Written in the programming language Rust, Redox aims to be a general-purpose operating system that is safe and reliable.

[6][7][8] It is inspired by prior kernels and operating systems, such as SeL4, MINIX, Plan 9, BSD, and Linux.

[11] Redox provides packages (memory allocator, file system, display manager, core utilities, etc.)

[citation needed] Redox includes a command-line interface (CLI) text editor similar to vi, called Sodium.

There are numerous graphical user interface (GUI) applications preloaded including a web browser (NetSurf) that uses its own layout engine, a file manager (File Browser), an ANSI type terminal emulator (Orbterm), and various other tools like a software calculator and text editor.