distro for linux kernel development [closed]

Question

Which is the best light weight distro for learning linux kernel development. It should have lot of debugging and profiling tools available along with it :)

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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 3

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

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