Microsoft is working to add Rust to the Windows kernel, following the steps Linux has been taking since version 6.1 of its kernel.
Rust has become one of the most popular programming languages thanks to its advanced features. The language offers better performance and memory safety than many other popular options.
According to Thurrott, Microsoft VP David Weston announced the news this week.
“We’re in the crawl stage of crawl, walk, run of Rust in Windows,” Weston said at the Microsoft’s BlueHat IL 2023 conference. “We’re talking about one of the most complex engineering products on the planet. But our goal is to do this to improve security … So you will actually see Windows booting with Rust in the kernel in probably the next several weeks or months, which is really cool. The basic goal here is to convert some of these internal C++ data types into their Rust equivalents.”
Weston revealed that Microsoft had already rewritten 36,000 lines of the Windows kernel in Rust. The company has also written 152,000 lines of Rust code for DirectWrite Core Library proof of concept.
With Linux and Microsoft both adopting Rust, the language’s future looks brighter than ever.
