Summary

We have traversed through one of the most crucial aspects of the Linux kernel, comprehending various nuances of memory representations and allocations. By understanding this subsystem, we have also succinctly captured the design acumen and implementation efficiency of the kernel, and more importantly understood the kernel's dynamism in accommodating finer and newer heuristics and mechanisms for continuous enhancements. Apart from the specifics of memory management, we also gauged the efficiency of the kernel in maximizing resource usage at minimal costs, ushering all classical mechanisms of code reuse and modular code structures.

Though the specifics of memory management may vary in correspondence to the underlying architecture, the generalities of design and implementation styles would mostly remain the same to achieve code stability and sensitivity to change.

In the next chapter, we will go further and look at another fundamental abstraction of the kernel: files. We will look through...