You don't need a PhD in computer science and years of experience to hack the kernel. Sure, they help, but the nature of Linux development means that it's open to all by default. All you have to do is get stuck in. You use the Linux kernel in whatever shape or form every day; wouldn't you feel just the tiniest swell of pride if you'd helped work on it, no matter in how small a way?

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...

(PS: you might find our earlier article, How the Linux kernel works, a helpful primer to this tutorial)

What if everything in the kernel works just fine for you, and there's nothing that you'd like to fix? Well, don't despair, the Linux kernel developers need all the help they can get, and have plenty of code in the tree that's just waiting to get cleaned up. One example is the code in the drivers/staging/ tree, which consists of a lot of drivers that do not meet the normal Linux kernel coding guidelines. The code is in that location so that other developers can help on cleaning it up before it and gets merged into the main portion of the Linux kernel tree.

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