An interview with Linus Torvalds

An interview with Linus Torvalds

Posted Jul 3, 2003 1:07 UTC (Thu) by StevenCole (guest, #3068)
In reply to: An interview with Linus Torvalds by Lovechild
Parent article: An interview with Linus Torvalds

My experience with recent 2.5.x kernels for desktop use has been different. After several hours of heavy use, the 2.5 systems remain responsive, while the default kernels of RedHat 9 and Mandrake 9.1 become less responsive and make more use of swap. The mouse with 2.5 is much slower and I have to increase the pointer acceleration in KDE to make 2.5 useable. Your mileage does vary, and it's important that your issues get resolved.

Linus's dual AMD box from two years ago was assembled about 3 blocks from where I lived at the time. Nice machine then, nice machine now. Recently he's been using a 4-way desktop (according to a post on lkml), so he may not notice some regressions which are evident to others.

As Linus pointed out above:

...it's always hard to anticipate everything that pops up when a lot of new people start moving over from 2.4.x to 2.6.x.

Desktop useability will always be one of the most important things. Maybe Linus will announce 2.6.0-test1 at OLS next month, which will likely increase the number of testers substantially. I hope those testers having difficulties will complain loudly and intelligently enough to be heard.

As mbp noted, distributers can and do provide differing kernels for differing purposes, but this can and should only be carried so far. If the core code diverges too far from what is optimal for desktop use, then maintaining those different kernels will become an increasing burden.

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