Okay, what actually uses Rust

Rust is no longer a niche passion project. It’s creeping into the plumbing of modern software — from kernels to cloud services. A recent roundup on Lobsters and the Goose blog assembled a long, non‑exhaustive list of notable projects and companies using Rust, and the scope surprised even some seasoned devs. Who’s on it? Pretty much everyone you’d expect… and a few you might not.

The full list

Highlights read like a who’s who of infrastructure: the Linux kernel has supported Rust since 6.1 (stable by 6.19), and it has been reported that Windows 11 already ships Rust components. Chromium integrates Rust, Ubuntu is adopting Rust coreutils, and big tools like ripgrep, swc (the JS compiler used by Next.js and Vercel), Deno, Tauri and Alacritty are all Rust‑first. Major players—Cloudflare (Pingora), Discord (migrating parts from Go), Valve Proton, Dropbox, AWS (via Firecracker and Rust in some Lambda containers), Apple (cloud backend) and Google—appear on the list, too. It has been reported that government and standards bodies are nudging the shift: the NSA and NIST highlight memory‑safe languages, and some public communications suggest the White House favors accelerating memory‑safe tooling adoption.

Why this matters

This isn’t just language churn. Rust’s adoption across browsers, OS components, cloud services and developer tools signals a real bet on memory safety and performance. Does this mean Rust is now as ubiquitous as C++ or Java? Not yet. It’s crossed the chasm into mainstream systems work, but market share and ecosystem depth still trail older incumbents. For Rust enthusiasts, that tension is the emotional core: pride at real wins, impatience for wider library and tooling maturity.

The list will keep growing. The Goose post promises updates, and readers are invited to add missing projects. Call it the slow, steady colonization of critical software by a younger language — careful, meticulous, and a little stubborn. If you’re worried about safety, leaks, or scary segfaults, Rust’s footprint across everything from WASM tooling to cloud infra is a comforting sign that the industry is changing its mind about “fast but unsafe.”

Sources: blog.goose.love, Lobsters