Torvalds says Linux kernel ‘bloated and huge’

At a roundtable at LinuxCon 2009 Linux creator Linus Torvalds was asked by Novell engineer James Bottomley whether feature sets in the Linux kernel were being released to fast, before the kernal is stabilized. The question came about due to a study that tracked kernel releases that suggested performance had dropped about two percentage points at every release for a total of 12 percent over the last ten releases.

As he was asked if this was a problem Torvalds said “We’re getting bloated and huge. Yes, it’s a problem.

Even as the problem is acknowledged the solution doesn’t seem to be readily available as Torvalds admits as well that there is no plan to try and put the kernel on a “diet”

Asked what the community is doing to solve this, he balked. “Uh, I’d love to say we have a plan,” Torvalds replied to applause and chuckles from the audience. “I mean, sometimes it’s a bit sad that we are definitely not the streamlined, small, hyper-efficient kernel that I envisioned 15 years ago…The kernel is huge and bloated, and our icache footprint is scary. I mean, there is no question about that. And whenever we add a new feature, it only gets worse.”

He maintains, however, that stability is not a problem. “I think we’ve been pretty stable,” he said. “We are finding the bugs as fast as we’re adding them — even though we’re adding more code.”

Bottomley took this to mean that Torvalds views that the current level of integration acceptable under those terms. But Mr. Linux corrected him. “No. I’m not saying that,” Torvalds answered. “Acceptable and avoidable are two different things. It’s unacceptable but it’s also probably unavoidable.”

Source: The Register – Linus calls Linux ‘bloated and huge’

As much a Linux has been praised for its slim and trim operating system the reality is that as more and more is added into the development cycle to keep it modern it is inevitable that it might get a bit paunchy in the midriff.