Linux Kernel Founder Explains Why he Prefers X86 Over ARM

Linus Torvalds, the Linux Kernel creator is one of the most influential figures of the technological age and paramount to the Linux’s success. During the Linaro Connect conference, Linus answered a question quite directly about his favourite chip architecture and said:

“What matters is all the infrastructure around the instruction set, and x86 has all that infrastructure… at a lot of different levels,”

 “It’s opening a way that no other architecture is.”

Then, Linus went on to criticise the fragmentation in the ARM platform and lack of a unified approach:

“Being compatible just wasn’t as big of a deal for the ARM ecosystem as it has been traditionally for the x86 ecosystem,”

“I’ve been personally pretty disappointed with ARM as a hardware platform, not as an instruction set, though I’ve had my issues there, too,”

“As a hardware platform, it is still not very pleasant to deal with.”

This is a very interesting response and it’s clear that Linus believes the X86 architecture has the better overall package and support. Whether or not these comments are shared by many, remain to be seen but I think Linus’ viewpoint has some validity to it.

Do you prefer X86 or ARM chips?

Image courtesy of Atcoltec.