distro for linux kernel development [closed]

Answer 1

I've enjoyed using Gentoo for fiddling around with the kernel.

Answer 2

LFS. Then install every debugger and profiler you can find.

Answer 3

I've heard Linus himself uses Fedora. I'd recommend Gentoo which lets (intends) for you to hand customize your kernel, it's the perfect setting for it (and I've spent many hours squeezing out every last bit of performance for the fun of it).

Naturally Ubuntu is my preferred distro, but you may have trouble if you start hijacking and removing expected kernel features. Gentoo won't complain, and doesn't expected them around to begin with.

Answer 4

The distro does not really matter. It is what you want to do with the kernel and do development/testing its feature.

Here are few things to do.

a. Turn on the kernel debugging and the logging options. Those would definitely help you in debugging. see useful linux kernel debug options to turn on

b. Getdebuggers tool like Valgrind that checks for memory leak. See doc like https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/kmemleak.txt

c. Found a good editor for editing. I don't want to start a vim vs emacs war. It is really a personal preference, just make sure you follow the linux kernel coding style guidelines. https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/CodingStyle‎

d. Get familiar with the log systems and proc system, as they provide valuable information.

e. Read the documentation in the directory /usr/src/linux/Documentation Very good starting point to understand the kernel

Answer 5

Buildroot

Buildroot is a set of scripts that generates tiny distros with rootfs images smaller than 10MiB.

It downloads everything from source and compiles it, so it is trivial to patch packages up.

The generated images are so tiny, that it becomes possible to understand the entire userland setup, which will make it easier to focus on the kernel.

Advantage over LFS: everything is fully automated. Because of this, Buildroot is used professionally in large organizations.

I have created this setup to automate things as much as possible: https://github.com/cirosantilli/linux-kernel-module-cheat

Answer 6

The distro probably doesn't make much difference since you'll be working on your own kernel and not the "kitchen sink" kernel the distros tend to provide with a bunch of patches in most cases.

If you're doing kernel development work then I suppose you want a distro that boots quickly, something like puppy might be ideal here and do your actual coding from something like Ubuntu.