We are proud to announce the launch of a brand new addition to our lineup of training courses: Embedded Linux Networking!
This training course is designed to provide embedded Linux engineers with a deep and practical understanding of networking concepts and their implementation in both the Linux kernel and user-space — with a strong focus on real-world embedded applications.
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As kernel developers, we often find ourselves writing device drivers—pieces of code that are typically registered using module_init() in the Linux kernel. But have you ever paused to wonder: just how late in the boot process does this happen? What exactly takes place between the moment we see the famous "Starting kernel..." message and the point where drivers are finally registered and devices probed?
If you’re curious about the intricate steps that occur before the system even reaches a working init process, you’re in the right place. Join us as we explore the fascinating journey of the Linux kernel boot sequence—step by step.
Throughout this article, you’ll find clickable links to our Elixir source code browser. We encourage you to dive in and follow along!
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Around mid-March, Bootlin engineers Köry Maincent and Romain Gantois had the chance to attend edition 0x19 of the Netdev conference, where developers from the Linux kernel networking community assemble for four days of technical presentations and discussions.
They were generally very much impressed by the quality and detail of the talks given during this conference, and they have selected two of the talks that they found the most interesting, which they summarized below. We expect the slides and videos to be published at some point in the future, but they don’t seem to be available at the moment.
Linux 6.14 was released last week, and as usual, we recommend checking out the LWN articles covering the 6.14 merge window (part 1, part 2) to get a good sense of the main new features and updates in this release.
Bootlin engineers have once again been busy contributing to this kernel release, with 125 commits authored by Bootlin engineers, and 60 patches reviewed and merged by Bootlin engineers who are maintainers of specific parts of the Linux kernel.
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The Netdev conference is THE annual event dedicated to Linux networking, featuring numerous talks, presentations, and discussions on all aspects of network support in the Linux kernel and ecosystem. It takes place this year on March 10-13 in Zagreb, Croatia.
Given the importance of these topics to Bootlin, our engineers Köry Maincent and Romain Gantois are attending in person. Köry has contributed to Linux’s new Power over Ethernet support and improvements in PTP timestamping flexibility, while Romain is actively working on SFP support. Additionally, Bootlin networking expert Maxime Chevallier will be following the conference remotely.
Attending Netdev is essential for Bootlin, enabling our engineers to stay at the forefront of Linux networking advancements, collaborate with key contributors, and take part in discussions shaping the future of networking in the Linux kernel. By actively participating, we ensure that Bootlin continues to make meaningful contributions to the ecosystem while strengthening our expertise to better support our customers and open-source initiatives.
Bootlin training courses have long been recognized for their quality and effectiveness. Before the COVID era, we offered in-person sessions either on-site at customer locations for larger groups or as public sessions at our facilities, bringing together engineers from multiple companies. However, with the onset of the pandemic, we transitioned exclusively to online training. Since then, we have resumed in-person sessions at customer locations, but public sessions have yet to make a comeback—until now.
We’re excited to announce the return of our in-person public training sessions! The first session will focus on Linux kernel driver development and is scheduled for June 16-20, 2025, in Lyon, France. This course will be conducted by none other than Bootlin engineer and Linux kernel maintainer Grégory Clement.
For participants who prefer an in-person learning experience, this session provides a valuable opportunity for direct interaction with our trainer and fellow attendees. It’s an excellent alternative to online sessions, fostering deeper engagement and collaboration.
Seats are available at the standard rate of 2100 EUR per participant, with a discounted rate of 2000 EUR per participant under certain conditions.
Beyond this Linux kernel driver development in-person public session, we have plans to also open in-person public sessions for our Embedded Linux system development, Yocto Project/OpenEmbedded system development and Debugging, tracing, profiling and performance analysis with Linux training courses. Do not hesitate to contact us if you’re interested. Your feedback will help us gauge interest and schedule these sessions accordingly.
Linux 6.12 has been released during the past week-end, pretty much as expected after 7 release candidates. As usual, we recommend our readers to go through the amazing LWN.net articles covering the 6.12 merge window (part 1, part 2) to get a high-level overview of the major new features and improvements in this 6.12 release. One of the prominent improvement in this release, as far as the embeded industry is concerned, is obviously the merge of the final bits enabling PREEMPT_RT… which already caused our Real-Time Linux with PREEMPT_RT training course to be updated.
As usual, Bootlin again contributed to this release: with 118 commits merged, we are again in the top 20 contributing companies! Also, in addition to contributing our own code, several of our engineers are also maintainers, and as part of this work those engineers review and merge patches from other contributors. As part of this effort, for this 6.12 release:
Overall, 13 active Bootlin engineers made contributions to this release, which on a total staff of 24 people, means that more than half of our team has contributed to the Linux kernel for 6.12, a good indication of our strong focus on Linux kernel development and upstreaming!
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Linux 6.11 has been released a week ago, the day before Open Source Summit Europe started, but as a large part of the Bootlin team was attending this conference and the immediately following Linux Plumbers conference, we are only posting now our usual blog post about our Linux 6.11 contributions.
As usual, we warmly recommend our readers to look at the articles from LWN.net covering the 6.11 merge window (part 1, part 2) to get a good high-level overview of the major new features and hardware support added in 6.11. CNX-Software also has a useful article on the 6.11 features relevant for embedded platforms.
From a Bootlin perspective, we contributed a total of 120 commits in this release, making us the 19th contributing company by number of commits, worldwide, according to the statistics. In addition to those 120 commits authored by Bootlin engineers, we reviewed and merged 76 patches from other contributors, as part of the Linux kernel maintainer role of several Bootlin engineers (Alexandre Belloni as the RTC and I3C maintainers, Miquèl Raynal as the MTD co-maintainer, and Grégory Clement as the Marvell platform maintainer).
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Last summer, we announced the availability of our Embedded Linux course on the BeaglePlay platform.
Today, we are happy to announce the publication of our Linux kernel driver development and Yocto Project/OpenEmbedded system development courses also ported on the BeaglePlay platform.
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Linux 6.10 was released last Sunday, following its now well-known release cadence. As usual, head over to LWN.net to have some good summary of the important features merged in this kernel release: part 1 and part 2.
LWN also published an article on statistics of the 6.10 release cycle, and Bootlin shows up in the most active employers by changed lines, with 7746 lines changed by Bootlin engineers. According to ths Kernel Patch Statistics site, we contributed 110 changes, putting us as the 19th contributing company (counting “Unknown” and “Hobbyists” as companies).
Also, in addition to the 110 patches we contributed, some of our engineers are also maintainers of different subsystems, and as such they review/merge patches contributed by others:
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