In order to be able to face this book, you need to be confident with C programming. A little Unix expertise is needed as well, as I often refer to Unix commands and pipelines.

At the hardware level, no previous expertise is required, as long as the general concepts are clear in advance. The text isn’t based on specific PC hardware, and I provide all the needed information when I do refer to specific hardware.

Being able to connect to the Internet would be beneficial for the reader because many interesting documents and upgrades can be retrieved from the network. Being wired is, however, not strictly necessary, and I myself have quite poor connectivity (mainly due to the high rates of the Italian telecommunication company).

As far as the software is concerned, you’ll need to have Linux installed on your computer to run the sample drivers, but any distribution will do (and almost any hardware platform as well). A complete list of the needed software packages is found in Chapter 1, as many readers just wouldn’t receive the information if it was in the Preface. (I expect many will skip Chapter 1 as well; most of the readers are hackers, aren’t you?)