CentOS and Rocky Linux Creator Builds Ginux Kernel in 11 Days Using AI

Gregory Kurtzer, creator of CentOS and founder of Rocky Linux, built Ginux, a from-scratch Rust-first x86-64 kernel that is ABI-compatible with Linux, in 11 days. The code was generated by a persistent OpenAI Codex task on the GPT-5.6 Sol model using the Human-Directed Agentic Engineering methodology.

Compiled by Sergey KostenchukPublished 2026-10-28Updated 2026-10-28

2026-10-28 Coding OpenAI

💻 CentOS and Rocky Linux Creator Builds Ginux Kernel in 11 Days Using AI

Gregory Kurtzer wrote a Rust-first x86-64 kernel from scratch — not a Linux fork, but ABI-compatible with it. The code was generated by an OpenAI Codex agent on GPT-5.6 Sol using the HDAE methodology: humans define the architecture, constraints, and acceptance criteria. The result is approximately 139,000 lines of code and 1,097 commits.

🌍 A coding agent under expert supervision can produce in days what used to take teams years, but there are limits: only 82 of the 375 Linux 6.12 system calls have been implemented, and security and hardware support remain a "moat" for Linux.

👤 The code is open under the Apache 2.0 license: the gmkurtzer/ginux repository runs in QEMU (make doctor, make run). The system starts unmodified Alpine programs and Rocky Linux 10 userspace with systemd via UEFI. This is currently a prototype: there is no GPU, NVMe, or security audit.

Source 1: https://itsfoss.com/news/ginux/ Source 2: https://github.com/gmkurtzer/ginux

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