Thanks first go to my wonderful wife Shannon and my beautiful children Madeline and Griffin for their understanding and patience while I took the time to work on this book. Without their support and prodding, this book would have never been completed. Special thanks to Shannon for getting me into Linux kernel development in the first place. Without her effort, I would be still doing some odd embedded programming job, and would have never discovered this great community in which to work in.

My editor, Andy Oram, is the driving force behing this book, shaping it into something that is both readable and informative. His editing skills and patience as deadlines flew by were instrumental in the creation and completion of this book.

Also a big thanks go to the original editor of this book, David Brickner, for giving me the chance to work on this project and believing that I could complete it, despite the first version weighing in at over 1000 pages.

The technical reviewers for this book were amazing, catching all of the numerous mistakes and pointing out ommisions that needed to be filled. The reviewers were (in alphabetic order by first name), Christian Benvenuti, Christian Morgner, Golden G. Richard III, Jean Delvare, Jerry Cooperstein, Michael Boerner, Rik van Riel, and Robert Day. Any remaining problems are due to me, and not their excellent skills.

A special thanks to Randy Dunlap for going over the kernel boot parameters with a fine tooth comb and pointing out issues in that chapter. Also to Kay Sievers, who helped immensely with all of the chapter on customizing the kernel, and who provided the script at the end of that same chapter. Without his sysfs help and knowledge, that chapter would not have been feasible.

And a final special thanks to my 6th grade English teacher, Ms. Gruber, for teaching me that writing was something that was possible to do, and showing me the enjoyment in doing it. Without that start, none of this would have been attainable.