I sent a patch to the Linux kernel and it got accepted

I use Arch (yes, I know). And for a while I’d had this itch to contribute to the kernel, even with something tiny. On September 23, 2026 it finally happened.

What I changed

The patch is called:

staging: rtl8723bs: remove unused NDIS association and auth defines

In plain words: the rtl8723bs driver (a Realtek wifi chip that lives in staging, the part of the kernel where drivers that still need cleanup go) had a bunch of #defines nobody used. I deleted them. One file, 15 lines removed, zero added.

Sounds small? It is. And that’s exactly why it’s a good first patch: staging exists so people can help clean up code, and removing dead code is one of the most useful things you can do there.

The part that isn’t so small

The patch is the easy bit; the process is what takes effort:

• No pull requests: patches are sent by email, as plain text, to the mailing list and the right maintainers.
• The message format matters a lot: the subsystem prefix, a clear description and your Signed-off-by.
• You have to show that nobody actually uses what you’re deleting, and that everything still builds.

Greg Kroah-Hartman, the staging maintainer, accepted it as commit 6f18b14bf35a in linux-next. You can see the message on the list.

Why I’m telling you

Because a lot of people think contributing to the kernel is only for gurus. It isn’t: there are tasks meant for getting started. The hard part isn’t the code, it’s working up the nerve to send that first email.