The Linux Kernel documentation

This is the top level of the kernel’s documentation tree. Kernel documentation, like the kernel itself, is very much a work in progress; that is especially true as we work to integrate our many scattered documents into a coherent whole. Please note that improvements to the documentation are welcome; join the linux-doc list at vger.kernel.org if you want to help out.

Working with the development community

The essential guides for interacting with the kernel’s development community and getting your work upstream.

Internal API manuals

Manuals for use by developers working to interface with the rest of the kernel.

Development tools and processes

Various other manuals with useful information for all kernel developers.

User-oriented documentation

The following manuals are written for users of the kernel — those who are trying to get it to work optimally on a given system and application developers seeking information on the kernel’s user-space APIs.

See also: the Linux man pages, which are kept separately from the kernel’s own documentation.

Architecture-specific documentation

Other documentation

There are several unsorted documents that don’t seem to fit on other parts of the documentation body, or may require some adjustments and/or conversion to ReStructured Text format, or are simply too old.

Translations

Indices and tables