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  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Rex: Proposed Safe Rust Kernel Extensions For The Linux Kernel, In Place Of eBPF

([Linux Kernel] 3 Hours Ago Rust Rex)


University researchers presented Rex at this month's Linux Plumbers Conference 2025 in Tokyo. Rex is designed for "safe and usable" Rust-based kernel extensions that could serve in place of eBPF programs for extending the Linux kernel functionality.

Still in development form and not yet any decision on upstreaming to the mainline Linux kernel, Rex is a Rust-based kernel extension framework with similar safety guarantees to eBPF. Rex relies on the safety of the Rust programming language paired with lightweight runtime protections.

Researchers from Virgina Tech and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign presented at LPC 2025 on Rex. The Rex code hasn't been formally submitted yet to the mailing list for any formal review or attempt at upstreaming to the mainline kernel. Those wanting to check out the Rex documentation and code in its current form can find it via [1]GitHub .

Embedded below is the full LPC 2025 session recording and there are also the associated [2]PDF slides for the proposed Rust safe kernel extensions for Linux.



[1] https://github.com/rex-rs/rex

[2] https://lpc.events/event/19/contributions/2190/attachments/1798/3878/rex-lpc.pdf


My message is not that biological determinists were bad scientists or
even that they were always wrong. Rather, I believe that science must be
understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise, not the work of
robots programmed to collect pure information. I also present this view as
an upbeat for science, not as a gloomy epitaph for a noble hope sacrificed on
the alter of human limitations.
I believe that a factual reality exists and that science, though often
in an obtuse and erratic manner, can learn about it. Galileo was not shown
the instruments of torture in an abstract debate about lunar motion. He had
threatened the Church's conventional argument for social and doctrinal
stability: the static world order with planets circling about a central
earth, priests subordinate to the Pope and serfs to their lord. But the
Church soon made its peace with Galileo's cosmology. They had no choice; the
earth really does revolve about the sun.
-- S. J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"