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Rust OS comparison

A comparison of operating systems written in Rust.

There are several open source operating systems written in Rust. Most of them are proofs of concepts. The only system that goes a step further is redox. It comes with a window manager as well as basic applications like an editor and a file manager. Theseus is approaching maturity with the ability to execute legacy components in a WASM sandboxed environment.

NameArchitecturesPure RustActive?Kernel architectureTargetUserpace?Optional GUI?ContributorsFilesystemLicense
redoxx86 and x86_64yesyesMicrokernelGeneral purposeyesyes60ZFS/RedoxFS/FAT32MIT
Theseus OSx86_64, ARM WIPyesyesSafe-language SAS/SPL OS1General + EmbeddedN/Ayes25Custom/FAT32MIT
TockCortex Myesno40APL 2 / MIT
intermezzOSx86_64noyes?PoCnono18noAPL 2 / MIT
RustOSi386?yesNonePoCnono10noAPL 2 / MIT
rustbooti386?noNonePoCnono8noMIT
bkernelARMyesyes?Embedded devicesnono4?GPL with linking exception
SOSx86_64yesyesMicrokernelPoCnono3?MIT
reenixBrown's CS167/9nonoMonolithic (current state)PoCnono3?unknown
Quasarx86_64?no??nono2??
Tifflinx86_64/amd64almostyesMonolithic??yes1ISO96602-Clause-BSD
MOROSx86_64yesyesMonolithicGeneral purposelimitedno1MFSMIT
Felix OSx86_64yesyes?General purpose?no3[FAT16] Read OnlyMIT
Aerox86_64?yesMonolithicGeneral purpose?yes10?GPL
Embassymanyyesyesembedded frameworkembeddedn/ano388?APL2 / MIT / CC 4.0
Hubrismanyyesyesmessage passing kernelembeddedn/ano50?MPL 2.0

Also worth noting: Robigalia, a sel4 userspace, written in Rust.

Blog posts and papers

-Writing the second video game for the Micro:bit in Rust

Embedded Systems

Footnotes

  1. Theseus is a safe-language OS that runs all components within a Single Address Space (SAS) and Single Privilege Level (SPL).