This is what makes the Linux kernel great, if nothing else

Jan 22, 2015 10:58 GMT  ·  By

The Linux kernel is a very advanced piece of software that is able not only to cater to all the current hardware needs but also to run on hardware that was decommissioned and is no longer produced for more than twenty years.

Linus Torvalds is always happy when developers propose the removal of code from the kernel, especially buggy or unused one, but he has a very strict policy. As long as there is at least one user that benefits from ancient support for some particular technology, it won't remove the kernel.

In fact, the Linux kernel would be a lot thinner if developers just removed all the bits that are no longer used, but the development process has been going on for so long and there is support provided for tens of thousands of various hardware devices and specifications. It would be a monumental effort to go through each one and see what is still in use and what's not.

Linus still has the last word

Linus Torvalds created the Linux kernel and he still has the last word, especially when it comes to the latest version. He pulls in the patches for each release and he makes sure that everything is in place. Right now, the 3.19 branch is the latest one being worked on. Apparently, he received a removal request for the old EISA FDDI (more than 20 years old), but he refused it, showing that there was still one guy left on the planet using it.

"Well, I'd like to keep my x86 box up and alive, to support EISA FDDI equipment I maintain if nothing else -- which in particular means the > current head version of Linux, not some ancient branch," said Maciej W. Rozycki, the one user that actually needs EISA support.

"So if we actually have a user, and it works, then no, we're not removing EISA support. It's not like it hurts us or is in some way fundamentally broken, like the old i386 code was (i386 kernel page fault semantics really were broken, and the lack of some instructions made it more painful to maintain than needed - not like EISA at all, which is just a pure add-on on the side)," also commented Linus.