On Thu, Jan 10, 2002 at 04:44:39PM -0800, Kashif Shaikh wrote: > With that being said, I need advice as the best way to get my "fingers dirty" with the Linux > kernel. I've been reading the book Understanding the Linux Kernel by Oreilly, and it's a great > book. But I'm just _reading_ the damn thing(and therefore learning process is slower). I would > like to get my fingers dirty and modify parts of the Linux Kernel, but the problem is where do I > start? What projects should I attempt to best learn the kernel? Well I assume you've read the FAQ by now, and of course you've mentioned process management and memory subsystems. There are several practical things you can do. 1) test + benchmark New code is constantly evolving, benchmark it. You will certainly notice some odd behaviours: there is your impetus to understand where the behaviour is coming from. Profile things, trace it (e.g. LTT), see if you can work out what might be causing problems. You'll learn the code by accident. 2) write docs I know, I know, but it is a big improvement on just reading docs. Write articles for kernelnewbies describing process management in linux, and you will probably learn enough to at least gain a foothold. 3) join kerneljanitors ;) often quite boring work but it will give you a better understanding of the code and do some critical work (see davej and acme's recent talk on uninet) linux is not a toy system like minix, so "student projects" are often not particularly easy to come up with (though I'm sure others have ideas ...) regards john -- "I went to set up a Yahoo ID for my dog. (Don't ask, but the DOG'S email was cluttering my inbox)." - Ruthless Advisorette -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ IRC Channel: irc.openprojects.net / #kernelnewbies Web Page: http://www.kernelnewbies.org/
