[tremon]

Alternatively, the use of BPF without explanation signals that the article is a deep-dive and not intended for random passers-by. I don't support the position that every article should be written to cater to the lowest common denominator.

The first line of the article:

> Support for BPF in the kernel has been tied to the LLVM toolchain since the advent of extended BPF.

Should the article also explain which kernel they're referring to, what LLVM is and stands for, and highlight the differences between BPF and extended BPF? Or are they allowed to expect a motivated reader to do a cursory web search to fill in the gaps in their knowledge?

[phiresky]

I disagree, you can always spend one or two sentences at the top to immediately bring everyone to a good starting point, regardless of how much technical depth the rest of the article has.

For example in this case: "eBPF is a method for user space to add code to the running Linux kernel without compromising security. They have been tied [...]. The GNU toolchain, the historical and still by many preferred system to build Linux currently has no support.

The description of what LWN and Linux is would be in the about page linked in the article.

It costs almost nothing for an expert to skim/skip two sentences while saving loads of time for everyone else.

The article is also completely missing motivation (why do we care whether BPF is supported in the second toolchain?) Which would be helpful for almost everyone, including people who think it is obvious.

Edit: To be clear though, I love LWN. But the articles are very often missing important context that would be easy to add that I suspect would help a large portion of the reader base.