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American software engineer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shuah Khan is an American software engineer recognized for her contributions to the Linux kernel. In 2019, she became the first female Linux Foundation Fellow, joining notable figures such as Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman as the third fellow at the time.[1][2][3]
Shuah Khan | |
|---|---|
Khan in 2018 | |
| Occupation | Software Engineer |
| Employer | Linux Foundation |
| Website | www |
Born in India,[1] Khan obtained a bachelor's degree in electronic engineering and a master's degree in computer science from Colorado State University.[3] After completing her education, she worked at Bell Labs, followed by 13 years at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and 5 years at Samsung.[1][4]
Khan made her first contribution to the Linux kernel in 2011,[1] by adding a new device driver for the LED sub-system as part of the Android Driver Mainlining effort.[5] Khan has served on the Linux Technical Advisory Board (TAB)[6][1][5] and as chair of the ELISA Project Technical Steering Committee.[7] As of October 2024, she maintains the Kernel Selftest (kselftest) framework, the USB over IP driver, the CPU power monitoring subsystem, and the Virtual Media Controller driver.[8] She has significantly contributed to kselftest, a regression testing suite for the Linux kernel.[9][4]
In the early stages, testing in the kernel was mostly limited to build and boot tests. Khan introduced a more comprehensive testing framework to detect regressions earlier, before they could impact users. Her efforts resulted in "kselftest", which enables developers to run sanity tests and ensure the stability of their changes.[9] This framework is now integrated into KernelCI and the 0-day test service.[10] Describing herself as a generalist, she has also worked on the media subsystem by solving shared device resource management problems impacting components of the Media Controller Device Allocator API.[11]
In 2020, Khan provided a "Signed-off-by" tag for a patch recommending inclusive terminology in the Linux kernel.[12] This change was approved and merged by Linus Torvalds.[13][14] The patch advised developers to avoid terms such as "master", "slave", "blacklist", and "whitelist".[12][15] Alternatives such as primary/secondary, denylist/allowlist, and blocklist/passlist are suggested.[13]
Khan has presented several times at the annual Linux Kernel Developers Summit.[9][10][16]
Khan also leads the Community Bridge Program, which aims to empower open-source developers by providing tools for funding, improving security, and promoting diversity.[1] She advocates for increasing the participation of women in the kernel community.[11]
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