RASR-stack and LASR-stack: Rust-native alternatives to the LAMP stack.

To cut with a LASR or cut with a RASR. That is the question.

R is for Redox

The RASR stack is a 100% pure Rust alternative to the LAMP stack. You start with a Redox server which is cool because it’s a memory safe Rust operating system. Oh and also it’s a microkernel architecture rather than a monolithic kernel like Linux.

(Alternatively) L is for Linux

But if you want to stick with Linux anyway there is a Linux flavor for that. Vanilla OS offers you the familiarity provided by linux with rust utilities and rust-native containerization. The Linux ecosystem’s maturity is worth something in this decision of whether to go 95% rust or 100% rust.

A is for Actix

Actix is is a powerful and highly performant Rust web framework built on the Actix actor system. It will outperform Rocket in just about every way except ease-of-use. Although Actix has a steeper learning curve, there are generative AI copilots for both LASR and RASR-stack that can help assist developers to overcome the learning curve. It’s recommended to start with Actix rather than trying to switch over from Rocket when you want to scale, but you do you. Both Actix and Rocket will generally outperform Apache.

S is for SurrealDB

SurrealDB is more than just a relational database. It’s multi-model which means you aren’t constrained to only relational data, but you can use the same server and semantics for abstracting data. It’s transactionally more efficient for general workloads. It’s very new relative to MySQL or PostgreSQL. It’s very new and using a new RDBMS is in fact surreal. If this is too much of a leap then you could still use Postgres or MySQL (run it yourself or get it as a service from AWS or GCP). There are rust semantics for this. But see how far you can get with SurrealDB first, especially if you are using the database in a straightforward manner without relying on fancy features or if you aren’t yet and maybe don’t even intend on doing anything fancy with the schemas.

R is for Rust

• Performance
• Memory-safety
• Concurrency
• Reliability
• Security
• Better than PHP and Go at their own web game because of these things alone.