I had time off, so I went to the LPC - Linux Plumbers Conference - in Portland last month. <br><br>point of interest, to me anyway, was how little ubuntu contributes up stream to the kernel<br><br>for details you might check out:<br>
<a href="http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linuxkerneldevelopment.php" target="_blank">http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linuxkerneldevelopment.php</a> <br><br>Individuals are - as you'll read at above URL - by far the biggest contributors at almost 27% and you will note that ubuntu does not make it into the top 30 - I think they Debian was at least twice perhaps three times more patches over the last 2 or 3 years. Now this all gets complex, and only those that have real open source interests - like in licenses or software patents or copyrights - might want to understand why Mark Shuttleworth is taking but not giving back to the "community" and I'll let you investigate that on your own. small hint: something to appartantly with vendors that won't open up drivers to open source, but will license to ubuntu.<br>
<br>The general take, from the developers at LPC was that it was best to support those distros that actually contribute and are trying to make Linux better for us all - and note, IMHO, about 50% of the developers were running ubuntu on their personal laptops - but after learning these facts, that number is probably lower. <br>
<br>I only mention this, as I hope ubuntu will be "shamed" into becoming a better contributor to the kernel code work - or at least stop bragging about how much of a contributor they are, when clearly they are not. <br>
<br>Sorry to have posted such a long message on such an esoteric topic, and I know many will not really care - and I must say I often recommend Mac to non-power users if they can afford Apple prices, and to newbies, I also recommend ubuntu as the most potentially "trouble free" and now you may have some insights as to why ubuntu seems to get some drivers right that other distros miss. BSD another fine choices - it is nice to have choices.<br>
<br>just an FYI - you'll no doubt research on your own. <br><br>Novell/SUSE (and some would include openSUSE) and Microsoft is of course yet another complex situation - but at least RH and Novell don't just take care of their own corporate distros, they both have fedora/openSUSE AND they actually pay developers to write code/patches for the kernel. They know helping the community helps improve the code base which will eventually end up in their corporate distros.<br>
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