Does [mainstream Linux] strike you as bloated, and possibly quite insecure?
>pic related
>the modern kernel has +4 million lines of code
Some quotes by Linus:
>The kernel is huge and bloated, and our icache footprint is scary. I mean, there is no question about that. And whenever we add a new feature, it only gets worse
>I think we've been pretty stable," he said. "We are finding the bugs as fast as we're adding them — even though we're adding more code."
>Torvalds said he'd love for Linux to shrink in size "We've been bloating the kernel over the last 20 years, but hardware has grown faster".
>Linus Torvalds stated that Linux has become "too complex" and he was concerned that developers would not be able to find their way through the software anymore. He complained that even subsystems have become very complex and he told the publication that he is "afraid of the day" when there will be an error that "cannot be evaluated anymore.
Kernel dev Andrew Morton:
>I used to think code quality was in decline, and I think that I might think that it still is. I see so many regressions which we never fix.
Then we have the issue of systemd. Many threads exist on that topic already.
The reason I'm thinking about this is that every time I'm setting up a Linux server, I am daunted by the sheer scale of the system. There are kernel subprocesses that have no available documentation, and endless configuration files. A debian server of mine has like 50 running processes currently.
How am I supposed to keep tabs on the system, beyond data-sniffing everything that passes to and from it? How am I supposed to identify malware for example in this kind of setting? It feels like it's based off insecurity through obscurity. When doing system hardening, it feels like I'm mounting high-tech defenses on a glass castle built on pillars of sand.
>queue the ebin "install gentoo"/"install openbsd" comments