This is probably a stupid question, but really, is it still possible? Yes, the rate of change is very high, Andrew says that it is scary, but those changes are made by pro developers, and they don't do silly mistakes. 75% of all contributors are paid to do this job: all those professionals work on it full time, they probably have a whole testing teams behind there back, or at least a small network of server-class machines at their basement. The kernel is historically supposed to be bug free, and it seems to be true (except for drivers for some obscure hw). Andrew keeps saying that number one project for all kernel newbies should is to make sure that kernel runs on their hw (because so much different permutations is possible), but the problem is that most of us currently have a very typical, standard hw and there is no way to find a regression with such a setup. Greg encourages to start with staging tree cleanups, but it is really good only for understanding a submission process. Once you get it, you want to some _real_ work and since staging tree contains drivers, you almost always need a hw to test your changes. Of course some people do post untested patches, but I just can't do that. So, again, is it still possible to start somewhere and go on? I mean not doing some mechanical job, but something that is useful to the community (of course assuming that one is not a complete newbie, knows C, a bit of assembly, have read LDD and UTLK3)? If this is really a stupid question, please just say it and nothing more, I don't want any flames here. One can say that this mail was a waste of time, and that I should have spent this time actually working on the kernel, but to me this is an important thing to know. --paul -- To unsubscribe from this list: send an email with "unsubscribe kernelnewbies" to ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxx Please read the FAQ at http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ
