Obviously it’s a skill issue but don’t you ever make mistakes? If Rust prevents some bugs and makes you more productive, what is not to like? It’s a new language and takes time to learn but the benefits seem to outweigh the downsides now and certainly in the long run (compared to C at least).

Maybe Torvalds didn’t give in to public opinion but made an informed choice?

The crates are a bit of a problem and I think Rust is a bit overhyped for high-level problems (it still requires manual memory management after all) but those are not principal roadblockers, especially in the kernel.

There is also AppImage Launcher which works nicely for me. It automatically integrates AppImages into the DE (e.g. search and start menu) and a few other nice things.

https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher

I assume you mean casualties? In that case outright deaths would be approximately a third of that.