Companies Join Hobbyists in Building a Better Linux

It was a little before 10 p.m. the last Saturday of March, after Greg Kroah-Hartman's kids had gone to sleep in their home in Washington County when he opened his laptop and realized his problem was bigger than he thought. A string of e-mails from fellow software developers shared dismaying news: The latest version of the Linux kernel had unleashed a bug that was causing some computers in Europe to freeze up when their owners plugged in peripheral devices such as a joystick, webcam or printer. The software code that makes up the kernel is the foundation of the operating system. All other software in the system depends on it.

Kroah-Hartman, whose business card reads "Kernel Hacker, Linux Technology Center, IBM," knew he wouldn't be going to bed for a while.

"The severity was very high," Kroah-Hartman said. "I realized I had better fix this."

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