The size of the Linux kernel has reached a milestone of 40 million lines of source code. Of the 40 million lines, 24 million relate to driver code (for instance, the AMD GPU driver code accounts for about 5 million lines), and 4.4 million are specific to various hardware architectures (approximately 500 thousand lines are used to support the x86 architecture).
As of July 2024, the size of the kernel has increased by 5 million lines. The 30 million line mark was passed in the summer of 2022, 20 million lines in the fall of 2015, and 10 million in the fall of 2008. In comparison, the 0.0.1 kernel release included only 10 thousand lines of code, while 1.0.0 included 176 thousand lines.
Growth dynamics of the code base (number of lines of source code) of the kernel:
- 0.0.1 β September 1991, 10 thousand lines of code;
- 1.0.0 β March 1994, 176 thousand lines of code;
- 1.2.0 β March 1995, 311 thousand lines of code;
- 2.0.0 β June 1996, 778 thousand lines of code;
- 2.2.0 β January 1999, 1.8 million lines of code;
- 2.4.0 β January 2001, 3.4 million lines of code;
- 2.6.0 β December 2003, 5.9 million lines of code;
- 2.6.28 β December 2008, 10.2 million lines of code;
- 2.6.35 β August 2010, 13.4 million lines of code;
- 3.0 β August 2011, 14.6 million lines of code;
- 3.5 β July 2012, 15.5 million lines of code;
- 3.10 β July 2013, 15.8 million lines of code;
- 3.16 β August 2014, 17.5 million lines of code;
- 4.1 β June 2015, 19.5 million lines of code;
- 4.7 β July 2016, 21.7 million lines of code;
- 4.12 β July 2017, 24.1 million lines of code;
- 4.18 β August 2018, 25.3 million lines of code;
- 5.2 β July 2019, 26.55 million lines of code;
- 5.8 β August 2020, 28.4 million lines of code;
- 5.13 β June 2021, 29.2 million lines of code;
- 5.19 β August 2022, 30.5 million lines of code;
- 6.4 β June 2023, 32.9 million lines of code.
- 6.10 β July 2024, 35.1 million lines of code.
- 6.13 β January 2025, 39.8 million lines of code.
As one option to reduce the kernel's code base, it was proposed to separate drivers into a separate repository, but this proposal is not being seriously considered due to complicating the processes of testing and quality assurance, as well as arising additional labor costs for synchronizing software interfaces. When developing drivers within the main kernel, many regressions affecting drivers are immediately identified during the review process by accompanying reviewers. In the case of separated development, there is a danger that less attention will be paid to the driver code.
Source: opennet.ru
