An empirical study of Rust for Linux

The research value of thisUSENIX paper by Hongyu Li et al. is not entirely clear, but it doesshow that the Rust-for-Linux project is gaining wider attention.

Despite more novice developers being attracted by Rust to thekernel community, we have found their commits are mainly forconstructing Rust-relevant toolchains as well as Rust crates alone;they do not, however, take part in kernel code development. Bycontrast, 5 out of 6 investigated drivers (as seen in Table 5) aremainly contributed by authors from the Linux community. Thisimplies a disconnection be- tween the young and the seasoneddevelopers, and that the bar of kernel programming is not loweredby Rust language.

As a bonus, it includes a ChatGPT analysis of LWN and Hacker News comments.