[$] Avoiding memory-allocation deadlocks
There is a saying that you need to spend money to make money, though this apparent paradox is easily resolved with a start-up loan and the discipline of balancing expenses against income. A similar logic applies to the management of memory in an operating system kernel such as Linux: sometimes you need to allocate memory to free memory. Here, too, discipline is needed, though the typical consequences of not being sufficiently careful is not bankruptcy but rather a deadlock. The history of how the Linux kernel developed its balance between saving and spending is interesting as a microcosm of how Linux development proceeds.

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