Projects in the topic kernel
The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel.


Better support for Chromebooks

an idea by suntorytimed

Better support for Chromebooks Chromebooks do have very limited hardware in terms of storage and RAM. But it is still the cheapest solution to a truly open source notebook, as it allows to replace its coreboot based bootloader with your own coreboot and payload (f.e. Tiano Core or Seabios).

Updated over 5 years ago. 6 hacker ♥️. 1 follower. Has no hacker: grab it!

Create a DRM driver for Matrox desktop cards

an invention by tdz

(was: Create a DRM driver for Matrox G200) Even after 20 years, the Matrox G200 series is still an excellent 2d graphics card. Unfortunately, there's only an fbdev driver and a user-space driver. Both are obsolete, as modern Linux uses the DRM framework for managing graphics cards. There already is a DRM driver for the G200 server series. This driver is under-maintained and doesn't work with desktop chips.

Updated about 2 years ago. 5 hacker ♥️.

perf-bench ipc

a project by dbueso

The state of the art of sysv/posix ipc benchmarking is a combination of ad-hoc programs scattered over the internet. While some mechanisms, such as sysv semaphores, have a lot of coverage, others really lack (message queues), and some are simply non-existent; albeit some of the legacy flavors we aren't too concerned with, other than them being functionally correct. Consolidate all this by taking the good benchmarks and implement new ones where needed, such as message queues, everything around the 'perf bench' framework. This will both improve the lives of us who hack on kenrel ipc as well as improve coverage overall. Eventually mmtests should be updated as well.

Updated about 5 years ago. 2 hacker ♥️. 2 followers.

work on sunxi a64 cpufreq driver (for teres-1, pine64)

an idea by mbrugger

With the teres-1 [1] laptop we have a first arm64 device we could use as end-users. Much work to run mainline kernel + u-boot was done already. But power consumption of the laptop is not optimal (~2 hours of battery life time). The idea is to support cpufreq for the A64 SoC upstream, which would enable the teres-1, pine64 and pinebook to run more power efficient. up to now it seems nobody is working on the driver [2].

Updated over 3 years ago. 3 hacker ♥️. 3 followers. Has no hacker: grab it!

Out-of-the-box SPD support

an invention by jdelvare

In order to see the SPD (detailed memory information) data, the user currently has to manually load the needed kernel driver. Which driver to load depends on the memory type. Depending on the driver user, the devices may even have to be instantiated manually and this is a non-trivial multi-step task. Plus you need to be root to do it. I would like to attempt to automatize all this at least in the most common and simple cases like Intel x86 desktop. The idea would be to figure out the memory type and the I2C address of the SPD EEPROMs based on DMI data. If the DMI data is of good quality then it should be possible to automatically figure out which driver to use and to instantiate the devices at boot time.

Updated over 3 years ago. 1 hackers ♥️. 2 followers.

ethtool ops for netdevsim

a project by mkubecek

This can be seen as a subproject of ethtool netlink interface but from the technical view it's independent. Every new piece of software is going to be buggy and with frequent changes and rewrites, new regressions are introduced. Automated selftests can help a lot but as ethtool deals with hardware devices, we do not want these tests to depend on a specific hardware. The netdevsim driver was created as a virtual device which (unlike e.g. dummy) cannot be used for actual network traffic but implements various configuration interfaces so that it can be used for their (automated) testing.

Updated over 4 years ago. No love. 1 follower.

Investigate C-Sky architecture

an invention by a_faerber

The youngest architecture addition to the mainline Linux kernel was C-Sky (arch/csky/). I have a GX6605S board booting a downstream 4.9 kernel. It uses a proprietary GxLoader bootloader (similarities with U-Boot exist but no sources...) with uImage and gx6605s.dtb files in a FAT partition on USB stick.

Updated about 5 years ago. 1 hackers ♥️. 1 follower.

Support for DRM platform drivers

an invention by tdz

This project could get us rid of the last fbdev drivers we're stil shipping: efifb and vesafb. Platform drivers handle hardware that is not auto-detected, but somehow there. For graphics this would be VGA, VESA, or UEFI framebuffers. In SUSE Linux, we currently support VESA and UEFI with fbdev drivers. Those load early in the boot process and maintain graphics hardware until the actual driver takes over.

Updated over 3 years ago. 3 hacker ♥️. 1 follower.

Mainline Sunplus Plus1 SP7021 kernel for Banana Pi F2S

a project by a_faerber

The recent Banana Pi BPI-F2S board features a new Arm SoC SP7021 by Sunplus, which is not yet supported in mainline Linux. Prior to Hackweek I had prepared UART and interrupt controller drivers and Device Tree for Sunplus SP7021's Arm Cortex-A7 cores: GitHub branch f2s-next

Updated over 3 years ago. No love. 1 follower.

DRM driver for USB-based SiS graphics cards

a project by tdz

Back in the late 90s to early 2000s, SiS graphics chips were fairly common and found in many low-end devices. Today, the chips are still capable enough for simple graphics needs, but the graphics cards were on PCI and AGP buses. They are not usable in modern computers. However, there exist USB-based graphics cards with a SiS 315 graphics chip. Those are around on Ebay et al [1] and easily usable with current computers. I already do have a driver for the old PCI-based SiS drivers and have long been struggling to find something useful to do with it. Converting it to serve USB devices would finally make it useful.

Updated over 3 years ago. 3 hacker ♥️. 1 follower.