I want to make a series of posts to record some of the things I’ve found out about maintaining the Ports Kernel for PS3 so far. I’m still to complete the full cycle to getting an updated kernel build into the repos but I’d like to note what I’ve found out so far. As I know more I’ll endeavor to update these notes so they remain fairly accurate.

I just needed to express how impressed I just found myself with how well the linux kernel was working this morning. I was on my AMD X2 3800 processor (dual core, about 2-3? years old) and was simultaneously listening to some tunes on rhythmbox, watching an XVid movie, and browsing the web while emerging ( compiling for those who don’t use Gentoo) on both cores without any noticeable slowdowns in any the realtime activities I was doing!

The Linux Foundation has found that the number of developers putting work into the Linux kernel is growing fast, tripling over the past three years. Over that period, the number of individual contributors has doubled. Linux is being used more often as the firmware found in consumer electronics, and now more than 70 percent of all kernel development is done by paid professionals.

With the Linux 2.6.32 kernel being released in a few days, we found it time to benchmark this newest kernel release that brings new drivers, kernel mode-setting improvements, virtualization enhancements, and more.

One of the topics of ongoing interest in the kernel community is that of maintaining quality. It is trivially obvious that we need to maintain and even improve quality. It is less obvious how best to do so. One broad approach that has found some real success is to increase the visibility of various aspects of the kernel.

You don't need a PhD in computer science and years of experience to hack the kernel. We asked prolific kernel hacker (and Linux Format reader!) Greg Kroah-Hartman to tell us what it takes for newbies to patch the Linux kernel - here's what he had to say...

Jon Masters is a Linux kernel hacker who has been working on Linux for almost 14 years, since he first attended university at the age of 13. Jon lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and works for a large enterprise Linux vendor…

We, the undersigned Linux kernel developers, consider any closed-source Linux kernel module or driver to be harmful and undesirable. We have repeatedly found them to be detrimental to Linux users, businesses, and the greater Linux ecosystem.

Recently Greg Kroah Hartman showed some very interesting Linux kernel development stats. I decided to do some too and the result are 5 cool things you probably didn’t know about the kernel code