asterinas / asterinas

Toward a production-grade Linux alternative—memory safe, high-performance, and more 
**News:**
- 2026-10-13: Asterinas 0.19.0 is released, adding a DRM graphics subsystem, AArch64 as the fourth supported architecture, a Rust-native device model (`aster-device`), better guest-kernel support for secure containers, and the first self-hosted build of Asterinas on Asterinas NixOS. Read the announcement.
## Introducing Asterinas
The future of operating systems (OSes) belongs to Rust—a modern systems programming language (PL)
that delivers safety, efficiency, and productivity at once.
The open question is not whether OS kernels should transition from C to Rust,
but how we get there.
Linux follows an _incremental_ path.
While the Rust for Linux project has successfully integrated Rust as an official second PL,
this approach faces inherent friction.
As a newcomer within a massive C codebase,
Rust must often compromise on safety, efficiency, clarity, and ergonomics
to maintain compatibility with legacy structures.
And while new Rust code can improve what it touches,
it cannot retroactively eliminate vulnerabilities in decades of existing C code.
Asterinas takes a _clean-slate_ approach.
By building a Linux-compatible, general-purpose OS kernel from the ground up in Rust,
we are liberated from the constraints of a legacy C codebase—its interfaces, designs, and assumptions—and from the need to preserve historical compatibility for outdated platforms.
**Languages—including PLs—shape our way of thinking**.
Through the lens of a modern PL, Asterinas rethinks and modernizes the construction of OS kernels:
* **Modern architecture.**
 Asterinas pioneers the _framekernel_ architecture,
 combining monolithic-kernel performance with microkernel-inspired separation.
 Unsafe Rust is confined to a small, auditable framework called OSTD,
 while the rest of the kernel is written in safe Rust,
 keeping the memory-safety TCB intentionally minimal.
* **Modern design.**
 Asterinas learns from Linux's hard-won engineering lessons,
 but it is not afraid to deviate when the design warrants it.
 For example, Asterinas improves the CPU scalability of its memory management subsystem
 with a novel scheme called CortenMM.
* **Modern code.**
 Asterinas's codebase prioritizes safety, clarity, and maintainability.
 Performance is pursued aggressively, but never by compromising safety guarantees.
 Readability is treated as a feature, not a luxury,
 and the codebase is structured to avoid hidden, cross-module coupling.
* **Modern tooling.**
 Asterinas ships a purpose-built toolkit, OSDK,
 to facilitate building, running, and testing Rust kernels or kernel components.
 Powered by OSTD,
 OSDK makes kernel development as easy and fluid as writing a standard Rust application, eliminating the traditional friction of OS engineering.
Asterinas aims to become **a production-grade, memory-safe Linux alternative**,
with performance that matches Linux—and in some scenarios, exceeds it.
The project h