Memory safety would be the main advantage.

It's a better, more modern language in general. It has way better tooling (better, more user friendly compiler, better package manager), really good set of modern features (null-safety, good error handling, type-classes, algebraic types), it's easier to modularize your code (workspaces, modules). Rust does a lot of things right and is fun to work with. That's why it's the most liked language overall. It's not hype, it really is that good. It will just make working on the kernel easier. And on top of that it offers some memory safety and concurrency features.

P.S. I forgot about amazing documentation. Again, way better then what you can find for C.

P.P.S Zero cost abstractions.

I've been watching Asahi Lina develop a big GPU driver for Apple silicon and development was so much faster because a whole category of bugs were largely absent once the code compiled, and memory issues are notoriously difficult to fix. Also error handling is easier and much cleaner.

She wrote about it here and here.

Security? Probably. I wouldn't expect any measurable improvements to performance but the with compiler being able to do more checks it might enable some clever optimization trickery that would be harder to maintain in C.

Still, Rust on the kernel probably won't leave the realm of drivers any time soon, so it all depends on if you have the hardware that will use a driver written in Rust.

Memory safety is likely to prevent a lot of bugs. Not necessarily in the kernel proper, I honestly don't see it being used widely there for a while.

In third party drivers is where I see the largest benefit; there are plenty of manufacturers who will build a shitty driver for their device, say that it targets Linux 4.19, and then never support/update it. I have seen quite a few third party drivers for my work and I am not impressed; security flaws, memory leaks, disabling of sensible warnings. Having future drivers written in rust would force these companies to build a working driver that didn't require months of trawling through to fix issues.

Now that I think about it, in 10 years I'll probably be complaining about massive unsafe blocks everywhere...

Performance? Not really no. I believe C is slightly faster with Rust and C++ competing for second place. The benefit is safer code as Rust is built with performance and safety in mind. It highlights what potential errors can be found where making human error way less common. Instead of potential null errors types are wrapped in an option enumerator which ensures you know there can be a lack of a value. Expections are also enumerators done similarly with a result object so you know which functions may fail. Instead of using memory and potentially forgetting to free it we have the ownership system.

Potentially stability improvements as well (for the same reasons as the security improvements), especially for lesser used drivers and stuff.

Yes, enhanced security is pretty much the entire pitch of Rust. There wouldn't be any reason for it to result in performance enhancements, though.

I would choose zig over rust; while zig isn’t as safe as rust (nor is that zig’s aim) zig also is also safer than C. Zig still has a bit to go.

Also rust compile times … in the kernel … that might matter more?