Linux Kernel 7.0 Hits RC3 as Rust Support Officially Graduates to Stable

The Linux kernel 7.0 development cycle has reached its third release candidate, and this one carries a change that systems programmers have been waiting years for: Rust language support is now officially stable. After being introduced as experimental in Linux 6.1 back in 2022, Rust in the kernel has graduated from curiosity to first-class citizen.

From Experimental to Stable

The journey of Rust into the Linux kernel has been one of the most closely watched developments in open-source history. When Linus Torvalds accepted the initial Rust infrastructure in kernel 6.1, it came with significant caveats — the API surface was minimal, tooling was rough, and many subsystem maintainers were skeptical. Four years later, the picture has changed dramatically.

Rust is now used in production drivers, with the Apple GPU driver (written in Rust) shipping in several distributions. The Rust-for-Linux project has grown from a handful of contributors to over 200 active developers. And kernel 7.0 includes Rust bindings for core kernel subsystems including memory management, file systems, and networking — enough infrastructure to write meaningful drivers and modules entirely in Rust.

RC3 Details

The RC3 patch is notably larger than RC2, primarily due to an expanded test suite — a sign that the kernel community is investing in validation infrastructure for the new major version. Driver updates make up a significant portion of the changes, with early enablement for Intel Nova Lake and AMD Zen 6 hardware appearing for the first time.

Linus Torvalds confirmed the major version bump from 6.x to 7.0 in his RC1 announcement on February 22, noting that version numbers are "just numbers" but acknowledging that the Rust stabilization warranted a symbolic new era.

What This Means for Memory Safety

The practical impact of stable Rust support is that hardware vendors can now write upstream kernel drivers in Rust without worrying about API instability. This matters because kernel code — running with full hardware access — is precisely where memory safety bugs are most dangerous. A buffer overflow in a kernel driver can compromise an entire system, bypass all security boundaries, and provide persistent access to attackers.

The final Linux 7.0 release is expected between mid-March and mid-April 2026, depending on the number of additional release candidates needed.