Book excerpts:

Anyone brave enough to open a book called "The Linux Kernel" is brave enough to read source code; they need the conceptual framework to make sense of source details within high-level requirements of the O/S. They need maps of inter-relations between components they plan to change and the rest of the kernel.

This is the guide to how the kernel fits together, the subsystems and algorithms, maps of interconnections and trouble spots. Not how we think it is, but, where possible, the concrete architecture of what it really is. We need to present Linux design requirements as if we were about to build it. As the subtitle suggests, the book specs out a blueprint of how to implement Linux, abstract (or informed and forward-thinking) enough that it won't go out of date with 2.6.