> Also you can't do self-referential strutcs.

You mean in safe rust? You can definitely do self-referential structs with unsafe and Pin to make a safe API. Heck every future generated by the compiler relies on this.

There's going to be ~zero benefit of Rust safety mechanisms in the kernel, which I anticipate will be littered with the unsafe sections. I personally see this move not as much technical as I see it as a political lobbying one (US gov). IMHO for Linux kernel development this is not a good news since it will inevitably introduce friction in development and consequently reduce the velocity, and most likely steer away certain amount of long-time kernel developers too.