Memory safe languages that are not garbage collected are not all that common. Ada and Rust are two examples.

With great care C++ and zig can be.

I'm sure there's a good reason a lot of the big players and the community at large have picked up rust though. Docs, error messages, cargo community etc.

I would argue that Rust does bring a lot to the table. I certainly would never code in C for work but I'll happily reach for Rust.

Bruh do you actually not get it. The point of rust is that its memory safe(with a huge grain of salt in the case of low level programming) and is a language you can write kernels in. Youre not gonna write a kernel in C# so it doesnt really matter for a discussion about kernels.

Thank you for the correction, I'll edit my comment.

sometimes the proof that the access is

safe is bevond what the compiler is able to represent

Could you say a few more words about this? In what situations do you have to write 'unsafe-tagged' code blocks? Could this be changed by improvements to the compiler? Or is it necessitated by the type of task being done by the code?