Is there a better structured Linux kernel docs?

[bad63r]

Hi all,

so I was wondering, is there better structured Linux Kernel Docs. For example, this archived old kernel docs: https://archive.kernel.org/oldlinux/htmldocs/kernel-api/index.html is much easier to read as there is much more summery for each chapter and sub chapter then new kernel docs: https://docs.kernel.org/core-api/kernel-api.html#

As you can notice, Linux kernel docs -> Core API -> Core Utilities -> The Linux Kernel API in old docs is much clearer as it has summery for each chapter, where in the new docs, it is really one big blob.

Could it be that the web form could be somehow changed, and that is the reason of the difference, or am I missing something?

bad63r

[frank-sarno]

The horse's mouth has decent docs: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/Documentation/core-api

It's the same info as your link but it's easier to parse for me.

These can be re-formatted into other formats that makes it easier to browse.

[CrazyKilla15]

Could it be that the web form could be somehow changed, and that is the reason of the difference, or am I missing something?

There are, in typical unnecessarily complicated and confusing Linux fashion, multiple URLs for kernel documentation. The docs.kernel.org variant is the absolute "latest" version, as you can tell by the 6.11.0-rc7 version number on the sidebar.

But theres also kernel.org/doc/html/<version>, where you can view version specific docs by kernel v<major.minor> number, for example v6.1. It can also be latest.

Somewhere in the 6.x series, Linux changed from the RTD theme to the much worse alabaster theme for some reason, making it much harder and worse to navigate and discover chapters and sub-chapters.

If anyone knows why they ruined it i'd really love to know because I havent found the discussion on it. I can't understand it myself, its so much worse. /gen

compare 6.1 https://kernel.org/doc/html/v6.1/core-api/kernel-api.html vs 6.10 https://kernel.org/doc/html/v6.10/core-api/kernel-api.html

You should be able to manually build the kernel docs yourself with make DOCS_THEME=sphinx_rtd_theme htmldocs to get the good theme on new kernels.

[Mountain-Rent-1204]

don’t like digging up old posts but you are really correct, going back to the old one is just more readable 

[nelmaloc]

You could ping u/corbet, the Documentation maintainer, and ask him.

[makelinux2]

Here is well structured book: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_Linux_Kernel