Really excited for the possibilities here.
People undoubtedly thought going for Affine types was too much, and even simple things like null safety or enums-with-values and the prevalence of Result saw debate with minimalists voicing concerns.
A world where you could write a Rust program that is memory leak free with Affine types is one I want to live in. Haskell can do it now, but its just not easy and Rust has beat out Haskell with its mix of ML-strength types and practicality.
IMO these changes maintain Rusts winning mix of academia and practicality. Heres a proof point — dependent types weren't mentioned :)
*linear types (the leak free future bit)
This description is also a good crystallization of why one would want linear types