Linux kernel speeds up on the desktop

LINUX HACKERS working on the next version of the Linux kernel claim that some new improvements will speed up the OS on the desktop.

While many Linux geeks were looking forward to USB 3.0 support and new Firewire drivers, kernel developers have also been working on improvements to desktop interactivity, particularly when the OS is under memory pressure.

Currently desktop software slows down when its path jumps to a part of the code that is not cached in memory and needs to be paged-in from disk. That can be caused by poor memory management that doesn't scale all that well in the desktop environment.