Uploaded June 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
You've used a BSD, but have you used the open source of it to bend it to your will? Does it grant you freedom, or just confine you to a different set of bugs?
This talk will tell the story of how I got into hacking NetBSD with zero experience in kernel development, and how you can get started with things too even if you aren't an experienced kernel hacker, including:
making cross-builds a breeze to do work from any platform,
diving into the kernel,
how to read a device driver,
working on a single subsystem at a time,
iterating development with automatic tests, chroots, rump, and VMs.
For beginners and experienced C hackers alike!
You've used a BSD, but have you used the open source of it to bend it to your will? Does it grant you freedom, or just confine you to a different set of bugs?
This talk will tell the story of how I got into hacking NetBSD with zero experience in kernel development, and how you can get started with things too even if you aren't an experienced kernel hacker, including:
making cross-builds a breeze to do work from any platform,
diving into the kernel,
how to read a device driver,
working on a single subsystem at a time,
iterating development with automatic tests, chroots, rump, and VMs.
For beginners and experienced C hackers alike!
