Better tools for kernel developers

The line feed character represents a newline at a higher abstraction level. Unix uses the line feed character to represent a line break in a text file. This has little to do with what character(s) are actually output when the file is sent to a terminal or a printer; the translation is done by the terminal line driver. How the newline should be output is determined by the line settings.

The same goes for input: conventionally, the Return (CR) key is used to terminate a line when typing on a (virtual) terminal, but the line break ends up as a line feed character in a file or in the input to a process.