Is the Linux kernel getting buggier? According to Andrew Morton, the lead maintainer of the Linux 2.6 kernel, in a CNET report from the LinuxTag conference in Germany, theres getting to be too much bad code in the kernel.
“I believe the 2.6 kernel is slowly getting buggier. It seems were adding bugs at a higher rate than were fixing them,” said Morton.
Indeed, Morton thinks that so many bugs are entering the kernel that “We may possibly have a bug fix-only kernel cycle, which is purely for fixing up long-standing bugs.”
But, is it really that bad?
Morton himself admits that this is simply his impression, and that he has no hard proof that the bug rate is actually increasing.
This isnt the first time that Morton has publicly been concerned about bugs in the kernel. Last year, in Canberra, Australia, he said that more attention needed to be paid to testing to avoid bugs proliferating in the kernel.
Theres also a question as to whether some of these “bugs” are what most people would consider bugs.
Morton sees a failure to support “a 5-year-old peripheral that no one is selling any more,” but is still being used, as a bug. To me, this seems more like a backwards compatibility concern rather than a bug.
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