Thanks, John --- just the sort of thing I've been looking for. As far as kernel development goes, I think I'll stick to popcorn for quite some time. ;-) Cheers, Tim
On Friday, September 5, 2014 12:38:22 AM UTC-4, john3909 wrote: > > > From: Tim Cole <[email protected] <javascript:>> > Reply-To: "[email protected] <javascript:>" < > [email protected] <javascript:>> > Date: Thursday, September 4, 2014 at 2:41 PM > To: "[email protected] <javascript:>" <[email protected] > <javascript:>> > Subject: Re: [beagleboard] Yet another newbie "how to get started" > > I'm probably going to kick myself for getting into this, but here goes > nothing. > > Getting into *any *new community can be difficult. You're the new kid and > you don't know who's who. You wonder what's a sensible question, what's a > naive question, and what's a bloody annoying question. I think most of us > Linux newbies understand this. I'm trying to avoid asking the "bloody > annoying" questions, but I imagine I'm going do it -- with luck, not often. > > Part of the problem with figuring out how to climb the learning curve is > that there's so *much *information. Saying its like "drinking from a fire > hose" is cliched, but it feels like that sometimes. I realize that's a > problem coming into *any *new area -- learning what's important and > what's noise. I've decided -- tentatively -- that the Linux arena might be > a bit worse than most. There's a tremendous amount of activity going on, > and with that, a bit of anarchy, too. Perhaps that's typical of the entire > open-source world, which also feels a bit odd to me. ("Hey, no problem, > dude! There are parts all over this big, old garage, and anyone can build a > car!") Having said that, I don't care to live in the near dictatorship of > commercial OS communities. ("No, you can't do that. It takes arcane > training and access to Secret Things. Now go away, buy the next version, > and leave everything to the experts.") > > It doesn't seem reasonable for anyone to expect all you more experienced > folks to do a vast quantity of work for no compensation. (Feeling good > about helping doesn't buy groceries.) On the other hand, being told to RTFM > is pretty frustrating when you don't know what's a good manual or an > outdated manual or just the equivalent of a scrawl on a notepad. And yes, I > realize that knowing the difference comes with experience, too. > > Speaking only for myself, I don't expect you to hold my hand and do > everything for me. If I'm asking for too much, it's because I don't know > I've done that. So, if this isn't too much to ask for (and I'm not trying > to be snarky here), if anyone can suggest a newcomer's basic reading list > and put that on a sticky post, it sure would help. > > Start by reading a few good books on the topic. Here are a few that I have > found helpful: > > Linux System Programming: Talking Directly to the Kernel and C Library by > Robert Love > The Linux Programming Interface: A Linux and UNIX System Programming > Handbook by Michael Kerrisk > Linux Kernel Development (3rd Edition) by Robert Love > > Once you have read these books, you will be in pretty good shape. If you > want to do kernel driver development, there are no good solutions as they > all tend to be somewhat outdated but they do give you the basics: > > Essential Linux Device Drivers by Sreekrishnan Venkateswaran > Linux Device Drivers (3rd Edition) by Jonathan Corbet, Alessandro Rubini > and Greg Kroah-Hartman > > An updated version of the last book is in the work, but it was original > scheduled for late 2014, but it has now scheduled for sometime in 2015. > > Regards, > John > > > -- For more options, visit http://beagleboard.org/discuss --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BeagleBoard" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
