Dave Airlie, a Distinguished Engineer at Red Hat, speaks with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about Linux kernel maintenance. After over-viewing the scale and structure of the Linux kernel, they dive deep into the review and validation of kernel patches, drawing on examples from the GPU subsystem. After discussing the features and benefits of the Linux kernel’s maintenance model, they also explore kernel maintenance best practices and the supporting tools for these practices. Dave and Gregory also discuss topics such as the integration of Rust code in the Linux kernel and the ways in which AI-driven code review are influencing kernel maintenance.
Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.
Show Notes
Related Episodes
- SE Radio 527: Adrian Kennard and Kevin Hones on Writing a Network OS from Scratch
- SE Radio 445: Thomas Graf on eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter)
- SE Radio 271: Idit Levine on Unikernels
Other References
- Dave Airlie Linux Graphics blog
- Dave Airlie’s Profile at NVIDIA Developer Blog: Author: David Airlie | NVIDIA Technical Blog
- [Q3] Dave Airlie’s blog on vendor code sharing: Linux graphics, why sharing code with Windows isn’t always a win.
- Why Github can’t host the Linux Kernel Community
- Rust moves from experiment to a core Linux kernel language – Spiceworks
- Linux Kernel Maintainer Handbooks: Subsystem and maintainer tree specific development process notes — The Linux Kernel documentation
- Linux Kernel Development Process: How the development process works — The Linux Kernel documentation
- Linux Stable Kernel Rules: Everything you ever wanted to know about Linux -stable releases — The Linux Kernel documentation
- Kernel articles: Kernel coverage at LWN.net [LWN.net]
- Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): LKML.ORG – the Linux Kernel Mailing List Archive
- Linux_Kernel_Newbies – Linux Kernel Newbies



