OSS + ELC EU 2026

Getting a driver into mainline Linux is a great step, but it is very different from downstream development. In downstream, the people writing the driver are often not the ones making the final product. Because of this, they have to implement 100% of the hardware features. But in the end, maybe only 60% of these features are actually used by product integrators. This creates dead code and increased driver complexity.

In this talk, I will show you the anatomy of a mainline Linux driver and guide you on how to write it for the upstream tree inclusion. We will see how to write generic code that is easy for the community to maintain in the long term. We will talk about using and extending existing kernel frameworks instead of making custom control paths or abusing current interfaces, which helps reduce ecosystem fragmentation. For embedded systems, we will also see how to make clean and extensible Device Tree bindings.

I will explain why we need to drop untestable downstream features to keep the code clean. Finally, we will look at how to format and check your patchset with tools like checkpatch, smatch, and new AI tools like Sashiko to ensure high kernel quality.