Guiding Newcomers: A Mentor’s Journey Through Linux Kernel Development
Talkat Open Source Summit Europe 2025 · on Monday, 2025-08-25· at 16:30· Elicium 1 (Elicium Level 1)·
summary
Practical mentorship practices for Linux kernel newcomers with concrete results: more than 15 interns contribute over 600 patches across IIO, ALSA and device-tree work; one intern sends 58 patches to move a driver out of staging, another submits 35 patches to add an air‑quality sensor driver. Workflow uses git-send-email, get_maintainer.pl and checkpatch, weekly meetings, a Day‑Zero setup doc, simple first tasks (whitespace fixes, two‑line deletions, API tweaks like kcalloc_array), hardware kits (I2C‑to‑USB bridge, iMX8M, Freedom 93 ≈ $80) and measurable hiring and mentoring outcomes.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Mentoring newcomers in Linux kernel
- 2:32Why mentorship matters
- 6:09Mentorship programs like GSoC
- 9:43Preparing intern projects
- 12:11Newcomers' first steps
- 17:12Hardware setup delays
- 20:25Starting internship and bonding
- 22:56Commit messages and reviews
- 23:37IIO subsystem success
- 28:47Device tree bindings to YAML
- 30:14Keeping interns in community
- 31:40Applying to mentorship programs
- 34:29Showcasing student work
- 37:25Q&A
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