G'day Adam - last I heard there were over 1,000,000 lines of code in the LInux Kernel - not sure of what schmuck had to count them.
Linus' right-hand man, lieutenant if you will, is
Matthew Garrett.
Linus or Matthew sign off against every change to the Linux Kernel. I reckon they do a pretty good job.
Matthew, amongst many other accomplishments, is the author and maintainer of
shim
... which is the protocol which allows Linux Distros to get authority to load on a Windows computer.
He has come to loggerheads with Intel over unfair practices (and won), just as Linus has vented against Nvidia - so it's good to see they are fighting for the wonderful world of FOSS
Avagudweegend, all
Wiz