Akamai becomes the official distributor of the Linux kernel

Someone needs to host the Linux kernel code, and going forward, it will be the content delivery network Akamai.

Author

Steven Vaughan-Nichols
March 27, 2025

In partnership with

Tux handing out the code.

When I was a young--well, younger anyway--squirt, I ftped my Linux kernel code from Ted T’so, one of the first Linux kernel developers, personal PC, tsx-11.mit.edu. I was glad to do it! Before T'so set up his repository, you had to download the files from Linus Toravalds' machine in Helsinki, Finland, which was s l o w.  Mind you, at the time, I recall I downloaded it at a "blazing" fast 64 Kilobits per second (Kbps) over an ISDN line. Hey, it was great in its day. 

Things have gotten orders of magnitude faster since those days! Now, Akamai, the well-known content delivery network (CDN) and cloud company, has announced a multi-year partnership with the Linux Kernel Organization. This collaboration aims to provide critical infrastructure support for the development and distribution of the Linux kernel, ensuring uninterrupted access for its global network of developers.

Akamai will leverage its infrastructure to support kernel.org, the primary platform for Linux kernel source code distribution. This partnership is crucial for maintaining Linux security and performance.

The first version of Linux weighed in at 10,239 lines of code. Today, it weighs in at about  28 million lines of code. Akamai's infrastructure will enable these developers to access kernel sources quickly and reliably, regardless of their location. This support is provided at no cost, reflecting Akamai's commitment to giving back to the open-source community.

"Akamai depends on Linux, just like the rest of the world," noted Alex Chircop, Chief Architect of Akamai Cloud. "By supporting kernel.org, we are contributing to the preservation of the world's most widely deployed open-source software."

Chris Aniszczyk, Chief Technology Officer of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), highlighted Akamai's deep roots in the open-source community, citing their contributions to projects like OpenTelemetry and Prometheus. Akamai's recent pledge of $1 million to CNCF projects further underscores its commitment to open-source stewardship.

In addition to supporting the Linux kernel, Akamai also provides infrastructure support for Alpine Linux, a popular, lightweight Linux distribution. Alpine is Akamai's preferred DevOps Linux architecture. This is all of a piece with Akamai's recent embrace of Linux-based cloud offerings, such as its 2022 acquisition of Linux cloud pioneer Linode and its 2023 acquisition of the Linux and Kubernetes-based, cloud-native storage software company Ondat. 

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