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Rewriting essential Linux packages in Rust
Most Linux systems depend on a suite of core utilities that the GNU Project started development on decades ago and are, of course, written in C. At FOSDEM 2025, Sylvestre Ledru made the case in his main stage talk that modern systems require safer, more maintainable tools.
Over the past few years, Ledru has led the charge of rewriting the GNU Core Utilities(coreutils) in Rust, as the MIT-licensed uutils project. According to Ledru, the Rust coreutils are used by the Debian-based Apertis distribution for electronic devices, the Spectacles smartglasses, and Microsoft is using the project for Visual Studio Code for the web. He used the hyperfine command-line benchmarking tool to run a test ten times; sorting a text file containing all of Shakespeare's works to see which implementation was faster.
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