The Linux Kernel documentation

This is the top level of the kernel’s documentation tree. Kerneldocumentation, like the kernel itself, is very much a work in progress;that is especially true as we work to integrate our many scattereddocuments into a coherent whole. Please note that improvements to thedocumentation are welcome; join the linux-doc list at vger.kernel.org ifyou want to help out.

Licensing documentation

The following describes the license of the Linux kernel source code(GPLv2), how to properly mark the license of individual files in the sourcetree, as well as links to the full license text.

User-oriented documentation

The following manuals are written forusers of the kernel — those who aretrying to get it to work optimally on a given system.

Application-developer documentation

The user-space API manual gathers together documents describing aspects ofthe kernel interface as seen by application developers.

Introduction to kernel development

These manuals contain overall information about how to develop the kernel.The kernel community is quite large, with thousands of developerscontributing over the course of a year. As with any large community,knowing how things are done will make the process of getting your changesmerged much easier.

Kernel API documentation

These books get into the details of how specific kernel subsystems workfrom the point of view of a kernel developer. Much of the information hereis taken directly from the kernel source, with supplemental material addedas needed (or at least as we managed to add it — probablynot all that isneeded).

Architecture-specific documentation

These books provide programming details about architecture-specificimplementation.

Filesystem Documentation

The documentation in this section are provided by specific filesystemsubprojects.

Indices and tables