> I also sorta remember some kernel developers (not necessarily Linux) making a fuss about rustc using a huge amount of address space and not working on 32-bit systems for that reason - although frankly, I can't remember where I read that and I'm starting to question how much I'm misremembering there.
Yep, that's exactly what I was remembering. Though I disagree that rewriting coreutils in Rust is a good place to start, there are definitely some valid points in there. I wonder if the i386 situation has been resolved at this point.
You might be thinking of Theo de Raadt: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=151233345723889&w=2