The packages that are installed by default when you use a typical Linux desktop distribution, such as any recent Ubuntu, CentOS, or Fedora Linux system, will include the minimal set required by a systems programmer: the native toolchain, which includes the gcc compiler along with headers, and the make utility/packages.
In this book, though, we are going to learn how to write kernel-space code using a VM and/or a target system running on a foreign processor (ARM or AArch64 being the typical cases). To effectively develop kernel code on these systems, we will need to install some software packages. Read on.
