  The Landau-Lifshitz fluctuating hydrodynamics is used to study the
statistical properties of the linearized Kolmogorov flow. The relative
simplicity of this flow allows a detailed analysis of the fluctuation spectrum
from near equilibrium regime up to the vicinity of the first convective
instability threshold. It is shown that in the long time limit the flow behaves
as an incompressible fluid, regardless of the value of the Reynolds number.
This is not the case for the short time behavior where the incompressibility
assumption leads in general to a wrong form of the static correlation
functions, except near the instability threshold. The theoretical predictions
are confirmed by numerical simulations of the full nonlinear fluctuating
hydrodynamic equations.
