Linux Kernel Grows Past 15 Million Lines of Code

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The Linux kernel source code has grown by more than 50-percent in size over the past 39 months, and will cross a total of 15 million lines with the upcoming version 3.3 release.

According to a post by The H, about three quarters of the Linux kernel code are drivers, file systems and architecture-specific code, while there are plenty of comments and blank lines as well.

The first release of Linux had just 10,000 lines of code, while version 1.0.0 had grown to 176,250 lines by March 1994. In 2001 or about a decade ago, the Linux kernel (2.4) had about 2.4 million lines of code.

In an interview with German newspaper Zeit Online, Torvalds recently stated that Linux has become "too complex" and he was concerned that developers would not be able to find their way through the software anymore. He complained that even subsystems have become very complex and he told the publication that he is "afraid of the day" when there will be an error that "cannot be evaluated anymore."

Douglas Perry
56 Comments Comment from the forums
  • nforce4max
    Now that is a lot of code :s
    Reply
  • fyend
    So now Linux is bloatware?
    Reply
  • The Greater Good
    fyendSo now Linux is bloatware?

    I came to joke about this. ::Shakes fist::
    Reply
  • Yep, Linux is bloatware today. Linus Torvalds confirmed this some years ago. It is not slim and fast, it has dropped 10% performance since the latest versions, Intel Corp says:
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/22/linus_torvalds_linux_bloated_huge/
    Reply
  • eddieroolz
    Oh my, 15 million lines of code. Still pales in comparison to Windows though - which is good, given Linux's focus on weight.
    Reply
  • Thunderfox
    So they have about one user for every million lines of code, then?
    Reply
  • rantoc
    The fate of all software, always adding features and end up bloated. Nothing new sadly!
    Reply
  • Camikazi
    eddieroolzOh my, 15 million lines of code. Still pales in comparison to Windows though - which is good, given Linux's focus on weight.Give it time and it will be like Windows (which isn't slow really, my Windows 7 clean install boots in almost the same amount of time as my Ubuntu clean install). But that will be the fate of Linux, or any OS, if they wish to be easier to use and more widely adopted, they must make installs easier and to do that as many systems must work on first install as possible and that means bloated code. Make fun of Windows all you want, but MS already knew that to make things simple the software had to get bigger.
    Reply
  • LORD_ORION
    So what he really needs to do is make a new OS.
    Reply
  • anonymous_user
    eddieroolzOh my, 15 million lines of code. Still pales in comparison to Windows though - which is good, given Linux's focus on weight.Keep in mind you are comparing a kernel to a full-blown OS.
    Reply