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Ask HN? Dumb question about the Linux kernel
2 points by khitchdee on Sept 2, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 6 comments
Hello, I am trying learn about the Linux kernel,

but could not find any documentation on gnu.org or linux.org

Could someone help me demystify the kernel?

Just a brief explanation of it's core ideas would be sufficient.

I am only interested in that kernel

and not its comparative analysis relative to mach or some of the other later kernels.

This is likely a tough question to answer

since most of the guys on this newsgroup are probably not very familiar with such dated concepts.

Thanks.



"Starting kernel development" points to two results with links to communities/mailinglists/IRC and documentation

https://github.com/petersenna/Kernel/wiki/How-to-start-Linux...

https://kernelnewbies.org/

> since most of the guys on this newsgroup are probably not very familiar with such dated concepts.

Or girls (we're modern).


Side note, and I'm a feminist, "guys" is attempting to become a gender-neutral pronoun in english similar to "y'all".

People from New York use it to refer to a group of people. I've even hear groups of only women address each other this way. "Do you guys wanna get some pizza together?"

"Girls" would imply that the gender is known to be all female, and "gals" is once again, very hokey and southern like "y'all" is to non-southerners.

It's imperfect but we could always just invent a new word to fix it. I don't say "do you people wanna get some pizza", I say, "does everyone want to get some pizza".

In this case, I would say "since most of the users on this newsgroup", which is a context specific example.


Personally,

Salt, pepper, and tomato ketchup,

three necessary add-ons to finish a "fresh of the griddle" omelette,

describe gender inter-relationships better.


Well, if you follow the statistics,

which I'm not sure you've been tracking,

the composition of Hacker News

has a larger number of gents than ladies.

At least it was so, the last time I checked.

However, that having been said,

I will maintain gender neutrality in the rest of this reply to your very much appreciated response.

FWIW, I am considering using the kernel to build an I/F above it.

One of our side projects at khitchdee (hhtp://www.khitchdee.net)

involves the design of a single interface

for a large population of users

through an app designed to help design them

I am planning to use this kernel as a base for that work.

AFAIK, the kernel is written in C which is my language of choice.

I do not think I will have trouble modifying it.

--- x --- x ---

At the risk of being intrusive into your precious time,

would you happen to know someone who knows where the kernel code is archived?

It's very old code and likely poorly documented, or, my guess is, completely undocumented.

However, if I were able to get a printout of that code,

I'm pretty sure I could browse through it and understand how that kernel functions.

It is notoriously known amongst C programmers

that if you can't read another programmer's code, you must not claim to be one.

This is an unwritten code of conduct

which few people know about or are aware of in this era

of very few C programmers.

One of the most famous quotes

of the author of the famous "The Art of Computer Programming" trilogy,

Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, Donald Knuth,

was

"all programs must be literate"

which, literally translated, means other programmers must be able to read them.

After he made this statement,

he was vehemently criticized by the programmers of his time

who claimed that this statement was a suggestion of the existence of their unwritten code.

In other words, he was the first person to even hint at its existence in non-verbal form.

--- --- ---

Long story short, I could use a pointer to the where-abouts of that code.

I'm guessing the base code is under a thousand lines.


The official Linux kernel archives are at https://kernel.org. To look at the code, you can click on the "browse" link corresponding to one of the releases.


Thank you.

I will sift through those links to find the first kernel.

I'm guessing it was a chain of independent sub-systems starting with I/O.




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