Our Goals

Redox is an attempt to make a complete, fully-functioning, general-purpose operating system with a focus on safety, freedom, reliability, correctness, and pragmatism.

We want to be able to use it, without obstructions, as an alternative to Linux/BSD in our computers. It should be able to run most Linux/BSD programs with minimal modifications.

We're aiming towards a complete, safe Rust ecosystem. This is a design choice, which hopefully improves correctness and security (see Why Rust).

We want to improve the security design when compared to other Unix-like operating systems by using safe defaults and limiting insecure configurations where possible.

The non-goals of Redox

We are not a Linux/BSD clone, or POSIX-compliant, nor crazy scientists, who wish to redesign everything. Generally, we stick to well-tested and proven correct designs. If it ain't broken don't fix it.

This means that a large number of programs and libraries will be compatible with Redox. Some things that do not align with our design decisions will have to be ported.

The key here is the trade off between correctness and compatibility. Ideally, you should be able to achieve both, but unfortunately, you can't always do so.