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linux-magazine.com » Online » News » Linus Torvalds on the Near Future of the Linux Kernel

Linus Torvalds on the Near Future of the Linux Kernel

Nov 27, 2007

Talking in an interview with InformationWeek Linus Torvalds revealed what features and functions we can look forward to from the Linux kernel in the near future, what direction development will take, and what his views are on the continual accusations by Microsoft.

The focus of next year’s work will be improving hardware support, said Torvalds, with work being put into drivers and porting to other platforms. He identified graphics and WLAN drivers as former weak spots with the situation currently improving and likely to continue doing so next year.

What Torvalds is really excited about is the use of solid state disks (SSD) which he anticipates will help to reduce latency in data access, thus having a huge positive impact on the Linux kernel’s latencies. Although virtualization is not one of his favorite topics, Torvalds doesn’t deny that much has been going on in that field.

Torvalds sees Linux’s strength of Linux compared to Windows less in a specific area than in the flexibility of Linux. Virtualization is a good example of this that shows the validity of various different approaches, according to Torvalds. At the same time it demonstrates the true strength of the Open Source model versus single-vendor models.

Asked to comment on Microsoft’s claims that Linux infringes on Microsoft patents, Linus Torvalds response showed that he was fairly confident that there was very little to support the accusations.

(Jan Rähm)

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