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Top 23 Kernel Open-Source Projects
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Project mention: Tell HN: First commit on Linux Kernel GitHub Page is from 30th of April 2005 | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-05-27
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Project mention: War Story: Debugging a Kafka 4.0 Consumer Lag Spike During a Product Launch Using Cilium 1.17 and Datadog 2026 | dev.to | 2026-04-28
This adds less than 2% overhead to your node’s CPU usage but exposes 14 Kafka-specific eBPF metrics that are critical for debugging lag. We’ve found that 72% of Kafka 4.0 lag incidents we’ve responded to in 2026 stem from node-level network policy issues that only eBPF can detect. If you’re using a different CNI, you can still use Cilium’s standalone eBPF probe https://github.com/cilium/cilium/tree/v1.17.2/contrib/kafka-probe to get these metrics without replacing your entire CNI. Always validate that kafka.heartbeat_drops_total is 0 in staging before every launch.
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Underneath the hood, Substrate uses gvisor (same thing as the Agent Sandbox project from the CNCF SIG), which is a container sandbox developed by Google that focuses on security, isolation, and the ability to use it in an efficient fashion (e.g - not take up a ton of hardware resources).
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Project mention: Instalando e Utilizando o Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) com Root | dev.to | 2025-08-12
KernelSU: https://github.com/tiann/KernelSU
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rt-thread
RT-Thread is an open source IoT Real-Time Operating System (RTOS). https://rt-thread.github.io/rt-thread/
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Project mention: WireGuard makes new Windows release following Microsoft signing resolution | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-04-10
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You might be using a device powered by Tock OS.
https://www.tockos.org/
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For kernel code itself, the most useful open-source tool is syzkaller, which fuzzes syscalls and IOKit interfaces. It's not magic — you need to write descriptions of the syscalls you want fuzzed — but once you have those, it'll find bugs you'd never spot by reading code.
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linux-network-performance-parameters
Learn where some of the network sysctl variables fit into the Linux/Kernel network flow. Translations: 🇷🇺
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build
The official build framework for the Armbian Linux distribution. This repository contains the complete toolchain and scripts required to compile custom OS images from source, including kernel configuration, U-Boot handling, and board-specific tweaks for various ARM and ARM64 single-board computers.
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Project mention: Building a Production eBPF Observability & Security Stack for Kubernetes in 2026 | dev.to | 2026-03-30
# Install Tetragon via Helm helm repo add cilium https://helm.cilium.io helm repo update helm install tetragon cilium/tetragon \ --namespace kube-system \ --set tetragon.grpc.address="localhost:54321" \ --set tetragon.exportFilename="/var/run/cilium/tetragon/tetragon.log" \ --set tetragon.enableProcessCred=true \ --set tetragon.enableProcessNs=true # Install tetra CLI (for event observation) GOOS=$(go env GOOS) GOARCH=$(go env GOARCH) curl -L --remote-name-all \ https://github.com/cilium/tetragon/releases/latest/download/tetra-${GOOS}-${GOARCH}.tar.gz sudo tar -C /usr/local/bin -xzvf tetra-${GOOS}-${GOARCH}.tar.gz rm tetra-${GOOS}-${GOARCH}.tar.gz
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asterinas
Asterinas aims to be a production-grade Linux alternative—memory safe, high-performance, and more.
Project mention: Ironclad – formally verified, real-time capable, Unix-like OS kernel | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-11-08 -
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linux-cachyos
Archlinux Kernel based on different schedulers and some other performance improvements.
Project mention: CachyOS Kernels Based on Different Schedulers and Performance Improvements | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-07-26 -
NOTE:
The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars.
The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or
since we started tracking (Dec 2020).
Kernel discussion
Kernel related posts
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Pluto – An x86 (Ring 0, Protected Mode) kernel written in Zig
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Tell HN: First commit on Linux Kernel GitHub Page is from 30th of April 2005
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Three Months of Speed-Up Experiments on a 3090 Ti: Autoregressive DFlash MTP for Qwen3.6-27B
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How to debug kernel memory corruption on Apple Silicon
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The mdadm backup file: when it's needed, and when it isn't
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Rezolus: High-Resolution Systems Performance Telemetry
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ReactOS
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A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
www.saashub.com | 7 Jun 2026
Index
What are some of the best open-source Kernel projects? This list will help you:
| # | Project | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | linux | 235,340 |
| 2 | serenity | 33,323 |
| 3 | cilium | 24,441 |
| 4 | gvisor | 18,450 |
| 5 | reactos | 17,604 |
| 6 | blog_os | 17,501 |
| 7 | KernelSU | 16,708 |
| 8 | rust-raspberrypi-OS-tutorials | 14,651 |
| 9 | raspberry-pi-os | 13,782 |
| 10 | rt-thread | 12,030 |
| 11 | winfsp | 8,641 |
| 12 | windows-kernel-exploits | 8,667 |
| 13 | lkmpg | 8,490 |
| 14 | tock | 6,332 |
| 15 | syzkaller | 6,220 |
| 16 | linux-network-performance-parameters | 5,795 |
| 17 | build | 5,268 |
| 18 | build-linux | 5,202 |
| 19 | tetragon | 4,724 |
| 20 | asterinas | 4,514 |
| 21 | gophernotes | 3,966 |
| 22 | linux-cachyos | 3,787 |
| 23 | pwru | 3,765 |
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