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Comment by bitcharmer | Hacker News Reader

HN's front page magic never seizes to amaze me. If you are looking for a introduction on how to write your first kernel module, Google will return pages worth of results with blog post entries, articles and even excerpts from books such as LDD[0]. Yet this brief text gets the reward.

Don't get me wrong I absolutely root for people's efforts for popularising kernel dev, just stunned how HN works sometimes.

[0] https://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/

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I think the reality is that news aggregators like HN reward short-form content; a 4 minute read is going to garner more upvotes than a page that links to 18 chapters of dense technical information. That's what the comments are for though! Thanks for linking this lwn page

Perhaps a hello-world type of project is preferred when trying to get a first taste for it?

linux-kernel-labs[1]. This looks much better if you want to dive deep. Looks more up to date then LDD though I cannot talk about the quality since I haven't actually read it.

I just found it when I put it into search. Looks more up to date then LDD though I cannot talk about the quality.

[1](https://linux-kernel-labs.github.io/refs/heads/master/)

Is LDD still up to date?

It hasn’t been updated since about 2004. No idea how much has changed since then but the authors have stated they don’t update it not because it’s still accurate but because they don’t need new kernel devs and it’s a lot of work.

There are some things out of date for sure, but the bulk of it is still highly relevant.

When I was first learning to write kernel drivers, I had LDD open on one screen and the kernel source code open on the other. You can usually look for examples in the source that will help you figure out the “modern” ways of doing things. LDD is indispensable for giving you a solid footing so that you’re not wading into the Linux kernel totally unequipped.

Surprisingly most of it still is. My old modules still compile and work as expected.

Mention Rust for those sweet sweet internet points! (I do like Rust, however seeing features D has had for 10 years on the frontpage is a little jarring, although I am channeling that into some blog posts to get the word out)

me too, I'll never understand what posts get the attention :D

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