You can always patch the kernel to try out your ideas. But really, the kernel is not where the innovation potential is. The way it works is really more or less

You can always patch the kernel to try out your ideas. But really, the kernel is not where the innovation potential is. The way it works is really more or less decided by the way the hardware works. That's why the only real "novel" idea in the kernel space is microkernels, which date back decades. Worth noting that the microkernel revolution kind of happened on Android, which is a re-think-computing-from-scratch kind of project. The drivers are all moved to userspace in Android, using their own IPC mechanism. The Linux kernel is left with less to do.