Linus Torvalds: 'Linux is bloated'

[Darryl Moore]

There is always Minix for those who don't want bloat in their kernel, or
any one of several uKernels too, like uCOS or FreeRTOS.

Of course the trade offs as usual are less support for variety of
hardware and less runtime flexibility.

Linux has grown from a hacker kernel to a full fledged general purpose
operating system.

I think the real question is "Is Linux bloated for what it is NOW?" Not
what it was when Torvald started. The answer to this question will be in
the comparison of it to other OSes like OSX, Windows, Solaris, etc...
Don't compare it to what it was.



Jamon Camisso wrote:
> Michael Lauzon wrote:
>> Interesting but extremely short article, here's a clip, the URL will
>> follow:
>>
>> "Linus Torvalds, founder of the Linux kernel, made a startling comment
>> at LinuxCon in Portland, Ore., on Monday: "Linux is bloated." While
>> the open-source community has long pointed the finger at Microsoft's
>> Windows as bloated, it appears that with success has come added heft,
>> heft that makes Linux "huge and scary now," according to Torvalds.
>>
>> "Has Linux failed?"
>>
>> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10358024-16.html
> 
> If you had to support as much hardware as the kernel does, you'd be
> bloated too no? Moreover, OSX isn't so tiny either compared to a Debian
> kernel and my initrd:
> 
> jamon at phaedrus ~ $ ls -alh /mnt/mach_kernel
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9.9M 2008-09-03 14:32 /mnt/mach_kernel
> 
> jamon at phaedrus ~ $ ls -alh /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.30-1-amd64
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.2M 2009-08-15 14:16 /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.30-1-amd64
> 
> jamon at phaedrus ~ $ ls -alh /boot/initrd.img-2.6.30-1-amd64
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11M 2009-09-22 12:11 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.30-1-amd64
> 
> Jamon
> -- 
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists