Faster Data Transfers
I2C in Linux 6.19 brought support for Rust-written I2C drivers. The newer I3C “Improved Inter-Integrated Circuit” interface changes have now been merged and the big feature there is HDR support. Not to be confused with the more common High Dynamic Range acronym usage for HDR, HDR in the I3C context is for the “High Data Rate” mode for facilitating faster data transfers… ⌘ Read more

Iced 0.14 Released For Popular Rust Cross-Platform GUI LIbrary
Released today is a new version of Iced, the popular cross-platform GUI library for the Rust programming language. Iced is notably used by the COSMIC desktop environment and a growing variety of different Rust apps… ⌘ Read more

Rust Drivers In Linux 6.19 Will Now Support… Module Parameters
On top of the Rust driver core changes and other Rust code for Linux 6.19, the modules infrastructure for this new kernel version is also bringing some new code. Surprisingly, it’s taken until now for Rust kernel modules/drivers to support module parameters as is common practice for passing different options when booting the kernel or manually loading kernel drivers with extra non-default options… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Brings Many Driver Core Changes For Rust, Housekeeping CPUs Exposed
Beyond the main set of Rust changes to land in Linux 6.19 earlier this week, as we near the end of the first week of two for the Linux 6.19 merge window… More Rust changes. This time around the driver core updates for the kernel bring a number of Rust changes… ⌘ Read more

Rust-Written Redox OS Sees Initial Wayland Port
Developers behind Redox OS, the original open-source operating system written from scratch in the Rust programming language, have ported Wayland to it with initially getting the Smallvil Wayland compositor up and running along with the Smithay framework and the Wayland version of the GTK toolkit… ⌘ Read more

Zlib-rs 0.5.3 Expands AVX-512 Usage For Faster Performance
The Trifecta Tech Foundation today released zlib-rs 0.5.3 as the newest version of this Zlib implementation written in the Rust programming language for better memory safety. Zlib-rs is advertised as “a safer Zlib” for use by both C and Rust projects while delivering competitive performance to the C-based zlib-ng… ⌘ Read more

Rust Updates For Linux 6.19, Rust Minimum Baseline To Likely Follow Debian Stable
Miguel Ojeda has already submitted the core Rust programming language infrastructure updates intended for the Linux 6.19 merge window. In the pull request he also notes that moving forward the minimum supported Rust version for compiling the Linux kernel will likely follow whatever the minimum Rust version currently in use by the latest Debian stable release… ⌘ Read more

Steam Machine, Continued Open-Source Rust Usage & Linux Kernel Happenings In November
It was an eventful past month with Valve announcing the new Steam Machine, a lot of new Linux kernel activity, the continued increase of Rust programming language adoption by open-source projects, a lot of fun hardware benchmarks, and more. There were 283 original news articles on Phoronix the past month about Linux/open-source software and hardware plus another 18 featured Linux hardware reviews / multi-page benchmark articles. … ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel 6.18 Officially Released
From the blog 9to5Linux:

Linux kernel 6.18 is now available for download, as announced today by Linus Torvalds himself, featuring enhanced hardware support through new and updated drivers, improvements to file systems and networking, and more.

Highlights of Linux 6.18 include the removal of the Bcachefs file system, support for the Rust Binder driver, a new dm-pcache device-mapper target to enable … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Will Allow You To Write I2C Drivers In Rust
With the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle there are yet more Rust kernel bindings being introduced and other additions to make it possible to write more Linux kernel drivers within the Rust programming language. Among the new Rust additions expected for Linux 6.19 are making it possible to write Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) bus drivers in Rust… ⌘ Read more

Australia’s first car was a rust bucket, but it was our rust bucket
The first fully Australian-made car rolled off the Holden production line in Melbourne on this day in 1948. The man who dreamt it up wasn’t there to see it unveiled. ⌘ Read more

Rust For Linux Kernel Co-Maintainer Formally Steps Down
Alex Gaynor recently announced he is formally stepping down as one of the maintainers of the Rust for Linux kernel code with the removal patch now queued for merging in Linux 6.19… ⌘ Read more

GCC Steering Committee Allows New Language Front-End To Land For GCC 16
Joining Ada, C/C++, COBOL, D, Fortran, Go, Modula-2, Objective-C/Objective-C++ and Rust is now another programming language expected to be added for the GCC 16 compiler release due out in the new year… ⌘ Read more

Rusticl Has Turned Out Remarkably Well For Open-Source OpenCL For Mesa Drivers
Rusticl as a modern OpenCL implementation for Mesa Gallium3D drivers has turned out remarkably well. Rusticl performance has evolved quite well for this Rust-based OpenCL driver and it continues tacking on new features / OpenCL extensions as well as working gracefully with more Mesa drivers. Rusticl lead developer Karol Herbst presented on some of the recent accomplishments for this driver back at XDC2025… ⌘ Read more

Rust-Based Arm GPU Kernel Driver “Tyr” Begins Running GNOME & Basic Games
Initially upstreamed into the Linux 6.18 kernel is Tyr as a Rust-based GPU kernel driver for Arm Mali hardware. This is in effect a Rust alternative to the Panthor DRM kernel driver for newer Arm Mali GPUs with the Command Stream Firmware (CSF). With the latest development code for Tyr, it’s moved onto running the GNOME desktop and basic games like SuperTuxKart… ⌘ Read more

More NVIDIA Nova Enablement For Linux 6.19 With Other Rust Graphics Driver Code
Alice Ryhl of Google sent out the main set of Rust language code changes for the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) graphics/display driver subsystem ahead of Linux 6.19. Notable is continued DRM core infrastructure work for Rust plus the open-source NVIDIA “Nova” driver continues taking shape albeit isn’t yet ready for end-user usage… ⌘ Read more

NVK Still Working Toward Ray-Tracing, Vulkan Video & More Performance
In addition to the RADV driver status update shared recently in Vienna at XDC2025, there was also a presentation on the current status of the NVK driver as the open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver within Mesa that currently targets the Nouveau kernel driver and the Rust-based Nova kernel driver in the future… ⌘ Read more

Python Developers Looking At Introducing The Rust Programming Language In CPython
A proposal has been raised by two CPython core developers to introduce the Rust programming language to CPython. Initially the focus is on allowing Rust to be used for developing optional extension modules for CPython but ultimately their goal is for Rust to become a hard dependency of CPython and used throughout its codebase… ⌘ Read more

GCC Patch Enables Support For The Rust-Based Wild Linker
The Wild linker is a very speedy linker written in the Rust programming language that has become quite competitive with the likes of Mold. A patch sent out this weekend adds Wild support for use with the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)… ⌘ Read more

Rust in Android: More Memory Safety, Fewer Revisions, Fewer Rollbacks, Shorter Reviews
Android’s security team published a blog post this week about their experience using Rust. Its title? “Move fast and fix things.”

Last year, we wrote about why a memory safety strategy that focuses on vulnerability prevention in new code quickly yields durable and compounding gains. This year we look … ⌘ Read more

Servo 0.0.2 Released For Those Wanting To Try Out This Example Rust Web Browser
Released minutes ago was the Servo 0.0.2 web browser engine update. Along with this new Rust-based web engine release is also the “servoshell” in tow for the example implementation built around this open-source codebase… ⌘ Read more