Linus Torvalds On Dogfooding The Linux Kernel

Besides Linus Torvalds examining various elements of code he's merging and build testing it on his AMD Ryzen Threadripper workstation and now also testing more on ARM64 with Ampere Altra, he does these days still believe in "dogfooding" and is in fact running the leading-edge Linux kernel code even during the merge window.

For those curious how much Linus Torvalds is running "on the edge" of the Linux kernel code even during the very busy merge window: yes, he's still doing so as a big proponent of dogfooding.

During a mailing list discussion yesterday when working through issues that came up from the DRM graphics driver updates for Linux 6.10, he commented on his current dogfooding approach to the Linux kernel:

[DRM maintainer David Airlie] This worries me actually, it's possible this warn could cause a problem, but I'm not convinced it should have machine ending properties without some sort of different error at the end, so I'd keep an eye open here.

[Linus Torvalds] Well, since I'm a big believer in dogfooding, I always run my own kernel even during the merge window. I don't reboot between each pull, but I try to basically reboot daily.

So there you have it, yes, Linus does continue dogfooding the Linux kernel even during the very busy two week merge window periods where lots of new code (and bugs) are introduced. As for the bug being discussed yesterday the belief was attributed ultimately to Btrfs or the new DRM buddy clear page tracking code. There's already a new pull with a DRM buddy allocator fix.