C (C11 since 5.18, C89 before),[4] Rust (since 6.1),[5] Assembly language
Available in
English
License
GPL-2.0-only with Linux-syscall-note[6][7][8][a]
Website
kernel.org
The Linux kernel is a free and open-source,[12]: 4 monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally written in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU operating system, which was written to be a free (libre) replacement for Unix.
Linux is provided under the GNU General Public License version 2 only, but it contains files under other compatible licenses.[11] Since the late 1990s, it has been included as part of a large number of operating system distributions, many of which are commonly also called Linux.
Linux is deployed on a wide variety of computing systems, such as embedded devices, mobile devices (including its use in the Android operating system), personal computers, servers, mainframes, and supercomputers.[13] It can be tailored for specific architectures and for several usage scenarios using a family of simple commands (that is, without the need of manually editing its source code before compilation);[14][15][16] privileged users can also fine-tune kernel parameters at runtime.[17][18][19] Most of the Linux kernel code is written using the GNU extensions of GCC[12]: 18 [20] to the standard C programming language and with the use of architecture-specific instructions (ISA) in limited parts of the kernel. This produces a highly optimized executable (vmlinux) with respect to utilization of memory space and task execution times.[12]: 379–380
Day-to-day development discussions take place on the Linux kernel mailing list (LKML). Changes are tracked using the version control system git, which was originally authored by Torvalds as a free software replacement for BitKeeper.
^"Linux Logos and Mascots". Linux Online. 2008. Archived from the original on 15 August 2010. Retrieved 11 August 2009.
^Greg Kroah-Hartman (17 April 2024). "Linux 6.8.7". Retrieved 17 April 2024.
^Linus Torvalds (14 April 2024). "Linux 6.9-rc4". Retrieved 14 April 2024.
^Bergmann, Arnd (3 March 2022). "Kbuild: move to -std=gnu11". git.kernel.org.
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^"GPL-2.0-only". spdx.org. Retrieved 2 September 2021.
^"Linux-syscall-note". spdx.org. Retrieved 2 September 2021.
^"GPL-2.0". git.kernel.org.
^"Linux-syscall-note". git.kernel.org.
^ ab"Linux kernel licensing rules — The Linux Kernel documentation". www.kernel.org. Archived from the original on 7 March 2020. Retrieved 6 January 2020.
^ abcLove, Robert (2010). Linux kernel development (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0-672-32946-3. OCLC 268788260.
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^"C Extensions (Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC))". gcc.gnu.org. Archived from the original on 20 November 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
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The Linuxkernel is a free and open-source,: 4 monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally written in 1991...
version history of the Linuxkernel. The Linuxkernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was conceived and created...
Linux (/ˈlɪnʊks/ LIN-uuks) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linuxkernel, an operating system kernel first released...
Linux began in 1991 as a personal project by Finnish student Linus Torvalds to create a new free operating system kernel. The resulting Linuxkernel has...
The Linuxkernel provides multiple interfaces to user-space and kernel-mode code that are used for varying purposes and that have varying properties by...
Enterprise Linux 8.0, May 7, 2019; 4 years ago (2019-05-07), uses Linuxkernel 4.18.0-80 8.1, November 5, 2019; 4 years ago (2019-11-05), uses Linuxkernel 4.18...
computing, an oops is a serious but non-fatal error in the Linuxkernel. An oops may precede a kernel panic, but it may also allow continued operation with...
a Linuxkernel image, and execution of various startup scripts and daemons. Those are grouped into 4 steps: system startup, bootloader stage, kernel stage...
Finnish-American software engineer who is the creator and lead developer of the Linuxkernel. He also created the distributed version control system Git. He was honored...
compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables (in ELF format) by implementing Linux system calls on the Windows kernel. It is available on Windows...
/usr/kernel. When running a DEBUG kernel build the system actively attempts to unload modules. Linux does not provide a stable API or ABI for kernel modules...
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following is an implementation of the Linuxkernel final initialization in kernel_init(): static int __ref kernel_init(void *unused) { ... /* * We try...
A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linuxkernel and often a package...
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Alpine Linux is made for Docker". InfoWorld. 10 July 2017. "Re: [leaf-devel] 2.6.x kernel support?". SourceForge. Small, Simple, and Secure: Alpine Linux under...
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