Topics / #kernel

Kernel projects on GitHub

Operating system kernel development

As of , the most-starred Kernel projects on GitHub are linux (252.3K stars), Magisk (63.3K stars) and firecracker (37.5K stars). GitHub.Locker tracks 74 Kernel repositories with 1.1M stars combined. The fastest-growing on October 17 was d2r-mobile, with +171 stars in a day.

74Projects
1.1MStars in total
+813Stars in a day
Browse in the catalog →github.com/topics/kernel ↗

Hot right now

Most stars gained in a day · Oct 17

+171

d2r-mobile

jhaizhou-ops/d2r-mobile · ★ 3.8K

D2R Mobile is an open-source iOS compatibility layer that lets you run your own Switch copy of Diablo II: Resurrected (with the Reign of the Warlock expansion) natively on iPhone and iPad, with full touch controls and 60 fps.

+138

linux

torvalds/linux · ★ 252.3K

This is the Linux kernel itself - the core of any Linux operating system. It manages hardware and system resources and provides the fundamental services all other software runs on.

+74

nvidia-macos-driver

nullmoth/nvidia-macos-driver · ★ 3.4K

A free, open-source Metal driver that lets NVIDIA Turing-and-later GeForce/RTX/Quadro cards act as a fully supported GPU on Intel Macs running macOS 15 Sequoia via OpenCore, covering desktop rendering, Metal apps, games, Core ML/MPS and OpenCL.

+59

KernelSU

tiann/KernelSU · ★ 19.4K

KernelSU is a kernel-based root solution for Android devices: the su and root access management run inside the kernel itself.

The all-time top

74 projects · by stars

  1. #1 · torvalds/linux

    linux

    This is the Linux kernel itself - the core of any Linux operating system. It manages hardware and system resources and provides the fundamental services all other software runs on.

    252.3K
  2. #2 · topjohnwu/Magisk

    Magisk

    Magisk is a suite of open source software for customizing Android, supporting devices higher than Android 6.0. Its four headline pieces are MagiskSU, Magisk Modules, MagiskBoot, and Zygisk.

    63.3K
  3. #3 · firecracker-microvm/firecracker

    firecracker

    Firecracker is an open-source virtualization technology for creating and managing secure, multi-tenant microVMs for container and function-based serverless workloads.

    37.5K
  1. 4

    serenity

    33.9KSerenityOS/serenity · C++

    SerenityOS is a graphical Unix-like operating system for 64-bit x86, Arm, and RISC-V computers, built entirely from scratch.

  2. 5

    linux-insides

    33.7K0xAX/linux-insides · Python

    This is a free, work-in-progress book that explains the internals of the Linux kernel, covering topics like booting, memory management, and system calls in deep technical detail.

  3. 6

    os-tutorial

    30.8Kcfenollosa/os-tutorial · C

    A step-by-step tutorial that walks you through building a small operating system from scratch, starting at the boot sector and moving up to a basic kernel.

  4. 7

    openwrt

    28.8Kopenwrt/openwrt · C

    OpenWrt is a Linux-based operating system built for embedded devices, mostly routers, that replaces a single static vendor firmware with a fully writable filesystem and its own package manager so you can customize the device however you want.

  5. 8

    cilium

    25.7Kcilium/cilium · Go

    Cilium is open-source networking, security, and observability software built on an eBPF dataplane, used mainly as the networking layer of Kubernetes clusters.

  6. 9

    radare2

    25.1Kradareorg/radare2 · C

    r2 (radare2) is a libre reverse engineering framework for Unix-like systems: a set of libraries, tools and plugins for analyzing, disassembling, emulating, debugging and modifying binaries.

  7. 10

    OSX-KVM

    23.7Kkholia/OSX-KVM · Shell

    Scripts and OpenCore configuration for running macOS as a virtual machine under QEMU/KVM on a Linux host, supporting recent macOS versions such as Monterey, Ventura and Sonoma.

  8. 11

    bcc

    22.7Kiovisor/bcc · C

    BCC (BPF Compiler Collection) is a toolkit for creating efficient kernel tracing and manipulation programs on Linux using eBPF. It also ships a large collection of ready-made tools for I/O analysis, networking, and monitoring.

  9. 12

    flash-linux0.11-talk

    22.7Kdibingfa/flash-linux0.11-talk · HTML

    This is a Chinese-language article series that walks line by line through the full source code of the Linux 0.11 kernel, explaining operating system design concepts as if reading a novel.

  10. 13

    How-to-Make-a-Computer-Operating-System

    22.4KSamyPesse/How-to-Make-a-Computer-Operating-System · C

    This is a free online book that walks you through writing a simple UNIX-based operating system in C++ from scratch.

  11. 14

    Atmosphere

    20.1KAtmosphere-NX/Atmosphere · C++

    Atmosphère is a work-in-progress custom firmware (CFW) for the Nintendo Switch that replaces and patches core parts of the console's Horizon OS to add new features and customization.

  12. 15

    HarmonyOS

    20KAwesome-HarmonyOS/HarmonyOS · C

    This is a curated list of resources about HarmonyOS, the microkernel-based distributed operating system developed by Huawei. It aggregates official docs, architecture references, developer tools, drivers, books, and videos about the OS rather than being the OS itself.

  13. 16

    gvisor

    19.7Kgoogle/gvisor · Go

    An application kernel for containers: it wraps running applications in a strong isolation layer from the host OS, implementing a Linux-like interface in memory-safe Go, entirely in userspace.

  14. 17

    KernelSU

    19.4Ktiann/KernelSU · Kotlin

    KernelSU is a kernel-based root solution for Android devices: the su and root access management run inside the kernel itself.

  15. 18

    cheat-engine

    19.3Kcheat-engine/cheat-engine · Pascal

    Cheat Engine is a development environment focused on modding games and applications for personal use. Its repository tags describe it as a memory scanner and debugger.

  16. 19

    OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher

    18.7Kdortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher · Python

    A Python-based tool built on Acidanthera's OpenCore and Lilu that revives Macs Apple no longer supports: it lets you install and run macOS Big Sur or newer on hardware as old as 2007.

  17. 20

    reactos

    18.3Kreactos/reactos · C

    A free, open-source operating system (GNU GPL 2.0) built to run the applications and drivers written for the Windows NT family, from NT4 through 7; compatibility work currently focuses on Windows Server 2003.

  18. 21

    blog_os

    17.8Kphil-opp/blog_os · HTML

    Source code for the 'Writing an OS in Rust' blog series at os.phil-opp.com - step-by-step posts that build a small x86-64 operating system kernel in Rust.

  19. 22

    open-gpu-kernel-modules

    17.5KNVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules · C

    This is NVIDIA's official source release of the open-source Linux GPU kernel modules (nvidia.ko, nvidia-drm.ko, nvidia-modeset.ko, nvidia-uvm.ko) for Turing and newer GPUs.

  20. 23

    zephyr

    16.8Kzephyrproject-rtos/zephyr · C

    Zephyr is an open source real-time operating system (RTOS) — a small-footprint kernel for resource-constrained embedded devices, supporting many hardware architectures and built with security in mind.

  21. 24

    redox

    16.6Kredox-os/redox · Rust

    Redox is an open-source operating system written in Rust that uses a microkernel architecture, aiming to be reliable, secure and usable while providing a full set of components like a file system, display server and core utilities.

  22. 25

    OpenCorePkg

    15.6Kacidanthera/OpenCorePkg · C

    OpenCorePkg is OpenCore, a UEFI bootloader bundled with a development SDK, best known for booting and patching macOS on non-Apple hardware, while also providing shared UEFI libraries used by other Acidanthera projects.

  23. 26

    gpu.js

    15.5Kgpujs/gpu.js · JavaScript

    GPU.js is a JavaScript library that takes the functions you write and runs them on your GPU as shaders instead of on the CPU — a big speedup for parallel math like matrix multiplication.

  24. 27

    rust-raspberrypi-OS-tutorials

    14.7Krust-embedded/rust-raspberrypi-OS-tutorials · Rust

    A step-by-step tutorial series that teaches you how to write your own embedded Operating System kernel from scratch in Rust, targeting the Raspberry Pi 3 and 4.

  25. 28

    raspberry-pi-os

    14Ks-matyukevich/raspberry-pi-os · C

    A step-by-step guide that teaches you how to create a simple operating system kernel from scratch, called RPi OS. Its code is largely based on the Linux kernel, and everything targets the Raspberry Pi 3.

  26. 29

    os01

    13.8Ktuhdo/os01 · TeX

    It's a free book, 'Operating Systems: From 0 to 1', that walks a self-learner through the foundational knowledge needed to write an operating system from scratch.

  27. 30

    linux

    13.3Kraspberrypi/linux · C

    This is Raspberry Pi's own Linux kernel source tree: the code its official Pi kernels are built from, with Pi-specific drivers and patches carried on top of the mainline Linux kernel.

  28. 31

    sanitizers

    12.5Kgoogle/sanitizers · C

    A family of runtime checkers that catch memory errors and data races in C and C++ code: AddressSanitizer, MemorySanitizer, ThreadSanitizer, LeakSanitizer and more. This repo is their archived documentation hub.

  29. 32

    zfs

    12.5Kopenzfs/zfs · C

    OpenZFS is an advanced file system and volume manager that started life on Solaris and is now maintained by the OpenZFS community. This repository contains the code for running it on Linux and FreeBSD.

  30. 33

    waydroid

    12.4Kwaydroid/waydroid · Python

    Waydroid runs a full Android system in a container on top of a regular GNU/Linux system, letting you use Android apps alongside your Linux desktop.

  31. 34

    rt-thread

    12.3KRT-Thread/rt-thread · C

    RT-Thread is an open source, community-based real-time operating system (RTOS) for embedded and IoT devices, mainly written in C.

  32. 35

    darwin-xnu

    11.3Kapple/darwin-xnu · C

    This is the source code of the XNU kernel, the core of Darwin, the operating system behind macOS and iOS. It is the kernel that ships on Apple devices, published as source for reading, building and debugging.

  33. 36

    pwndbg

    11.1Kpwndbg/pwndbg · Python

    A plug-in for GDB and LLDB that makes debugging far less painful for low-level developers, hardware hackers, reverse-engineers and exploit developers — it adds the utilities vanilla debuggers are missing.

  34. 37

    ZygiskNext

    10.6KDr-TSNG/ZygiskNext · C

    Zygisk Next is a standalone, native reimplementation of the Zygisk API: it brings Magisk-style Zygisk module support to KernelSU and can also replace Magisk's own built-in Zygisk.

  35. 38

    cutlass

    10.6KNVIDIA/cutlass · C++

    NVIDIA's collection of C++ CUDA templates and Python DSLs for writing high-performance matrix-matrix multiplication (GEMM) and other linear algebra kernels on NVIDIA GPUs — the standard toolkit for that since 2017.

  36. 39

    WSL2-Linux-Kernel

    10.6Kmicrosoft/WSL2-Linux-Kernel · C

    This is the official source repository for the Linux kernel that powers WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux 2), including the kernel source code and configuration files used by Microsoft.

  37. 40

    mac-precision-touchpad

    10.5Kimbushuo/mac-precision-touchpad · C

    A Windows driver that makes Apple MacBook trackpads and the Magic Trackpad 2/3 work as Windows Precision Touchpad devices on Windows 10, over USB, SPI or Bluetooth connections.

  38. 41

    perf-tools

    10.5Kbrendangregg/perf-tools · Shell

    A collection of command-line scripts for analyzing Linux performance using ftrace and perf_events (the 'perf' command), created by Brendan Gregg (author of the DTraceToolkit).

  39. 42

    bpftrace

    10.4Kbpftrace/bpftrace · C++

    bpftrace is a high-level tracing language and tool for Linux: it uses eBPF to trace the kernel and user applications with minimal overhead.

  40. 43

    amlogic-s9xxx-armbian

    10.2Kophub/amlogic-s9xxx-armbian · Shell

    This is a project that lets you replace the Android TV firmware on Amlogic, Allwinner, and Rockchip TV boxes and SBCs with Armbian, turning them into real Debian/Ubuntu-based Linux servers. It also ships management commands for installing, updating the kernel, and configuring the resulting system.

  41. 44

    tilelang

    8.6Ktile-ai/tilelang · Python

    TileLang (tile-lang) is a domain-specific language for writing high-performance GPU/CPU/NPU kernels like GEMM, Dequant GEMM, FlashAttention, and LinearAttention, using Pythonic syntax backed by a TVM-based compiler.

  42. 45

    capsule-fs

    8.4Kunicity-aos/capsule-fs · Rust

    capsule-fs is a filesystem toolkit for AI agents inside Unicity AOS (also called Astrid OS): it gives agents readfile, writefile, replaceinfile, listdirectory, grepsearch, createdirectory, deletefile and movefile tools, all mediated by the OS kernel's VFS airlock.

  43. 46

    book

    7.5Kastrid-runtime/book · Perl

    This is the official reference book for Astrid, covering its kernel, capsule model, host ABI, IPC bus, and security model.

  44. 47

    ProxyBridge

    6.8KInterceptSuite/ProxyBridge · C

    ProxyBridge is a cross-platform proxy client that transparently redirects TCP and UDP traffic from specific Windows/macOS/Linux applications through SOCKS5 or HTTP proxies, acting as an open-source alternative to Proxifier.

  45. 48

    dirtyfrag

    5.1KV4bel/dirtyfrag · C

    Dirty Frag is a proof-of-concept Linux kernel local privilege escalation exploit that chains two page-cache write vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-43284 and CVE-2026-43500) to obtain root on major Linux distributions.

  46. 49

    rfcs

    4.2Kastrid-runtime/rfcs · Python

    This repository holds RFCs (design proposals) that define any substantial change to the contract between Astrid's kernel and user-space, covering the host ABI, IPC protocol, capability model, manifest schema, VFS semantics, capsule interface standards, and the SDK's public API.

  47. 50

    copy-fail-CVE-2026-31431

    4.1Ktheori-io/copy-fail-CVE-2026-31431 · Python

    This repository is a technical writeup and proof-of-concept for CVE-2026-31431, a 9-year-old Linux kernel local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability found by Theori's AI vulnerability research tool, Xint Code.

  48. 51

    src

    3.9Kopenbsd/src · C

    A read-only git mirror of the official source tree of OpenBSD, the open-source Unix-like operating system — converted from the project's original CVS repository so the full source can be browsed and cloned on GitHub.

  49. 52

    d2r-mobile

    3.8Kjhaizhou-ops/d2r-mobile · C

    D2R Mobile is an open-source iOS compatibility layer that lets you run your own Switch copy of Diablo II: Resurrected (with the Reign of the Warlock expansion) natively on iPhone and iPad, with full touch controls and 60 fps.

  50. 53

    nvidia-macos-driver

    3.4Knullmoth/nvidia-macos-driver · Rust

    A free, open-source Metal driver that lets NVIDIA Turing-and-later GeForce/RTX/Quadro cards act as a fully supported GPU on Intel Macs running macOS 15 Sequoia via OpenCore, covering desktop rendering, Metal apps, games, Core ML/MPS and OpenCL.

  51. 54

    vinix

    2.7Kvlang/vinix · V

    Vinix is an effort to write a modern, fast, and useful operating system in the V programming language — a hobby OS project that also feeds improvements back into the V compiler.

  52. 55

    rawaccel

    2.6KRawAccelOfficial/rawaccel · C#

    Raw Accel is a kernel-mode mouse acceleration driver for Windows 10 and 11, bundled with a GUI for tuning the acceleration.

  53. 56

    Relapse-Exploit

    2.3Kntfargo/Relapse-Exploit · JavaScript

    Relapse Exploit is a browser-based jailbreak chain for the PS5, working on firmware 7.00 through 13.60, that chains a WebKit browser exploit with a kernel exploit to gain kernel read/write and load custom payloads.

  54. 57

    ghostlock-app

    2KYuKongA/ghostlock-app · Kotlin

    GhostLock is a one-tap Android app that runs the CVE-2026-43499 kernel exploit to grant uid 0 (root) on a matching vulnerable kernel, optionally loading a KernelSU-style module afterward.

  55. 58

    darwin-vm

    1.2Kjprx/darwin-vm · Shell

    darwin-vm boots iOS or macOS (Darwin) inside QEMU straight to a root shell, so you can debug the kernel, edit the filesystem, and run your own custom programs. It supports emulating iPhone 12-17 (A14-A19) and M1-M5 Macs.

  56. 59

    motor-os

    1.1Kmoturus/motor-os · Rust

    Motor OS is a simple, fast, and secure operating system built for the cloud. It targets virtualized workloads — web serving, serverless computing, and edge caching — and is written entirely in Rust, kernel to shell.

  57. 60

    mu300-linux

    602dikeckaan/mu300-linux · C

    This project turns the ZTE F50/MU300 and ZTE U30 Air 5G pocket hotspots into small Linux computers that run next to Android, giving you Ubuntu or OpenWrt with working Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, SSH and the device's own 5G modem.

  58. 61

    Stuxnet

    588Sadpainy/Stuxnet · C

    This is a reconstructed source code of Stuxnet, the famous 2010 worm that sabotaged Siemens industrial control systems, rebuilt by the author from reverse-engineering research for educational and malware-analysis purposes.

  59. 62

    DeepGEMM-Ascend

    586deepseek-ai/DeepGEMM-Ascend · C++

    DeepGEMM-Ascend is a port of DeepSeek's DeepGEMM matrix-multiplication kernel library to Huawei Ascend NPUs, fully API-compatible with the original and supporting BF16, FP8, and FP4 GEMM along with MQA logits and MegaMoE operators.

  60. 63

    android-internals-wiki

    495Gracker/android-internals-wiki · Python

    This is a free online book and knowledge wiki about Android system internals, covering App, Framework, Native, and Kernel layers, benchmarked against Android 17 / API 37 with AOSP android-17.0.0r1 source references.

  61. 64

    virtio-nvgpu

    431nestrilabs/virtio-nvgpu · Rust

    A virtio device that shares one NVIDIA GPU across several KVM virtual machines at near-bare-metal speed, by forwarding kernel-driver ioctls instead of translating graphics APIs. The target use case is headless streaming: the guest renders and encodes on the GPU, and only compressed video leaves.

  62. 65

    PCILeechGen

    400sercanarga/PCILeechGen · Go

    PCILeechGen is a CLI tool that generates custom firmware for PCILeech FPGA boards. It reads a real donor PCI/PCIe device through VFIO, clones its identity (config space, BARs, capabilities), and produces a ready-to-flash .bin bitstream via Vivado.

  63. 66

    edrEvasionWorkshop

    397tyeurada/edrEvasionWorkshop

    Workshop materials from DEF CON 34 and BSidesLV 2026 on writing custom malware that evades EDR — from loaders to kernel-level techniques.

  64. 67

    allox-os

    313AlloxOrg/allox-os · Python

    A dedicated runtime for AI agents: it runs multiple agents and sessions inside a Kata-isolated VM and adds workspace isolation, checkpointing, rollback and observability on top of it.

  65. 68

    ftl

    304nuta/ftl · Rust

    FTL is a new operating system written in Rust that aims to be an alternative to Linux, BSD, and Illumos specifically for cloud environments.

  66. 69

    Hyperloom

    242AMD-AGI/Hyperloom · Python

    A multi-agent harness that autonomously optimizes LLM inference on AMD Instinct GPUs: it profiles your workload, searches framework and GPU-kernel optimizations, validates every candidate end to end, and saves proven results into a recipe knowledge base.

  67. 70

    UniRoot

    232kuuky29/UniRoot · Kotlin

    UniRoot is a one-tap rooting app for Samsung Galaxy devices. It ships a new unprivileged kernel exploit (DirtyFrag, CVE-2026-43284) that roots the phone with a single button press, plus an older CVE-2026-43499-based exploit with per-device profiles, and it automatically re-roots the device on every boot.

  68. 71

    ablation

    222Ablation-Tool/ablation · Python

    Ablation is a reverse engineering framework that provides the same core disassembly, decompilation, and binary analysis capabilities as industry tools like Ghidra, IDA Pro, and Binary Ninja, and it's built to be driven by an AI coding agent.

  69. 72

    freemint

    196freemint/freemint · C

    FreeMiNT is a Unix-like kernel for Atari ST and compatible computers, providing multitasking and Unix-style features on classic Atari hardware.

  70. 73

    GoodmansKernel

    152zer0condition/GoodmansKernel · C

    GoodmansKernel is a signed Windows kernel-mode driver that embeds the wasm3 interpreter, letting you load unsigned .wasm modules and run them inside the kernel with direct FFI access to nt/hal exports. You write kernel logic in C or Rust, compile it to wasm32, load it into the driver, and iterate without re-signing each payload.

  71. 74

    lytlnyblOS

    116red-mutt/lytlnyblOS · C

    lytlnyblOS ('little nibble OS') is a small 32-bit operating system built from scratch to teach beginners OS development practically. You write every line of it yourself while following the companion book.

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