Asterinas: OS kernel written in Rust and providing Linux-compatible ABI

Decades ago Linus Torvalds was asked in an interview if he feared Linux to be replaced by something new. His answer was that some day someone young and hungry would come along, but unless they liked writing device drivers Linux would be safe.

This is all paraphrased from my memory, so take it with a grain of salt. I think the gist of it is still valid: Projects like Asterinas are interesting and have a place, but they will not replace Linux as we have it today.

(Asterinas, from what I understood, doesn't claim to replace Linux, but it a common expectation.)

I feel like there's a potentially large audience for a kernel that targets running in a VM. For a lot of workloads, a simple VM kernel could be a win.

How is that different from Linux with all virtio drivers? (You can just not compile real hardware drivers)