The Linux Kernel

This book explores the Linux kernel, an open-source operating system kernel for many different architectures. What does it do? How does it do things?

There are thousands of hackers working on the Linux kernel, spread over the world. These people are also called Linux hackers. At the top of the Linux kernel development is Linus Torvalds, the starter of the Linux kernel. The kernel is written in C, with some architecture-specific parts written in assembler. The Linux kernel is licensed under the GPL, a free software license devised by Richard Stallman. This allows the Linux kernel to be freely shared by all its users, with no restrictions on its use apart from the fact that any derivations of the source must be under the same license.

Table of contents

• Booting
• File systems
• Time
• Updating

Drivers

• Softdog Driver

Modules

• System
• Processing
• Memory
• Storage
• Block devices
• Networking
• External links

Functions

• bread
• buffer uptodate
• get blk
• sb bread