10 Linux Kernel & Open Source Facts

Published: Jan 10, 2018
Updated: May 12, 2021
1 minute read

10 Facts About Open Source and the Linux Kernel

10 Facts About Open Source and the Linux Kernel

10 Facts About Open Source and the Linux Kernel

The kernel serves as the foundation for Linux, which runs most of the public cloud. Find out how extensively the open source community supports it.

Dominant Presence

Dominant Presence

The Linux operating system runs 90% of the public cloud workload, 62% of the embedded market share, and 99% of the supercomputer market share.

Massive Collaboration

Massive Collaboration

Since 2005, an estimated 15,600 developers from more than 1,400 companies have contributed to the kernel.

Change Agents

Change Agents

In its history, the kernel has seen 83,000 change sets merged from 4,319 individual developers representing 519 corporations.

Patched Up, Part I

Patched Up, Part I

More than 12,000 patches go into each kernel release.

Patched Up, Part II

Patched Up, Part II

Within the 406 days covered by the report, nearly 83,000 patches were implemented into the kernel.

Accelerated Activity

Accelerated Activity

The kernel currently undergoes 8.5 patches an hour, up from 7.8 patches per hour from roughly a year ago.

Snowball Effect

Snowball Effect

The kernel now represents nearly 25 million lines of code. It started with 10,000.

Prolific Team

Prolific Team

The kernel community adds just over 15 files and nearly 7,500 lines of code every day.

Top Contributor

Top Contributor

Intel has contributed the most to the Linux kernel during this reporting period, with 10,833 changes – or just over 13% of the total changes.

Other Top Contributors

Other Top Contributors

Volunteer contributors: 6,819 changes

Red Hat: 5,965

Linaro: 4,636

Dennis McCafferty

Dennis McCafferty

Content Writer

Dennis McCafferty, a writer for eWeek, Baseline and CIO Insight, has more than 20 years of experience as a writer. He has covered a variety of technology and business topics for a number of publications, including those of Ziff Davis. Dennis was also an editorial staffer for USA Weekend, the nation’s second-largest magazine, with more than 22 million readers.

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