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Google and Samsung soar into list of top 10 Linux contributors

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Re: Google and Samsung soar into list of top 10 Linux contributors

#31
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually unaffiliated programmers are at the top. Canonical's contribution is more to the desktop and OS itself than to the kernel. The majority of desktop installations are either Ubuntu or Ubuntu-based, and Ubuntu is quickly becoming the server of choice as well. Ubuntu is leading GNU/Linux adoption worldwide, which in itself is a huge contribution to the ecosystem, as it gets more programmers interested in various…

> Ubuntu is quickly becoming the server of choice as well Source?

Some anecdotal evidence - our university is running free Linux VM's for research purposes (so, non-graphical remote servers), people can choose what they want, and the majority seem to choose Ubuntu; with CentOS being second place.

Re: Google and Samsung soar into list of top 10 Linux contributors

#32
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless you are using unity, I don't see why a distribution should be called ubuntu based instead of debian based. Because Ubuntu is more than Unity. I mean, by the "Unity or its not Ubuntu-based" standard you propose, Kubuntu (which is exactly Ubuntu -- sharing all the same repos -- with the KDE desktop and apps installed by default) wouldn't be an "Ubuntu-based distribution". Heck, Ubuntu Server, since it doesn't…

Well you'll have to show me what Ubuntu has that Debian does not. Kubuntu, I suspect, is only named because it was originally sponsored by Canonical. Nothing more.

> Well you'll have to show me what Ubuntu has that Debian does not.

Ubuntu maintains a set of repositories for each version of Ubuntu, which (even when the same--by name--software is in Debian's official repositories, will often be different versions or otherwise different contents than Debian repos).

Kubuntu uses entirely software from the Ubuntu repos from the corresponding version number (e.g., Kubuntu 12.04 uses exactly the same set of repos as Ubuntu 12.04.) You can, in effect, switch from Kubuntu to Ubuntu, or vice versa, just using the apt package manager without changing the base repositories, just installing and removing the right packages from the ubuntu repos.

The difference between Kubuntu 12.04 and Ubuntu 12.04 is entirely in which packages, from the Ubuntu "precise" repositories are installed by default. The difference between either and any version of Debian is much greater.

The whole "unity or you have to call it 'Debian-based' instead of 'Ubuntu-based'" idea is nonsense.

Re: Google and Samsung soar into list of top 10 Linux contributors

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using linux mint for a couple years now, and I have the feeling that mint is growing more than ubuntu.

Do you have any data to back up that feeling?

If you trust distrowatch's pagehits then yes, it's significantly beating/overtaking ubuntu. http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity

Re: Google and Samsung soar into list of top 10 Linux contributors

#34
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless you are using unity, I don't see why a distribution should be called ubuntu based instead of debian based. Because Ubuntu is more than Unity. I mean, by the "Unity or its not Ubuntu-based" standard you propose, Kubuntu (which is exactly Ubuntu -- sharing all the same repos -- with the KDE desktop and apps installed by default) wouldn't be an "Ubuntu-based distribution". Heck, Ubuntu Server, since it doesn't…

Well you'll have to show me what Ubuntu has that Debian does not. Kubuntu, I suspect, is only named because it was originally sponsored by Canonical. Nothing more.

If you're going to be so nit-picky then distinctions between distros become meaningless.

Your choice of distro really just boils down to your package-manager preference.

Re: Google and Samsung soar into list of top 10 Linux contributors

#35
post #2

Can't wait for Google to replace ext4 with F2FS by default in Android. It offers significant speed improvement (~50 percent faster, or even 2x faster in some cases I think). There are a lot of performance improvements built into the new Linux kernels, too, along with 64-bit ARMv8 support, so those will be very welcome, too, if they arrive in Android 4.4.

>Can't wait for Google to replace ext4 with F2FS by default in Android. It offers significant speed improvement (~50 percent faster, or even 2x faster in some cases I think).

And why can't you wait? What will that buy you? Do you have a read/write heavy workflow with Android?

Re: Google and Samsung soar into list of top 10 Linux contributors

#36
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless you are using unity, I don't see why a distribution should be called ubuntu based instead of debian based. Because Ubuntu is more than Unity. I mean, by the "Unity or its not Ubuntu-based" standard you propose, Kubuntu (which is exactly Ubuntu -- sharing all the same repos -- with the KDE desktop and apps installed by default) wouldn't be an "Ubuntu-based distribution". Heck, Ubuntu Server, since it doesn't…

Well you'll have to show me what Ubuntu has that Debian does not. Kubuntu, I suspect, is only named because it was originally sponsored by Canonical. Nothing more.

Surely you're joking, right? For one, Ubuntu has a desktop and server version along with a LTS version and the repos are totally different. The filesystem layout is little different between the two. I'm sure there's more like init differences, differences in installation and configuration, kernels, and stuff in /etc, but I haven't used Ubuntu in quite some time.

Re: Google and Samsung soar into list of top 10 Linux contributors

#37
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty crazy for a Samsung filesystem to be actually good, considering their history with RFS...

Well take a look what F2FS stands for: Flash-Friendly File System. It's designed around living on disks that aren't platters of spinning rust. Few companies can call themselves an authority on NAND flash memory and Samsung is definitely at the top of that list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F2FS

I think people on this site consider Samsung to be "that company that invented that gimicky feature that pauses videos when you look away" and not "the company that makes pretty much every flash memory chip or LCD in existence".

Re: Google and Samsung soar into list of top 10 Linux contributors

#38
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the hardware and OS companies are working together on this, and the hardware doesn't ship until it works in its target OS. In Linux, volunteers are poking around blindly tryign to get the hardware to do what they ask while the hardware vendor has all the information and isn't sharing it.

That's what I used to think but now that I see that there are that many chip makers contributing I'm starting to wonder. But it's probably as varikin says, they're working on different kinds of drivers.

Much of the hardware for the higher end Android devices is composed of stuff from a handful of OEMs, so that also helps. Also many of the devices that come out around the same time are using at least some identical components.

SoCs are all mostly Qualcomm or Samsung, radio chipsets are mostly Qualcomm, LCDs are Sony/Samsung/Sharp/LG and a few others, AMOLED are all Samsung as far as I know, GPUs are mostly Qualcomm/PowerVR/Nvidia.

Much of the time, the Android modding community ports newer versions of Android to other devices simply by hoping some OEM releases a newer version of Android for another device that happens to have some identical hardware component so they can either drop that particular driver into the other device or tweak it a bit. Porting the OS is never really the problem. The problems generally lie in outdated proprietary drivers no longer working with the newer version of Android (Camera/Bluetooth/Radio/sometimes GPU are the most likely candidates to break).

Re: Google and Samsung soar into list of top 10 Linux contributors

#39

> Linus Torvalds' creation has expended [sic] to 17 million lines of code. Not to worry: the same code can get used over and over without being consumed.

Also drivers, which for example, aren't part of the Windows source.

Re: Google and Samsung soar into list of top 10 Linux contributors

#40
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well take a look what F2FS stands for: Flash-Friendly File System. It's designed around living on disks that aren't platters of spinning rust. Few companies can call themselves an authority on NAND flash memory and Samsung is definitely at the top of that list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F2FS

I think people on this site consider Samsung to be "that company that invented that gimicky feature that pauses videos when you look away" and not "the company that makes pretty much every flash memory chip or LCD in existence".

Also nearly AMOLED in existence on a consumer device.
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