Get Adequate Documentation

It seems to me that to really understand the processes behind these sections of lower level hackery, you'd need to be some sort specialised knowledge relating to operating systems. For me, it doesn't matter if a section of code was written in assembly assuming there is adequate documentation. For me, this would be comments that explain why certain logic or values were used to solve a problem. Documentation for hardware specifications would also be required for this level of hackery.

So please, support the free software movement by purchasing from companies that respect the movement enough to publish the things we need to support ourselves. An example would be for ATI that have published some of the specifications that detail some parts of the hardware they sell. Though ATI haven't yet published all that we require, they have pledged to do so over time.