Stefan Mileschin

Linux guru Linus Torvalds has been meditating and come to the conclusion that his kernel has become too big and will have to be thrown over his shoulder when he goes to the beach.

RC 7 for Version 3.5 of the kernel is being shown off and Torvalds is frightened that it will scare the children and a few horses.

A host of small modifications and a large number of system-on-a-chip and PowerPC fixes have made the beast too big to bear.

He only received them on Friday and Saturday and he said that this was "not cool, guys."

The biggest bugbear are the assorted changes for SoCs, PowerPC compatibility, USB and audio which have to be folded in, forcing a comparatively large RC7.

He said that it was bigger than -rc6 was and he hoped for less.

Torvalds is worried that he might have to deploy an eighth release candidate before Version 3.5 of the kernel can be properly rolled out, and urged the community to "go forth and test."

Linux 3.5 is expected to place nice with the ARM processor family, which are used in a wide array of low-cost computing devices. Several ARM-related fixes are part of 3.5-RC7, according to the official announcement email and changelog.

http://news.techeye.net/software/tor...nel-is-too-big