Rust support hits linux-next

But does it also provide more control over the machine code that's generated?

I've come to the conclusion that a good low-level language "does not give the compiler much opportunity to optimise well-written code". It seems most problems with C (for the kernel at least) are caused by the compiler optimising the hell out of it.

So long as high-level constructs map cleanly to the obvious underlying machine/assembler code, I'd call that a "good low-level language".

Cheers,
Wol