What Is Linus Torvalds Working On in Linux Today? (And Why There’s Still Plenty to Do)
Linus Torvalds is still “working on Linux,” but not in the way many people imagine (writing most of the code himself). Today, his main job is leading the integration and release process of the Linux kernel—making sure thousands of changes from thousands of developers become one coherent, stable kernel release.
1) What Linus does day-to-day (the practical reality)
A) He’s the top integrator (“the final merge”)
Linux is developed by many subsystem teams (networking, filesystems, scheduler, memory management, drivers, etc.). Those subsystem maintainers collect patches, review them, and then ask Linus to pull their work into the mainline kernel.
Linus’s work is heavily about:
deciding what gets merged now vs later
spotting risky changes or regressions
keeping the overall tree consistent
coordinating with maintainers during conflicts
B) He runs the release cadence (merge window → -rc → final)
Linux has a very structured rhythm:
a merge window where new features land
then multiple release candidates (-rc) where fixes, stabilizing, and regression hunting dominate
You can see how massive this is in practice: for example, an LWN merge-window report for a recent kernel cycle mentions 11,404 non-merge changesets pulled into mainline.
C) He still codes sometimes—but that’s not the core of his value
Linus does patch occasionally, but his highest leverage is architecture-level judgment and keeping the project moving without breaking users.
2) Why is he still working on Linux?
A) Linux needs a final technical “center of gravity”
Linux is one of the largest software projects on Earth. Even with strong subsystem maintainers, someone still needs to:
say “yes / no”
keep standards consistent
prevent fragmentation
enforce “don’t break userspace” culture in practice
That “final integrator” role is exactly what Linus provides through the release process described in the kernel’s own documentation.
B) He’s effectively funded to do it full-time
Linus has long been sponsored (through the Linux Foundation’s ecosystem) so he can focus on kernel maintenance and releases as a full-time job.
C) The job never becomes “done”
Operating systems don’t reach a finish line. Linux sits under:
cloud infrastructure
phones (Android)
enterprise servers
embedded devices
…and all of those environments keep changing.
3) Is there still much to do for Linux?
Yes—because the target keeps moving. The “work” today is less about inventing a kernel from scratch and more about continuous evolution under real-world pressure:
A) Hardware enablement never stops
Every new CPU, GPU, laptop, server platform, NIC, storage controller, and embedded board brings new drivers, quirks, power management behavior, and performance tradeoffs.
B) Security is ongoing (and often reactive)
New classes of CPU flaws and side-channel issues have forced industry-wide mitigations and tradeoffs in performance vs safety—work that lands in kernels over time.
C) Performance and scalability are moving targets
Linux is used from tiny devices to supercomputers. Scaling improvements, scheduler changes, memory-management work, and filesystem performance tuning are never “finished.”
D) Regressions and stability work are constant
A huge part of kernel leadership is minimizing regressions while still shipping improvements. That’s why the -rc phase and the overall development process exist in such a structured way.
E) The project is also evolving how it’s built
The kernel community continues to refine processes, tooling, and even language discussions (for example, ongoing conversations around Rust in the kernel ecosystem are part of the broader modernization effort—regardless of anyone’s personal stance).
4) The simplest answer
Linus is still working on Linux because Linux is not a product you “complete.”
It’s a living foundation underneath modern computing, and his job is to merge, judge, coordinate, and ship changes safely—release after release—so the whole world can keep building on it.