Yeah, if you need a linked list (you probably don't) use that. If however you are one of the very small number of people who need fine-grained control over a tailored data-structure with internal cross-references or whatnot then you may find yourself in a world where Rust really does not believe that you know what you are doing and fights you every step of the way. If you actually do know what you are doing, then Zig is probably the best modern choice. The TigerBeetle people chose Zig for these reasons, various resources on the net explain their motivations.

I think that misses the point though. C trusts you to design your own linked list.

It also trusts your neighbor, your kid, your LLM, you, your dog, another linked list...