Linux is bloated, but it works

Linus Torvalds has admitted that the Linux kernel is bloated. It's not a particularly startling admission, because it's obviously true, but also because Torvalds has never been one to use marketing speak. What it doesn't mean is that Linux is bad, or that you shouldn't use it. It works, and that's better than the alternative.

One of the hardest lessons I've learned over the years is "Best is the enemy of good". Like many others, I always look for the perfect solution to a problem, and would quite happily spend ages thinking of answers to every single question, rather than getting on with coding something people can actually use. While trying to create the perfect system is an admirable goal, if it means delivering the code late or not at all, it makes the whole effort pointless.

There are many different ways of explaining this problem. It's called the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule, where 80 percent of the work takes 20 percent of the time, and vice versa. The practical effect is that as a developer you could have delivered some code that met most of the users' requirements in a fifth of the time. Although the urge to create a masterpiece is almost irresistable, resist it you should — you'll just gain a reputation for missing deadlines, not for being a master programmer.

Linux is a perfect example of why it's fine to strive for perfection, but you shouldn't try to design a perfect system before you start building. The GNU operating system was never meant to have this bloated, monolithic kernel at its centre. Instead, a beautifully designed, lightweight microkernel architecture called HURD was supposed to form its core. Many of you will know this already. Virtually none of you will have tried running it, because the code still isn't suitable for production use, despite decades of development.

What's likely to happen to the Linux kernel over time is that someone will develop a way of dealing with the bloat, possibly in an incremental way, but you can't rule out a breakthough by some bright developer. The point is that because the kernel is open source, anyone can have a go at solving the problem, and different ideas can be tried against each other, or even in conjunction. Academic researchers, professional coders or absolute amateurs can pitch in with code.

Is Linux bloated? Yes. Should you worry? No. Will it get fixed? Eventually. The important point is that it's here and it works, and it has lots of users and developers. Open source software lives and dies by its community. That community also causes it to evolve, and that evolution fixes most problems over time.