The difference is that Apple has a very specific idea what their kernel is for, where as Linux is pushed and pulled in different directions by people who want s

The difference is that Apple has a very specific idea what their kernel is for, where as Linux is pushed and pulled in different directions by people who want something very large scale or secure or embedded or lots of archetictures and so on. Also you should put it in perspective, the Linux kernel itself is really not so bloated, that any normal user would notice, like they do with Gnome/KDE/Firefox's bloat. Even with that type of bloat, Linux distros still run well on a 1GB (probably less) and an old P4 CPU which people don't say about recent releases of OSX or Windows.