Rust in Production

Bringing Rust into the Linux kernel is one of the most ambitious modernization efforts in open source history. The Linux kernel, with its decades of C code and deeply ingrained development practices, is now opening its doors to a memory-safe language. It's the first time in over 30 years that a new programming language has been officially adopted for kernel development. But the journey is far from straightforward.In this episode, we speak with Danilo Krummrich, Linux kernel maintainer and Rust for Linux core team member, about the groundbreaking work of integrating Rust into the Linux kernel. Among other things, we talk about the Nova GPU driver, a Rust-based successor to Nouveau for NVIDIA graphics cards, and discuss the technical challenges and cultural shifts required for large-scale Rust adoption in the kernel as well as the future of the Rust4Linux project.

What does it take to rewrite the foundational components of one of the world's most popular Linux distributions? Ubuntu serves over 12 million daily desktop users alone, and the systems that power it, from sudo to core utilities, have been running for decades with what Jon Seager, VP of Engineering for Ubuntu at Canonical, calls "shaky underpinnings."In this episode, we talk to Jon about the bold decision to "oxidize" Ubuntu's foundation. We explore why they're rewriting critical components like sudo in Rust, how they're managing the immense risk of changing software that millions depend on daily, and what it means to modernize a 20-year-old operating system without breaking the internet.

Building a new programming language from scratch is a monumental undertaking. In this episode, we talk to Richard Feldman, creator of the Roc programming language, about building a functional language that is fast, friendly, and functional. We discuss why the Roc team moved away from using Rust as a host language and instead is in the process of migrating to Zig. What was the decision-making process like? What can Rust learn this decision? And how does Zig compare to Rust for this kind of systems programming work?

How do you build a system that handles 90 million requests per second? That's the scale that Cloudflare operates at, processing roughly 25% of all internet traffic through their global network of 330+ edge locations.In this episode, we talk to Kevin Guthrie and Edward Wang from Cloudflare about Pingora, their open-source Rust-based proxy that replaced nginx across their entire infrastructure. We'll find out why they chose Rust for mission-critical systems handling such massive scale, the technical challenges of replacing battle-tested infrastructure, and the lessons learned from "oxidizing" one of the internet's largest networks.

Building autonomous robots that operate safely in the real world is one of the most challenging engineering problems today. When those robots carry sharp blades and work around people, the margin for error is razor-thin.In this episode, we talk to Andrew Tinka from Scythe Robotics about how they use Rust to build autonomous electric mowers for commercial landscaping. We discuss the unique challenges of robotics software, why Rust is an ideal choice for cutting-edge safety-critical systems, and what it takes to keep autonomous machines running smoothly in the field.