“Linus has released the 6.1 kernel,” reports LWN.net — and it’s the one with initial support for kernel development in Rust.
Elsewhere LWN explains the specifics of this milestone:
No system with a production 6.1 kernel will be running any Rust code, but this change does give kernel developers a chance to play with the language in the kernel context and get a sense for how Rust development feels….
There are other initiatives underway, including the writing of an Apple graphics driver in the Rust language. For the initial merge into the mainline kernel, though, Linus Torvalds made it clear that as little functionality as possible should be included. So those drivers and their support code were trimmed out and must wait for a future kernel release. What is there is the support needed to build a module that can be loaded into the kernel, along with a small sample module…. Torvalds asked for something that could do “hello world” and that is what we got. It is something that can be played with, but it cannot be used for any sort of real kernel programming at this point.
That situation will, hopefully, change in the near future.
Meanwhile, Linux 6.1 also includes “support for destructive BPF programs, some significant io_uring performance improvements, better user-space control over transparent huge-page creation, improved memory-tiering support.”
The Register adds:
Other interesting additions include more support for the made-in-China LoongArch CPU architecture, introductory work to support Wi-Fi 7 and security fixes for some flaky Wi-Fi routines in previous versions of the kernel. There’s also plenty of effort to improve the performance of Linux on laptops, and enhanced power efficiency for AMD’s PC-centric RYZEN silicon.
This article originally appeared on Slashdot: Linux 6.1 Released With Initial Support for Rust-Based Kernel Development
