CentOS creator builds Ginux kernel in 11 days: Codex wrote 139,000 lines of Rust
JFPuget · x · 2026-10-30
Gregory Kurtzer, creator of CentOS and Rocky Linux, says Ginux isn't a Linux competitor but an experiment: "the code is disposable — the development process was the experiment, the kernel was the evidence."
Key facts:
- In 11 days, a single persistent coding-agent task produced an independent Rust-first x86-64 kernel (139,000 lines), with Kurtzer guiding design and Codex writing/testing the code
- Ginux boots via UEFI, implements its own memory management, scheduler and networking, plus a Linux compatibility layer, and boots Rocky Linux 10 with systemd in a VM
- A Zenodo report documents the method, dubbed Human-Directed Agentic Engineering (HDAE): humans define architecture, constraints, milestones, acceptance criteria and stopping points; the agent runs autonomous implementation-execution-diagnosis-revision loops
- Open sourced under Apache 2.0; still an experimental prototype with incomplete compatibility, and community bug/security review is already underway
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