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ZDNET's key takeaways

• Microsoft and Linux are adding AI and Rust to their pipelines.
• Microsoft is leaning much harder into AI development than Linux.
• Both are expanding Rust, but neither OS will be fully Rust soon.

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Recently, Galen Hunt, a Microsoft distinguished engineer, wrote: "My goal is to eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030. Our strategy is to combine AI and algorithms to rewrite Microsoft's largest codebases" and to "evolve and augment our infrastructure to enable translating Microsoft's largest C and C++ systems to Rust." 

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If that sounds to you like Microsoft is going to rewrite Windows using AI from C to Rust, you're not alone. Hunt has since backed away from that interpretation, writing, "Windows is not being rewritten in Rust with AI."

Still, one cannot help but wonder. After all, Hunt continued, "We are building tech to make migration from language to language possible," which is what you'd need to do first if you did want to move Windows from C to Rust. And Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently said 20% to 30% of Microsoft's code was "written by software," that is, AI. 

And, far earlier, in 2022, Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich tweeted, "It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++ and use Rust ... For the sake of security and reliability. The industry should declare those languages as deprecated."

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Microsoft isn't alone. As I've been covering for some time now, the Linux developer community is also deeply engaging with AI and Rust. As Linus Torvalds himself recently declared himself "a huge believer" in using AI to maintain code. 

Maintainers and developers are now using AI to help build Linux. Simultaneously, Rust has graduated to being a co-equal language with C for mainstream Linux development.

The great transformation

However, the programming world is at a transition point. For system programming, Rust and AI are replacing C and manual coding.

Why? Easy. C is prone to memory errors, accounting for about 70% of all operating system security holes. Memory-safe Rust prevents these problems. As Microsoft stated in 2019, "What separates Rust from C and C++ is its strong safety guarantees."

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That's not to say you still can't screw up with Rust. You can. The first Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) security bug has also been identified: the Rust Android Binder driver bug, CVE-2025-68260. Meanwhile, over in Windows land, in early 2025, Check Point Research found a bug in the Rust-based Graphics Device Interface (GDI) component in Windows 11 24H2.

Microsoft is, as I think we all know, very gung-ho about using AI in programming. Want to buy a Copilot license? If you're a Windows user, you've probably seen a pitch for Copilot services sometime today.

Linux developers appreciate that AI can make their work easier. However, as Torvalds said, 90% of today's AI industry is hype. He's also warned that using AI to generate serious, long-lived production code can be a "horrible idea" because it harms maintainability and hides the reasoning needed to debug and evolve systems.

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Let's look more closely at what both operating system powers are up to.

AI

For Linux, AI will be doing a lot of scut work. At the Linux Plumbers Conference in Tokyo, the invitation-only Linux developer conference, programmers and maintainers alike told me they were taking a very cautious approach. They'll use AI to help with some of the project's dirtiest jobs: triaging patches, identifying likely backports, and managing CVEs.

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Linux maintainer Sasha Levin described AI tools as an "extra stable maintainer" that can sift massive patch streams and reduce burnout, while still leaving final decisions to humans. As for actually creating code, that's another story. Maintainers believe AI is acceptable when it is transparent, accountable, and disclosed. The community is still debating exactly how that will work.

Microsoft is going full hog into AI. Russinovich has showcased Microsoft's move from simple code assistants to full AI agents that can take an issue, spin up an environment, modify code, and open pull requests as part of the engineering pipeline. He describes AI programs as everyday tools for Microsoft developers.

That said, he also cautioned that internal AI use must account for prompt injection, data leakage, and reliability. Safe adoption requires robust guardrails and rigorous evaluation, not blind trust in generated code. 

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Russinovich warned: "The vulnerability of LLMs to hallucination, prompt injection, and jailbreaks poses a significant but surmountable challenge to their widespread adoption and responsible use."

Thus, while Microsoft uses AI, the company recognizes it's no panacea and must be used cautiously.

Rust

For years, Microsoft has been expanding its use of Rust across Windows, Azure, and device firmware. It may not be writing Windows in Rust anytime soon, and neither is Linux. Instead, both are pursuing an aggressive but gradual strategy: Rust for new security-critical components and a long-term push to place memory-safe Rust where it's appropriate. 

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Of the two, Microsoft is far more aggressive about Rust adoption than Linux.

To be exact, Microsoft has already shipped Rust in key parts of Windows and its ecosystem. For example, Windows 11 now includes kernel components and system functions written in Rust, particularly in newer builds such as 24H2, as part of a gradual hardening of the OS against memory bugs.

Microsoft also recently adopted a Rust Windows Application Programming Interface (API) and a Rust framework for Windows drivers. This enables developers to build Windows applications and kernel/user-mode drivers in Rust while calling existing WDK and Win32 APIs.

The Microsoft Surface and Windows driver teams are already adopting Rust to ship "safer drivers, stronger devices," using the language's safety guarantees to reduce crashes and exploitable flaws in device firmware and drivers.

Also: AI is already part of Linux's plumbing - whether developers like it or not

Looking ahead, Windows may not be rewritten in Rust by 2030, but I wouldn't be surprised if most of its code were written in Rust by 2035

As for Linux, Rust is creeping in pretty much everywhere. As Rust-for-Linux lead Miguel Ojeda said at Plumbers, Rust is "here to stay." Rust is officially the kernel's second core language alongside C. Who would have thought it even two years ago?

In particular, while Rust has largely been confined to drivers and peripherals, it's making its way into core Linux programs. For instance, Debian Linux recently announced that, going forward, its vital apt package manager will be written exclusively in Rust. That means Mint and Ubuntu, too, will soon have Rust in their heart.

Linux maintainer Dave Airlie has said the vital graphics program Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) project, by this time next year, will require Rust for new drivers. At the Maintainers Summit, Airlie said the DRM project is "about a year away" from disallowing new C drivers and requiring Rust for new drivers. The plan is to "require Rust and prohibit the use of C for new controllers" in the graphics stack.

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Work is also continuing on the rust_codegen_gcc and GCC-based gccrs projects, which are making good progress. These core compilers will eventually enable developers to compile Rust in Linux using the same programming tools now used for C.

Meanwhile, with Google's support, the mobile Linux we all know has several Rust programs working behind the scenes in Android 16.

All AI? All Rust? Not yet

Just like Windows, you won't be seeing an "all Rust Linux" anytime soon. You may never. Rust may be safer, but for pure speed, you still can't beat C. That said, I would never say never. Check in again in 2035.

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By then, AI will be fully incorporated into the development of both. Sure, some of us will still be coding in Visual Studio Code, vim, and EMACS. But, just like today, when most of us program in integrated development environments (IDEs), by 2025, AI will be so tightly integrated with IDEs that developers won't be able to separate them.