The biggest point is in your second paragraph. "The problem really is that the people who want to see Rust in the linux kernel have next to no linux kernel bac

The biggest point is in your second paragraph. "The problem really is that the people who want to see Rust in the linux kernel have next to no linux kernel background and have a poor understanding of how Linux works and how things are generally done." Is this a non topic then? Having drivers in Rust is one thing. Drivers were done in C++ before. But you use a subset because a language targeting kernel needs to use kernel facilities. You won't be able to use your standard library. Syntax needs to be resolved to what kernel provides, or dropped. That's why C++ in kernel never took off that seriously, when you restrict it, and when you already have to accommodate for kernel's "API mindset", what's left of language in between isn't that important.