Published at LXer:

Linux creator Linus Torvalds says the open source OS has become "bloated and huge," with no midriff-slimming diet plan in sight. During a roundtable discussion at LinuxCon in Portland, Oregon this afternoon, moderator and Novell distinguished engineer James Bottomley asked Tovalds whether Linux kernel features were being released too fast, before the kernel is stabilized. Citing an internal Intel study that tracked kernel releases, Bottomley said Linux performance had dropped about two per centage points at every release, for a cumulative drop of about 12 per cent over the last ten releases. "Is this a problem?" he asked. "We're getting bloated and huge. Yes, it's a problem," said Torvalds.

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Interesting, but I saw many benchmarks that said newer kernels had increased performance ... weird. Won't it help if you compile your own slim kernel ?

"Bloated" seems to be a very fashionable word. I've noticed it a lot in LQ posts.

Hi,

I just read 'Linux is Bloated, Just Not How You Think'. Linus has some good insight as to the way the kernel has grown. '5MB' doesn't seem so large but the Linux Kernel has doubled in code lines. Too have a piece of code double in size with so many developers involved one would expect errors. But most errors that were experienced were snipped quick.

I found the article very interesting and resourceful.