Breaking Into The World Of Kernel Hacking?

crow_t_robot asks: "In the past couple of months I have become increasingly interested in kernel programming and have finally decided to take the leap and 'get my hands dirty.' I have searched around the web and read a few docs and FAQs on getting started with the kernel but I was wondering what kind of personal experiences those in the Slashdot crowd have had that are so bold as to start goofing with the kernel code. For those that have become competent kernel programmers, how did you 'break in' and what advice would you give beginners?"

Comments

Try this

[DrStrange]

Read this: http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/index.html

Lurk on this for a little while (be prepared for 200+ messages per day):
http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Watch for to do lists or bug reports to go flying by on the list and start there. Its probably best if you don't try to implement something from scratch your first time out. Start slow and learn the inner workings first.

Oh well.

[rice_burners_suck]

The best way to get your hands dirty with any programming project is to get the code, study it for a while, and try to change and improve things. The kernel contains a little bit (or a lot) of everything. Try to fix bugs, improve performance or lower memory usage, if you're skilled at that kind of stuff.

The most important thing to remember is: Don't be intimidated by the kernel. Think of it as a really big program, because that's what it is. The only difference is that it doesn't get loaded by the operating system... it is the operating system!

Kernelnewbies.org

[HairyBN]

Here's a good place to start, the web page and the irc channel on irc.openprojects.org #kernelnewbies.

Happy Hacking!

Re:My understanding of Kernel hacking.

[BeneDux]

3: Know a bit of basic algorithms.
Basic??!! They wrote the kernel in Basic? Hell, a monkey could write Basic code.