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I think a fork with a mission to aggressively rewrite the kernel into Rust would be a great experiment. Lessons learned could be applied to the more mainstream C/Rust kernel(s).

Has anyone done that?



https://github.com/asterinas/asterinas

Asterinas is such an experiment. Purely written in Rust and Linux ABI compatible.


https://www.redox-os.org/

It's not a fork of Linux but a ground up effort to write a kernel in Rust. Still they're trying to make it compatible with Linux/BSD


Rust aside, it uses a microkernel, multiserver architecture.

And, of course, drivers run in userspace and interact with the system through a clearly defined API.

Other systems like this include Robigalia, Lions OS and Genode.

They would likely quickly overtake Linux if they got 1% of the resources Linux receives.


Correction, where I said Robigalia I meant Managarm.

Robigalia is also an effort, but one that hasn't been touched in nearly a decade.




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