Philip Copeland

Surely with its army of kernel hackers and proofreaders, the Linux kernel should be close to perfect. The reality is that most kernel hackers focus on only a piece of the kernel - VM, disk I/O, a particular driver, or some part of the network stack - and mistakes are made through oversight or because a certain condition wasn't given its due. Everyone also has slightly different hardware and support chipsets, so it's not feasible for kernel writers to test on the entire range of available hardware. As a result, kernel writers depend heavily on accurate bug reports sent back upstream after mini-releases. Because Linux is distributed as highly configurable source code, it needs to be tested with many different options to find combinations that stimulate bugs. Many operating system vendors only certify their product for a limited set of base options and hardware setups.... (more)