10 Facts About Open Source and the Linux Kernel
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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
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
Since 2005, an estimated 15,600 developers from more than 1,400 companies have contributed to the kernel. -
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
More than 12,000 patches go into each kernel release. -
Patched Up, Part II
Within the 406 days covered by the report, nearly 83,000 patches were implemented into the kernel. -
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
The kernel now represents nearly 25 million lines of code. It started with 10,000. -
Prolific Team
The kernel community adds just over 15 files and nearly 7,500 lines of code every day. -
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
Volunteer contributors: 6,819 changes
Red Hat: 5,965
Linaro: 4,636
If you were ever curious about how many developers and companies have contributed to the Linux kernel during its more than a quarter century of existence - in addition to a wealth of other interesting statistics about the kernel - then you'll want to check out this list of 10 "fun facts" from The Linux Foundation. In its "2017 Linux Kernel Development Report," the foundation has compiled data related to the kernel's patching activity, code development and other key details about the kernel, which remains a pioneering operating system for open source. Released by Linus Torvalds in 1991, the kernel manages the hardware, runs user programs, and maintains the overall security and integrity of Linux. This particular report is the eighth in a series of regular updates, which has been published roughly annually since 2008. It covers development over a period of 406 days, up through the 4.13 release (which came out on September 3, 2017). "The Linux kernel is one of the largest and most successful open source projects that has ever come about," according to the report, which is co-authored by Jonathan Corbet, Linux kernel developer and editor of LWN.net, and Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux kernel maintainer and Linux Foundation fellow. "The huge rate of change and number of individual contributors show that it has a vibrant and active community, constantly causing the evolution of the kernel in response to number of different environments it is used in. This rate of change continues to increase, as does the number of developers and companies involved in the process; thus far, the development process has proved that it is able to scale up to higher speeds without trouble." For more about the report, click here
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