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