That doesn't match my experience at all.

Find the maintainer of the relevant subsystem, talk to them via mail or IRC about what's bugging you and how to improve it, implement it, send a patch and it will most likely be accepted.

Where I have had difficulties getting something accepted is if your patch might cause problems later or doesn't solve the problem in a way that aligns with the vision of the maintainer. But while that might be annoying as a developer that wants a problem fixed now, I'd say that it's probably for the better of the whole kernel.

I did it (and repeated a few times) and I didn't know anyone. I did it by reading about the process, formatting my patch correctly, and sending it to the appropriate list. If it were so difficult, Linux would not be a success. Now, just like other large projects, maintainers might dislike comment-only nit patches, but if it objectively increases readability it might work.

> Trying to get a patch into Linux as a new developer without [personally] knowing one of the (sub-)lieutenants is a futile exercise.

You're totally wrong about "personal" part.