Linux Memory Had One Maintainer for 26 Years. He Just Quit. Now What? | by Can Artuc | May, 2026 | MediumSitemapOpen in appSign up<br>Sign in

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Linux Memory Had One Maintainer for 26 Years. He Just Quit. Now What?

One person held the code that runs every Android phone, cloud server, and supercomputer for 26 years. On April 21, he posted one message and then was silent.

Can Artuc

8 min read·<br>May 21, 2026

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Photo by Jordan Seott on UnsplashTwenty-six years. One maintainer.<br>Every Android phone, every cloud server, every supercomputer on the planet depends on a single kernel subsystem to allocate, reclaim, and protect its memory. 164 source files, all interlinked. 17.9% of all Linux kernel security vulnerabilities between 2020 and 2024 came from this code.<br>One person reviewed the code going into this subsystem for 26 years.<br>On April 21, 2026, that person posted a message to the kernel mailing list saying he intended to begin stepping away.<br>Almost no one responded.<br>Two weeks later, at a developer summit in Zagreb, the memory management team tried to figure out how to replace him. They couldn’t.<br>The Colonel of the Kernel

Credit: Author, Andrew Morton’s Journey to Linux Memory Management

Written by Can Artuc<br>7.7K followers<br>·6 following

The architect, dad. 20+ years in tech. I only write experience-backed stories about Linux and open source. E-mail: c@canartuc.com. More articles: canartuc.com

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