After four years, Rust-based Redox OS is nearly self-hosting

[sman]

After four years, Rust-based Redox OS is nearly self-hosting

"https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/29/after_four_years_rusty_os_nearly_selfhosting/"

A better operating system thanks to Rust's combination of safety and performance?

The Redox OS, written in Rust and currently under development, is only "a few months of work away" from self-hosting, meaning that the Rustc compiler would run on Redox itself, according to its creator Jeremy Soller.

Soller, who is also a principal engineer at the Linux hardware company System76, based in Denver, USA, says that he is now running Redox OS permanently on one of his company's laptops, with "full support for the keyboard, touchpad, storage and Ethernet".

Redox will be a desktop operating system first, but both embedded and server uses are envisaged eventually.

Redox has a POSIX-compliant C library written in Rust, called relibc. It is Linux-compatible both at the syscall API level and at the syscall ABI (Application binary interface) level, subject to the same architecture. You can also run Redox applications on Linux. There is a shell called ion. There is a desktop environment called Orbital, and applications already include a calculator, file browser, image viewer, terminal emulator, 3D renderer, and a vi-like editor called Sodium.

It is best described as experimental and not in line to replace any existing OS for the time being. Still, if Rust continues to grow in popularity, its characteristics of safety and unimpeded performance seem ideal for creating a new operating system, so perhaps Redox will become more prominent. ®