linux

This repository is the source code of the Linux kernel — the core piece of software at the heart of any Linux operating system. The README explains it as the part that "manages hardware, system resources, and provides the fundamental services for all other software." Everything else in a Linux system, from desktop applications to web servers, ultimately runs on top of this kernel.

The way it works is that the project is organized as a large source tree alongside extensive documentation. The README itself is a directory of links pointing into that documentation, and uniquely it is divided by reader role rather than by topic. There are dedicated entry points for new kernel developers, academic researchers (memory management, scheduler, networking, filesystems, RCU, locking, power management), security experts (security documentation, vulnerability reporting, CVE procedures), backport and maintenance engineers, system administrators (kernel parameters, sysctl tuning, tracing and debugging), maintainers (pull requests, managing and rebasing patches), hardware vendors (driver API, driver model, device tree bindings, DMA API), and distribution maintainers. There is also a section addressed specifically to LLMs and AI-powered coding assistants, marked CRITICAL, telling them to read a coding-assistants document about licensing, attribution, and the Developer Certificate of Origin before contributing.

Someone would interact with this repository when they are studying how an operating system works internally, contributing patches, packaging Linux, hardening systems for security, or supporting new hardware. The repository's primary language is C.