Johan Hovold
Linux Kernel Developer, Owner at Hovold Consulting AB
Greater Malmö Metropolitan Area Sweden
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJohan Hovold is a seasoned Linux kernel developer and proprietor of Hovold Consulting AB with 26 years of embedded systems experience, specializing in driver model, power management, TTY and USB subsystems. A long-time subsystem maintainer and top contributor to the mainline Linux kernel, he has authored 3,500+ patches and maintains USB Serial, Greybus and GNSS trees while regularly supplying stable-kernel security backports. He combines deep low-level expertise across ARM, x86, Devicetree and many kernel subsystems with practical system integration and boot-time/power optimization consulting. Johan’s work includes high-impact fixes in the flagship torvalds/linux tree and board support contributions for vendors like Rockchip and Qualcomm, reflecting both upstream leadership and hands-on debugging of race conditions and NULL dereferences. Based in Greater Malmö, he is a regular conference speaker and offers consulting for driver development, mainlining and embedded system integration.
26 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
University of New South WalesMaster of Science (MSc), Master of Science (MSc) at Lunds universitetKøbenhavns Universitet
Github Skills (19)
debugging10
debug10
memory-management10
qualcomm10
usb10
c1110
linux-kernel10
c1710
kernel10
device-tree10
driver10
device-driver10
sys10
kernel-mode10
arm10
Programming languages (2)
Github contributions (5)
torvalds/linux
Oct 2022 - Mar 2023
Linux kernel source tree
Role in this project:
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT Developer
Embedded Systems Engineer / IoT DeveloperContributions:98 commits, 6 comments in 5 months
Contributions summary:Johan primarily contributed to the Qualcomm Linux kernel, focusing on device driver improvements and bug fixes. Their work involved addressing issues in the serial communication drivers (qcom-geni) including correcting receiver enable and DMA cancellation, alongside fixing shutdown race conditions. They also made several changes to Device Trees, addressing issues related to regulator boot glitches and HID supplies on x1e80100 platforms. Additionally, the user worked on the qcom-qmp and clk drivers, fixing null pointer dereferences in runtime PM and issues with PLL configurations respectively.
kernellinux-kernellinuxkernel-source
rockchip-linux/kernel
Jan 2016 - Jan 2016
BSP kernel source
Role in this project:Back-end & Embedded Systems Engineer
Back-end & Embedded Systems EngineerContributions:1 commit in 1 day
Contributions summary:Johan's contributions focused on fixing critical memory management issues, and potential NULL pointer dereferences in various USB serial drivers within the kernel. These fixes addressed race conditions, buffer handling errors, and issues related to endpoint usage and device registration. Their work primarily involved debugging and patching existing drivers. The user has demonstrated expertise in embedded systems, USB device management, and kernel-level programming.
kernelkernel-sourcelinuxlinux-kernelbsp
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