1 .. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
4 .. The Linux Kernel documentation master file, created by
5 sphinx-quickstart on Fri Feb 12 13:51:46 2016.
6 You can adapt this file completely to your liking, but it should at least
7 contain the root `toctree` directive.
11 The Linux Kernel documentation
12 ==============================
14 This is the top level of the kernel's documentation tree. Kernel
15 documentation, like the kernel itself, is very much a work in progress;
16 that is especially true as we work to integrate our many scattered
17 documents into a coherent whole. Please note that improvements to the
18 documentation are welcome; join the linux-doc list at vger.kernel.org if
21 Licensing documentation
22 -----------------------
24 The following describes the license of the Linux kernel source code
25 (GPLv2), how to properly mark the license of individual files in the source
26 tree, as well as links to the full license text.
28 * :ref:`kernel_licensing`
30 User-oriented documentation
31 ---------------------------
33 The following manuals are written for *users* of the kernel — those who are
34 trying to get it to work optimally on a given system.
42 Firmware-related documentation
43 ------------------------------
44 The following holds information on the kernel's expectations regarding the
53 Application-developer documentation
54 -----------------------------------
56 The user-space API manual gathers together documents describing aspects of
57 the kernel interface as seen by application developers.
65 Introduction to kernel development
66 ----------------------------------
68 These manuals contain overall information about how to develop the kernel.
69 The kernel community is quite large, with thousands of developers
70 contributing over the course of a year. As with any large community,
71 knowing how things are done will make the process of getting your changes
87 Kernel API documentation
88 ------------------------
90 These books get into the details of how specific kernel subsystems work
91 from the point of view of a kernel developer. Much of the information here
92 is taken directly from the kernel source, with supplemental material added
93 as needed (or at least as we managed to add it — probably *not* all that is
141 Architecture-agnostic documentation
142 -----------------------------------
149 Architecture-specific documentation
150 -----------------------------------
152 These books provide programming details about architecture-specific
177 There are several unsorted documents that don't seem to fit on other parts
178 of the documentation body, or may require some adjustments and/or conversion
179 to ReStructured Text format, or are simply too old.