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this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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Technology
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How many dev teams have a kernel dev on them?
Don't need one. If you can read C/C++ you can read the kernel code. And in most cases, you won't have to, as the problem is probably in a component in the distro. Those are written in python, ruby, or bash, which are all much more readable than C/C++.
No such luck on windows
I worked at a small company without a kernel dev and we periodically looked into the code to solve problems. I don't know how much we upstreamed, but we relied on Linux so it was either the or try to get someone on the mailing list to care.
It's really not that hard to look through the kernel source, it's pretty well written and documented. It's a lot harder to be a kernel developer writing new code, but finding bugs and contributing fixes isn't that bad.
You don't have to be a kernel dev for that. Reading source code is much easier than writing it. I myself have even read the code that handles the battery management drivers, and it's mostly self documenting, even though I'm bad at C and it's pointers, and also have never yet written a kernel driver.