6.1. Introduction

6.1.1. Tools you need

First of all you need assembler (compiler) -- nasm or gas.

Second, you need a linker -- ld, since assembler produces only object code. Almost all distributions have gas and ld, in the binutils package.

As for nasm, you may have to download and install binary packages for Linux and docs from the nasm site; note that several distributions (Stampede, Debian, SuSe, Mandrake) already have nasm, check first.

If you're going to dig in, you should also install include files for your OS, and if possible, kernel source.