> I've taken a class in college about the Linux kernel, and it's still amazing to see how complicated it actually is.
Complexity doesn't necessarily mean it's a masterpiece. A lot of it is just old and has been incrementally changed without being simplified in the mean time.
As a concrete example, the guide goes through the rather complicated mess of how syscalls worked. That complexity was the result of a series of optimizations and features added over time, but it wasn't a good design. These days Linux syscalls (on x86_64 anyway) are a good deal simpler than they are in the guide.
(Hey 0xAX, I don't suppose you'd like to update the guide?)
Complexity doesn't necessarily mean it's a masterpiece. A lot of it is just old and has been incrementally changed without being simplified in the mean time.
As a concrete example, the guide goes through the rather complicated mess of how syscalls worked. That complexity was the result of a series of optimizations and features added over time, but it wasn't a good design. These days Linux syscalls (on x86_64 anyway) are a good deal simpler than they are in the guide.
(Hey 0xAX, I don't suppose you'd like to update the guide?)