Top all-time · #2311
Bootlin
Company blog · bootlin.com/blogsystemshardwareprogramming
Bootlin is the company blog at bootlin.com, writing about systems, hardware and programming. Since 2018, 31 different Hacker News readers have linked it 55 times, most often “Free Electrons becomes Bootlin”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-21, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (16) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Embedded Linux and kernel training company whose free course slides and blog posts on boot time, kernel development and graphics are linked as learning resources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 16 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Free Electrons becomes Bootlin3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-02-01
- /docs/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-09-01
- Delivery of Allwinner VPU driver main goals2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-07-22
- Test a Linux kernel USB Device Controller driver with testusb2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-02-21
- Snagboot: a cross-vendor recovery tool for embedded platforms2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-05-23
- Linux ext2 filesystem driver now marked as deprecated2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-03-26
- /doc/training/boot-time/boot-time-slides.pdf2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-10-23
What Hacker News says?
The bootlin training slides on embedded linux boot time optimisation is also quite informative: https://bootlin.com/doc/training/boot-time/boot-time-slides....
Comment linking /doc/training/boot-time/boot-time-slides.pdf
on “Raspberry Pi 3 Fastboot – Less Than 2 Seconds”Submitted An Introduction to PipeWire as a story · 215 points
HN discussionHire open source consulting companies like Collabora, Igalia, Bootlin etc to work on Linux/graphics stuff. IIRC Valve is doing this work via Collabora. I note that both Igalia and Bootlin have done crowdfunding campaigns to support their Linux, graphics and web work: http://open-prioritization.igalia.com/ https://www.igalia.com/2020/09/28/Open-Prioritization-Experi... https://bootlin.com/blog/tag/crowdfunding/ https…
Comment linking /blog/tag/crowdfunding/
on “Valve Is Working on Another Extension to Help in Direct3D-over-Vulkan”Submitted Linux ext2 filesystem driver now marked as deprecated as a story · 163 points
HN discussionBootlin has some very nice introductory training materials online: https://bootlin.com/doc/training/linux-kernel/ https://bootlin.com/docs/ Allwinner SoC used in PinePhone has a longstanding community around it organized around http://linux-sunxi.org/ There are a lot of materials, including datasheets there, etc. https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePhone wiki also has a lot of information. #pinedev at freenode is…
Comment linking /docs/
on “PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition”Submitted Using Device Tree Overlays, Example on BeagleBone Boards as a story · 54 points
HN discussionWRT GPU there is [1] https://bootlin.com/blog/wrapping-up-the-allwinner-vpu-crowd... The rest i don't know exactly. But all in all this seems like a viable replacement for the obsolete 12/13' ThinkPads coveted in some crowds. Could have more RAM, better Displays, but hey, all Open Source, so this really could be new 'ecosystem' for that. Edit: I know this is for Allwinner, but this applies to other SOCs which embed…
Comment linking /?s=Mali
on “Trying out the Pinebook Pro – a $200 ARM Laptop”Submitted Bouncing on trampolines to run eBPF programs as a story · 33 points
HN discussionHere is a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign that resulted in open source code being added to the Linux kernel. This is from a company that usually does the same sort of work but is usually funded by other companies. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bootlin/allwinner-vpu-s... https://bootlin.com/blog/allwinner-vpu-crowdfunding/ https://bootlin.com/blog/tag/kickstarter/ https://bootlin.com/blog/allwinner-vpu-suppo…
Comment linking /blog/allwinner-vpu-campaign-one-year-anniversary/
on “Excerpts from Richard Stallman's talk in Mandya, India”Submitted Bootlin at the XDC 2018 Conference as a story · 29 points
HN discussionI can recommend the bootlin course to get started with kernel development. https://bootlin.com/training/kernel/ Additionally, I often use new drivers "published" on Phoronix as example. They are often quite simple. The complexity usually lies in the reverse engineering the hardware, not really in the driver development. E.g. for the apple magic mouse: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Apple-Ma... A…
Comment linking /training/kernel/
on “Writing Your First Kernel Module (2019)”Submitted Zephyr: Implementing a Device Driver for a Sensor as a story · 19 points
HN discussionWhy reinvent the wheels over and over again? Just port coreboot, or something similar to the likes of https://cwwk.net/ which have done the hardware part sufficiently. Or even better, organize to have some group/org paying them to port it to their HW. Or/and get https://bootlin.com / https://www.collabora.com involved, if they are disinterested, have them coordinate the effort. They should know how to do that, inste…
Comment linking /
on “Securing edge device systems, including firewalls, routers, and VPN gateways”Submitted Understanding D-Bus (2016) [pdf] as a story · 11 points
HN discussionI don't know that I'd recommend learning FreeRTOS for fun because you should basically never be using a traditional RTOS if you can possibly avoid it. Unless you really like reinventing stuff that you get "for free" on Linux, there are remarkably few advantages beyond certifiability (which FreeRTOS in particular doesn't get you), easier porting (just buy something that actually runs Linux) and lower resource use (mo…
Comment linking /docs/
on “Ask HN: How to get started with real-time Linux?”Submitted Delivery of Allwinner VPU driver main goals as a story · 5 points
HN discussion"Instead of finding and optimizing tasks, we just turned systemd off". Okay. The folks at Bootlin have way more interesting approaches and techniques to review. I'd look to them. https://bootlin.com/blog/tag/boot-time/
Comment linking /blog/tag/boot-time/
on “How to optimize boot time in user space on a Raspberry Pi 4 / Boot2Qt”Submitted Linux PTP mainline development war story and new features as a story · 3 points
HN discussionA/B updates as implemented in android, https://bootlin.com/pub/conferences/2022/elce/opdenacker-imp...
Comment linking /pub/conferences/2022/elce/opdenacker-implementing-A-B-system-updates-with-u-boot/opdenacker-implementing-A-B-system-updates-with-u-boot.pdf
on “Rivian Pushes Broken Software Update That Will Require Physical Repair”Submitted Ext2 filesystem driver now marked as deprecated as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSome text from the original feature announcement appears in the official docs. OE/YP state sharing between projects, https://bootlin.com/blog/yocto-sharing-the-sstate-cache-and-... State can be locked, https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/TipsAndTricks/LockSharedS...
Comment linking /blog/yocto-sharing-the-sstate-cache-and-download-directories/
on “Yocto Shared State – What does it mean and why should I care? (2011)”Submitted Using the U-Boot Extension Board Manager – BeagleBone Boards Example as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBootlin's embedded Linux class is fantastic and will teach you how to do all of this--uboot setup, building a kernel and root fs, etc. All of the materials for the class are free downloads so if you're motivated you can read the slides and follow it all yourself. I highly recommend it: https://bootlin.com/training/embedded-linux/
Comment linking /training/embedded-linux/
on “Repurposing e-waste: turning a TV set-top box into a Linux computer”Submitted Supporting a misbehaving NAND ECC engine in the Linux kernel as a story · 3 points
HN discussionMaybe https://bootlin.com/doc/training/graphics/graphics-slides.pd...
Comment linking /doc/training/graphics/graphics-slides.pdf
on “GNOME's Wayland Shows Potential for Better Battery Life”Submitted Security contributions to OpenWrt: dm-verity and SELinux as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIf you want to get a good introduction, I recommend the bootlin kernel course. All course material is available on their website. https://bootlin.com/training/kernel/
Comment linking /training/kernel/
on “Easylkb: Easy Linux Kernel Builder”Submitted Free Electrons becomes Bootlin as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWill you be doing embedded Linux? Embedded RTOS? Bare metal? Microcontrollers? SoC (say, FPGA with a hard processor core)? You can do a lot with QEMU. https://bootlin.com/ has a lot of great, free training material. https://bootlin.com/doc/training/embedded-linux-qemu/embedde... is one of my favorites. Learning to cross-compile, do embedded debugging, the process of booting an embedded system (which varies depending…
Comment linking /doc/training/embedded-linux-qemu/embedded-linux-qemu-labs.pdf
on “Ask HN: Best books to learn embedded systems?”Submitted Improving the eBPF tests in the kernel – Bootlin as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
