Almost a decade ago, I used to co-work with a friend who is a GCC maintainer. There over our discussions, I learned a lot about how Linux kernel is built and shipped, but I really never put it all together.

Thankfully I found this interview of Greg Kroah-Hartman, who has been a maintainer on Linux kernel for over 25 years. It is a very good introduction to How Linux is actually built and what all goes into it from a top level view.

One insight I found quite useful was at 50:20 is how he explains that

We don’t have grand proposals sent to the kernel lists…

This is a very important part for contributors to realise, when trying to get involved with large open source projects.