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'Key kernel maintainers' still back Rust in the Linux kernel, despite the doubters
(www.theregister.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
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Rust run times are excellent. And statically linked binaries are the superior intellect.
Runtime performance counts for me only some specific cases, and there are many programs I have installed that I recompile because of updates far more frequently than I run them; and when I do run them, rarely use performance an issue.
But you have a good point: performance in the kernel is important, and it is run frequently, so the kernel is a good use case for Rust - where Go, perhaps, isn't. My original comment, though, was that Zig appears to have many of the safety benefits of Rust, but vastly better compile times.
I really do need to write some Zig projects, because I sound like an advocate when really my opinions are uninformed. I have written Rust, though, and obviously have opinions about it, and especially how it is affecting my system update times.
I'll keep ripgrep, regardless of compile times. Probably fd, too.
So, a couple of thoughts. You can absolutely write safe code that produces wrong results. Rust doesn't help - at all - with correctness. Even Rustaceans will agree on that point.
I agree that Rust is safer than C; my point is that if correctness and safeness is the deciding criteria, then why not use Haskell? Or Ada? Both are more "safe" even than Rust, and if you're concerned about correctness, Haskell is a "provable" language, and there are even tools for performing correctness analysis on Haskell code.
But those languages are not allowed in the kernel, and - indeed - they're not particularly popular; certainly not in comparison to C, Go, or Rust. There are other factors than just safety and correctness; otherwise, something like OCaml would probably be a dominant language right now.