Kernel quality control, or the lack thereof
This is nothing new. I followed kernel development pretty closely about a decade ago and I was honestly very disappointed in what I saw. It's all about features, features, features, and there's almost no testing beyond "well, it works on <i>my</i> machine". It's kind of ironic that Linux has become the C++ of kernels, given Linus's feelings about C++: a giant pile of features, many of which nobody really understands, that can have some really weird corner case interactions.<p>I switched to FreeBSD as a result of my time reading LKML. The BSDs seem, at least to me, to be more designed rather than thrown together; but maybe I just haven't spent enough time watching their sausage get made.<p>Hopefully now that a senior kernel developer (Chinner) is saying some of these things publicly, things can get better. But a culture change of the magnitude needed will not come quickly.