From the BigMac dept.:
Linus Torvalds, founder of the Linux kernel, made a startling comment at LinuxCon in Portland, Ore., on Monday: "Linux is bloated." While the open-source community has long pointed the finger at Microsoft's Windows as bloated, it appears that with success has come added heft, heft that makes Linux "huge and scary now," according to Torvalds.

...So, while Torvalds declared "We are definitely not the streamlined, hyper-efficient kernel I envisioned when I started writing Linux," Linux is also not the limited-purpose/function kernel he initially envisioned. It's powering everything from corporate data centers to over half of all new smartphones shipped, as the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin noted in his opening keynote.

from C|Net