Getting Started With Kernel Programming: The Linux Kernel Mentorship Program
summary
Program guides newcomers to contribute 5–10 patches in 3–6 months, with weekly Q&A, Discord peer support, and co-mentors from core subsystems. Prerequisites are readable C or Rust for drivers, ability to compile and boot a kernel, and basic git. Workflow uses git format-patch, get_maintainers to collect reviewers and mailing lists, and checkpatch for style. Practical entry points include the syzbot dashboard and kselftest. LLMs are banned for code generation in the mentorship.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Linux Kernel Mentorship intro
- 1:27Why mentorship for kernel programming
- 6:43Prerequisites to join
- 8:09Program structure and goals
- 11:45Beginner contribution options
- 17:02New contributor best practices
- 19:59Live kernel patch demo
- 24:18Q&A
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