On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 7:17 AM, J.R. Mauro <jrm8005@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 9:12 PM, andrey mirtchovski
<mirtchovski@gmail.com> wrote:
> it's on slashdot, it must be true:
>
> "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."

And instead of revising the design, I think we're going to see them go
for the 2-percent speedups here and there.

Another thing they won't consider is having separate versions for
high-end servers and PCs. I don't understand why Torvalds thinks Linux
has to be all things to all people.

Having used uClinux on an embedded platform, my only advice is "for the love of god don't do that!!!".

It's not that good software can't be written for it, it's that people think they're writing linux programs that the compatible APIs seem to almost encourage one to write, and the net result is chaos and debugging nightmares.

If I ever get to sound off on an embedded platform choice again, uClinux is not going to be near the top of my list.

If you want linux, make sure the target has an MMU. That's all :-)

Dave

>
> well, not really slashdot:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/22/linus_torvalds_linux_bloated_huge/
>
> Ron, did you throw anything at Linus while you were there? :)
>
>