Linux started as a hobby project in 1991 for a Finnish student, Linus Torvalds. The project has gradually grown and continues to do so, with roughly 1,000 contributors around the world. Nowadays, Linux is a must, in embedded systems as well as on servers. A kernel is a central part of an operating system, but its development is not so obvious.
Linux offers many advantages over other operating systems:
- It is free of charge
- Well-documented with a large community
- It is portable across different platforms
- It provides access to the source code
- There is lots of free, open source software
This book tries to be as generic as possible. There is a special topic, regarding device trees, which are not a full x86 feature ...
