Marcelo Tosatti

Marcelo Wormsbecker Tosatti (born in 1983 with the Brazil) is one of the Développeur S of the Noyau Linux. He works for the company Red Hat after 3 years at Cyclades and 6 years at Conectiva Inc. Many cores Linux 2.4 bear the name of Marcelo now.

Method of development of the core linux

To include/understand its role, it is necessary to explain the method of development of the core: there is an enormous number of developers, that they are the independent ones (increasingly rare) or large companies like IBM or Red Hat. These developers provide patch are (“rubber patches”, modifications of source code).

The patches are included in the manager of source code of the core and continue their life until new a patch comes to replace the code that they introduced. To coordinate all this flow of patches, it quickly proved that Linus Torvalds all alone was not enough. It was thus surrounded “lieutenants” to do the work, Linus dealing with the version under development (2.6 for the moment).

But which is thus the work of a maintenor of core?

It is precisely to test the patches, to check their validity, to correct the faults of the kernel quickly and to publish a new version when it is time (each one its policy in this very subjective field).

Currently the kernel exists in three versions:

2.2 maintained by Alan Cox
the 2.4 maintained for a long time by Linus, then by Marcelo of 2001 to 2006 (since the 2.4.16 until the 2.4.33), and maintaining by Willy Tarreau
the 2.6 maintained jointly by Linus and Andrew Morton

Its course

Child prodigy

Tossati started to work on the Linux core when it was 14 years old and became the person in charge of the cores of the Conectiva distribution.

The series 2.4.x

The series 2.4.x of the core recently wiped some criticisms due to some bugs. These last being the cause of exits (very) close to new cores. To try to avoid that, Marcelo Tosatti has to decide to employ the following method: 2.4.x-preY as long as new patches is added, 2.4.x-rcZ as long as the additions pose problem. And the last - rc to which nobody finds to repeat is launched as a 2.4.x, without any change.

External bond

Interview of Marcelo Tosatti

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