Redox OS with Rust gets X11 support!
Redox OS was an independent operating system that was written with Rust to give you performance while ensuring memory safety thanks to Rust and its goals. It’s a microkernel-based general purpose operating system that aims to be Unix-like. Rust is a programming language that aims to be a memory-safe version of C and C++, while being suitable for most applications.
Recently, Redox OS has gotten X11 support and GTK 3 support according to their official blog post. This was done directly in the Orbital display server, which Redox OS internally uses for the GUI to enable user interaction with common applications, such as web browsers. X11 applications can now run on Redox OS using a separate X11 window!
Conceptually, this is similar to how X11 programs run on Wayland on a conventional Linux system using XWayland. Applying the same concept idea to the Orbital display server with X11 applications, you can now run traditional X11 applications.
The DRI backend? Yes! Redox OS also contains this backend to improve rendering performance, and it improves user experience. However, it doesn’t support full graphics acceleration yet, so you can’t run demanding games on it. The Redox OS team expects that this code will become part of their Wayland support.
The GTK 3 toolkit has been ported to Redox OS to allow GTK 3 applications to run on the X11 server. In the same blog post, they’ve even shared how this support worked, using a demo application that uses GTK 3 with the OpenGL support window open. This is to showcase the huge milestone that Redox OS has gone through.
To download Redox OS, please follow the below links: