Greg Kroah-Hartman is a Linux kernel maintainer, and head of the Linux Drivers Project. He is a Novell Fellow, and works on the SUSE distribution for that company. At the Linux Foundation, Kroah-Hartman has helped to compile the “Who Writes Linux?” survey for the past few years.

You don't need a PhD in computer science and years of experience to hack the kernel. We asked prolific kernel hacker (and Linux Format reader!) Greg Kroah-Hartman to tell us what it takes for newbies to patch the Linux kernel - here's what he had to say...

Here's one from the file of random stuff you see when you put a new machine on the upstream kernel instead of the distro kernel. USB drivers for Linux will be GPL-only with the release of the upcoming kernel 2.6.25.. USB maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman writes: "Over two years ago, the Linux USB developers stated that they believed there was no way to create a USB kernel driver that was not under the GPL. This patch moves the USB apis to enforce that decision."

Greg Kroah-Hartman kicked off the second day of the 9th annual Ottawa Linux Symposium with a talk entitled "Linux Kernel Development - How, What, How fast, and Who?" to a solidly packed main room with an audience of more than 400 people.

With the Linux 2.6.32 kernel merge window opening up this month, open-source developers around the world have been busy working on their code that they wish to push into this next major kernel update.

Don't tell Greg Kroah-Hartman that Linux hurts for device drivers. He's heard too much of that rap, and he's already done plenty to stop it. We should thank him and help pick up the ball. I'm doing both here.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced it is publishing an update to its April 2008 study on Linux kernel development. The new report is written by original authors and kernel developers Jonathan Corbet and Greg Kroah-Hartman, and the Linux Foundation's Amanda McPherson

If you ever wondered how the Linux kernel is put together, here's an excellent description (complete with historical context) from Greg Kroah-Hartman, who knows it from the inside:

Don Marti attended Greg Kroah-Hartman's Linux Symposium talk on the kernel development process; he wrote an informative article (titled Linux contributor base broadens) about it. The article states: