I have started reading book Linux Device Drivers 3rd edition. So I want to know which is the best light weight distribution to use so that learning can be more generic and also does not involve distro specific nitty-gritty details. I have already tried building kernel for Ubuntu 10.04 but it involved different commands from what is mentioned in the book. So I am not sure whether I would be able to make further in the book. Has anybody tried??

Thanks a lot in advance

You could look at Slackware, since the kernel is a vanilla one.

Also, you might want to be aware that the book is for quite an old kernel version now (2.6.10) and some things have undoubtedly changed since then. I started reading it a while ago (though admittedly didn't get too far) and some things had moved around. Hopefully, there's a new version in the works. Having said all that though, the book will still be useful and you'll be able to find help from the various kernel mailing lists.

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Hi Nylex,
Thanks for the info. As you mentioned, that book is quite old, could you suggest me some other reference which would be the best one to start learning? And when you started, did you start with slackware or some other ?

And if I choose slackware, should I download all the 6 CD as mentioned on this page (http://www.slackware.com/getslack/torrents.php) or just the first one is enough. I want the minimal things so that building, testing, debugging and learning process is faster.

Conceptually LDD (3) should be fine. As for a distro, I find ArchLinux suits me best for kernel testing.
It's minimalistic, and is light and quick. Ubuntu is a dead loss due to the proliferation of modules - you'll soon get sick of the compile time. The first thing I always did with Slack was compile my own kernel - it's usable as a testbed, but didn't offer anything I couldn't do easier elsewhere.

Most of the kernel devs I've spoken to still seem to be Debian bigots. Might be worth considering.

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Hello avd122,

Slackware is a quite good startingpoint for programming with Linux.

afaik you will only need CD1 and CD2. On CD3 there are the "kdei" packages for the KDE-localization and CD4 upto CD6 are the sources.Slackware is a very clean system anyway. If you don't want to install a gui, you may install the packages a, ap, d (developement), e, f, k (the kernel), l, n. But this is excellently explained on Slackware's homepage.

Note: the Slackware forum here at LQ http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/ is the official forum for Slackware, you will find excellent help there.

Markus

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Sorry for the delay. I haven't really had time for LQ this week. So far, yes, I've only looked at kernel stuff on Slackware (again, I haven't really done that much).

As for other books, I don't know. I'm inclined to agree with syg00 about LDD3 being fine, for the simple reason that the kernel is still in development and so lots of books are going to go out of date (in some sense) quite quickly, but the concepts should be fairly well defined by now.