On Sun, Dec 07, 2025 at 11:34:25PM -0600, Mike McClain wrote: > When perusing /var/log/kern.log among others, trying to figure out > why the computer doesn't want to do what I want. I'm constantly seeing > acronyms as SLUB, dma, RCU, GIC. Some I can figure out, others I > suspect I'd have to dig through the kernel source for. > Is there anywhere a dictionary type listing of what all those acronyms > mean? Just something simple with lines like > 'NTP Network Time Protocol'. > Thanks, I fear there isn't one in that wide generality. Those things come from extremely different contexts. Just for two examples: SLUB is a Linux specific thing, a unit of one (of several) memory allocation strategies. This one is in Wikipedia [1], BTW. NTP is an Internet protocol, the Network Time Protocol. This one is from a much wider context than Linux and clearly must have a Wikipedia entry [2] (go through the NTP disambiguation [2a]). Actually the whole question is so general (due to the huge breadth of the kernel) that it reduces to "how I find information", and for that, different people develop different strategies. I often go to Wikipedia as a first stop when I'm trying that; asking here is also a good bet. Cheers [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLUB_(software) [2a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTP [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Time_Protocol -- tomás
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