GoKawiilLinux stable kernel maintainer Greg Kroah‑Hartman: "The Rust experiment is over. It's real." Screenshot by Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
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In the future, some Linux subsystems will only be written in Rust.
Rust is much safer than C, but it's no silver bullet for bad logic.
The Linux kernel will not be rewritten in Rust. Well, not yet anyway.
At Open Source Summit India 2026 in Mumbai, Linux stable kernel maintainer Greg Kroah‑Hartman said in his keynote that "the [Linux] kernel is moving toward Rust. Git is moving toward Rust. Lots of projects are starting to move toward Rust."
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He didn't always feel that way. Kroah-Hartman added, "A number of years ago, when a friend of mine said, 'Ah, you got to try this new language. It's called Rust.' I was like, 'What? No, C is great.' His friend continued, "'No, no, no! It makes programming fun again.' I'm like, 'Nah, programming is fun in C.' He was right. I should have done it then. Rust is actually fun. It makes programming fun. It takes a lot of stuff away from having to worry about the compiler, which can fix a lot of your problems for you, and it makes code a little bit better."
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