Linus Torvalds said the development is inevitable.
Linux people are gathered this week for the conference in Portland, Oregon. There was Linux 'origins, Linus Torvalds, interviewed on stage by the "kernel Maintainer" James Bottomley from Novell.
According to the most comprehensive briefs (see Channel Register and Internetnews.com)
Torvalds responded to a question from Bottomley on Linux kernel was updated too quickly and it went out of stability. Bottomley drew up an internal report from Intel that states that Linux's performance falls around 2 percentage points at each major upgrade of the kernel, so it is reduced by a total of 12 percent in the last 10 updates, and asked if this is a problem.
Torvalds replied as follows:
- We inflate, and yes, there is a problem. It would be nice if I could say that we have a plan [to do something about it]. I mean, sometimes it seems a little sad that the head is not the streamlined and hyper-efficient kernel that I saw for me 15 years ago. The core is huge and bloated.
Linus Torvalds is happy over the way Linux is developed, even if the system has been "huge and bloated." According to PC Pro was the nucleus of 176 250 lines of code in 1994, when Linux 1.0 was published. Version 2.6.40 which came in June this year consisted of 11 637 173 lines of code. A significant factor is the drivers for all the world's hardware. The comparison of Windows - Vista will include up to 50 million lines of code - is not entirely fair, since the Linux kernel does not contain either user interface or all the applications that Microsoft has made a part of their operating system.
Torvalds added that the development is probably inevitable, but that stability is not a problem, since the system debug in about the same rate as it grows. All in all, he is pleased with the ongoing development of Linux. He also said that his job as manager of the core is actually easier in recent months. The reason is that donors have followed his directions, making it faster to add new code into the kernel.
One of the things Torvalds has asked developers to sharpen up on, are explanations of what the code does. He said that he need such explanations to be sure that the code he put into responding to what users want. Now, he notes that his job has become so much easier that he can come with their own code occasionally.
