Book excerpts:

Linux Device Drivers is, on the surface, a book about writing device drivers for the Linux system. It should be an interesting source of information both for people who want to experiment with their computer and for technical programmers who face the need to deal with the inner levels of a Linux box.

The Linux enthusiast should find in this book enough food for her mind to start playing with the code base and should be able to join the group of developers that is continuously working on new capabilities and performance enhancements. This book does not cover the Linux kernel in its entirety, of course, but Linux device driver authors need to know how to work with many of the kernel's subsystems. It thus makes a good introduction to kernel programming in general.

If, on the other hand, you are just trying to write a device driver for your own device, and you don't want to muck with the kernel internals, the text should be modularized enough to fit your needs as well. If you don't want to go deep into the details, you can just skip the most technical sections and stick to the standard API used by device drivers to seamlessly integrate with the rest of the kernel.

In order to be able to use this book, you need to be confident with C programming. A little Unix expertise is needed as well, as the book often refer to Unix commands and pipelines.

Reviews:

Amazon.com

:) "This book is a must-have if you want to write your own device drivers for Linux, or if you just need a place to get started hacking the kernel."