Linux 6.1 Merges Initial Rust Support
Released December 11, 2022, Linux 6.1 became the first kernel version to officially accept Rust as a second language for kernel development, alongside C.
Linux 6.1, released by Linus Torvalds on December 11, 2022, shipped with the initial infrastructure for writing Linux kernel code in Rust — the first time in the kernel’s history that a language other than C has been officially accepted for kernel development.
What actually landed
The pull request bringing Rust support was approved by Torvalds in October 2022, ahead of the 6.1 release. What merged was foundational infrastructure — roughly 12,000 lines of code — rather than any specific Rust-written driver shipping as production-ready. This distinction matters: 6.1 made it possible to write kernel code in Rust going forward, it didn’t convert any existing subsystem to Rust outright.
Why Rust, and why now
Rust’s appeal for kernel development centers on memory safety guarantees enforced at compile time — a large share of historical kernel security vulnerabilities trace back to memory-safety bugs (use-after-free, buffer overflows) that Rust’s ownership model is specifically designed to catch before code ever ships. Introducing it as a second, opt-in language rather than a wholesale replacement for C reflects a deliberately incremental approach: existing C code stays exactly as it is, while new drivers and subsystems gain the option to be written in a memory-safer language.
Where this fits in kernel history
Accepting a second systems-level language for kernel development is a genuinely rare event — the Linux kernel had been a C-only codebase (with some assembly) for its entire three-decade-plus history up to this point. The initial 6.1 merge has been followed by continued, incremental expansion of Rust-based driver support in subsequent kernel releases, alongside ongoing discussion within the kernel community about the pace and scope of that expansion.
What actually shipped in Rust after the initial merge
The infrastructure landing in 6.1 was deliberately inert on its own — real Rust-written drivers followed over the next several kernel releases rather than arriving simultaneously. The first actual Rust drivers were accepted in December 2023 and shipped in kernel 6.8 in March 2024, and Rust code has since spread into a growing list of subsystems: the Android binder driver, Apple’s AGX GPU driver (part of the Asahi Linux project targeting Apple Silicon), an NVMe driver, and — with direct engineering involvement from NVIDIA itself — the Nova GPU driver for NVIDIA hardware. This incremental pattern is exactly what the cautious initial approach was designed to enable: infrastructure first, then real, individually-reviewed drivers proving the approach out one subsystem at a time.
From experimental to a core kernel language
At the Linux Kernel Developers Summit in December 2025, the kernel community formally voted to promote Rust from experimental status to a core language of the kernel, placing it alongside C and assembly as an officially supported implementation language rather than a still-provisional addition. Kernel developers have since indicated at least one Rust-written driver is expected to merge into mainline within the following 12 to 18 months as a genuinely default, non-experimental component, and the DRM (graphics) subsystem’s maintainers have signaled it may require Rust for new driver contributions within roughly a year — a trajectory that would have seemed like a remarkably fast pace of adoption when the first 12,000 lines of scaffolding merged back in December 2022.
Related:
- Linux 5.0 Released — a Version Bump, Not a Milestone
- Linux Kernel 2.6.0 Ships, Redefining Scalability and Preemption
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