Microsoft Releases New Features for Windows’ Rust Kernel in Latest Insider Build

Microsoft has been working on initiatives around the Rust programming language for a while now. At the end of April, it was revealed that the tech giant was working on a major project to rewrite Windows in this more efficient code. Now, the company has released more features for Windows’ Rust kernel in the latest Insider build.

Insider Build 25905

Insider Build 25905 was released on Wednesday and comes with a Rust-based GDI Regions implementation. This means that the win32kbase_rs.sys driver in System32 is now equipped with a Rust-based option to see, for example, where a cursor is located on the desktop.
Microsoft said in a blog post about the update that it is a “small test”. The company added: “We have just started rolling out this, so the experience is not yet available to all Insiders in the Canary Channel. We plan to monitor feedback to see how it is received (with a select group, ed.) before we bring it to everyone.”

Advantages of Rust

In the message, Microsoft highlighted two important reasons for moving towards Rust. It said that Rust would have advantages in terms of reliability and security compared to C and C++.
As always, such updates in the Canary Channel are hot off the press and so there may be compatibility or stability issues.
It will be interesting to see how far along Microsoft’s Rust plans are. The programming language has been in demand throughout the IT industry for some time, with a 2020 Stack Overflow article pointing out that Rust has been preferred over other languages ​​since 2016.
Rust is particularly good at maintaining memory integrity, which is often a dangerous place for data.