Yes, I understand that.
Please correct me if I’m wrong (I’m still new to Linux), but isn’t KDE and Gnome simply the interface layer? In other words the desktop atmosphere, etc.?
As far as the kernel, it sounds like he only made driver upgrades and a few other tweaks.
The least he could have done is put the new KDE-4 or Gnome-3 face on it.
You’re talking applications. They kernel is code that all the applications run on.
Linus: NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. Sure, we have the usual two thirds driver changes, and a lot of random fixes, but the point is that 3.0 is *just* about renumbering, we are very much *not* doing a KDE-4 or a Gnome-3 here.
Linus’s point escaped the original poster. Of course the kernel is the kernel and doesn’t have a desktop environment etc. What Linus was saying here is that 3.0 is evolutionary, not revolutionary - not that you can even speak in the same breath of a kernel and a desktop environment. The kernel can happily run in console mode and not have Gnome or KDE, or the kernel can happily run with some other desktop environment - basically the kernel doesn’t care.