My advice on implementing stuff in C:

> Yes, glib is used all over the place these days. syslog-ng and dbus aren't desktop programs by any means.

They are still definitely user space though. If you are careful, C++ can be used for driver or even kernel code (e.g. the TU-Dresden implementation of the L4 micro-kernel with its unfortunate name was implemented in C++). Perhaps GLib would be too with a bit of work on it, I haven't used it enough to know.