Ingo Molnár

Ingo Molnár is a Hungarian Linux kernel developer, employed by Red Hat as of May 2013, known for his contributions to the operating system in terms of security and performance. He studied at Eötvös Loránd University. His additions to the Linux kernel include the O(1) scheduler of Linux 2.6.0, the Completely Fair Scheduler that replaced the previous process scheduler in Linux 2.6.23 after work between 2.6.21 and 2.6.24, the in-kernel TUX HTTP and FTP server, enhancements to thread handling, and a security feature called Exec Shield, which prevents stack-based buffer overflow exploits on x86 by disabling the execute permission for the stack. With Thomas Gleixner he worked on the real-time preemption patch set, PREEMPT RT, which aims to bound thread switching latency to tens of microseconds. In 2012 he argued that the Linux desktop was not free enough for its users, and in early 2022 he submitted the Fast Kernel Headers series of about 2300 patches to reduce kernel compile times.