Some very fair points! I think there's more warts in Rust than just these, but if indeed Rust can be incorporated into Linux sanely and productively, I think it

Some very fair points! I think there's more warts in Rust than just these, but if indeed Rust can be incorporated into Linux sanely and productively, I think it will be a net positive. I respectfully disagree on the Haskell front. C is a significantly better known language then Rust, but you're advocating for Rust due to certain memory guarantees it provides. I think a similar argument can be made for languages like Haskell, and the formal mathematical guarantees they provide. Interestingly, Haskell was the language used to prototype seL4, which was then rewritten in C for performance, but the logic of the original Haskell implementation was used to formally verify parts of the later C one.[0] Imho, Rust is a (fantastic) attempt to make Algolians safer, but strictly functional languages like Haskell obviate many of the issues of Algolian languages in the first place. On your last point, I'm unsure there's really much interest in making the next Linux, outside major corps who bristle at the GPL - e.g. Google's Zircon, notably written in C and C++ and first deployed in 2021. I think kernel dev largely divides into two camps: (i) hobbyist / academic kernels, which will be a homecoming parade of languages and designs (and rightly so); and (ii) production kernels, of which there are very few, written in C and C-likes, and conservative by design. Anything too new and unusual should probably prove its mettle in the former group before it graduates into the latter. [0] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1159842.1159850 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1159842.1159850