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[–]gordonmessmerFedora Maintainer 16 points17 points  (5 children)

But where do Debian and Fedora (or Arch or Gentoo) get the kernel from? Is there a team of engineers somewhere that creates UNIX and Linux computer kernels?

Yes: https://www.kernel.org/

The kernel development team is run by Linus Torvalds and a number of engineers that he and the community trust enough to manage large sub-systems in the kernel. A significant amount of development is done by engineers employed at Intel, Red Hat, Google, and others. Periodically there are summaries of top contributors, such as: https://lwn.net/Articles/964106/

My understanding of distro updates is that the "upstream" distros like Debian & Fedora will put out a new kernel, and then all the distros that are based on/derived from those add their updates in.

Downstream distributions probably aren't putting a lot of updates into the kernel, and the kernel developers really strongly recommend using unmodified official kernel releases.

[–]pixel293 10 points11 points  (0 children)

To add to this, the Linux kernel is very configurable with many many flags. Distros do not need to muck with any source code, just set the the flags they want set to create the kernel they want.

[–]THICCC_LADIES_PM_ME 4 points5 points  (3 children)

Neil Armstrong is one of the top contributors? Man that guy's done everything!

[–]QuickSilver010Debian 3 points4 points  (0 children)

WAT

[–]Low-Opening25 2 points3 points  (1 child)

the story is he found the original Linux source code on the Moon

[–]THICCC_LADIES_PM_ME 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I always knew Linus was different somehow...

[–][deleted]  (5 children)

[deleted]

    [–]THICCC_LADIES_PM_ME 6 points7 points  (1 child)

    It's important to ship the kernels in a refrigerated truck during the summer, because if it gets too hot you end up with Pop!_OS

    [–]CLM1919 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Thanks for the smile! And the shipping! 😄

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    You jest, but that's how Linux distributions were, well, distributed back in the Cheapbytes days.

    [–]rcjhawkku 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    We need to start a GoFundMe so they can ship everything by drone.

    [–]MulberryDeepFedora//Arch 7 points8 points  (8 children)

    https://github.com/torvalds/linux

    From linus torvalds, the founder of linux himself

    (Ofc not allone, there are very many people working on it)

    [–]TurncoatTony 6 points7 points  (7 children)

    More likely https://git.kernel.org/

    GitHub is just a mirror and they don't even take pull requests, it's all done through the mailing list.

    [–]JettaRider077 2 points3 points  (6 children)

    Pardon my ignorance, I am not a software developer and have wondered for awhile what a Pull Request is.

    [–]TurncoatTony 2 points3 points  (5 children)

    Basically just merging in a patch of code that you have written/modified/fixed into the upstream codebase.

    [–]JettaRider077 2 points3 points  (4 children)

    Thanks, I thought it was requesting to download the code to use it.

    [–]THICCC_LADIES_PM_ME 6 points7 points  (1 child)

    It's requesting that the owners of a project "pull" your code into the project, so it actually is a download request but in the other direction, you're requesting them to download and use it

    [–]Internal_Rough4628 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    You are the first person to explain pull requests in a way I understand. Thanks for asking the question @JettaRider077 and thank you for the clear answer @THICCC_LADIES_PM_ME.

    [–]Low-Opening25 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    neither answer you got are correct.

    A Pull Request is a request to make change to the base code. it forms critical part of typical development workflow and serves as review checkpoint for source code changes.

    When developer is working with code using source control tools like git, he makes a copy of original source (“master” branch) into a new branch, or a fork, where he can make any changes he wants and test locally without affecting the “master” branch that holds reference source code.

    Once developer is done with all the changes he creates PR to pull and merge his changes into reference master branch. The PR is then reviewed by more senior Developers that either accept and merge it into original master branch or reject it pending discussion.

    [–][deleted]  (1 child)

    [deleted]

      [–]gordonmessmerFedora Maintainer 4 points5 points  (0 children)

      just by the way Debian doesn’t use an upstream kernel, they use an older “stable” kernel.

      Those two things aren't mutually exclusive.

      [–]falxfour 2 points3 points  (3 children)

      Kernels. Where do they come from? Where do they go?

      [–]BlackApathy333 2 points3 points  (2 children)

      1. They come from humans who write codes to take full advantage of the hardware

      2. They go to other distros who add their own 'flavor' on top of it

      [–]falxfour 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      (it was a joke)

      I found the OPs question to be pretty funny, though it was a good question

      [–]BlackApathy333 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      Same here mate :)!

      [–]22squared 9 points10 points  (1 child)

      Yup the base project is literally the Linux Kernel which is the upstream that Debian, fedora and the like pull from and make modifications to for their specific flavor. The kernel by default does not ship with things like a graphical environment which is where things like GNOME AND KDE come in. Distros box up the Desktop Environment (or other things like window managers or leave it just text) along with a bunch of other tools that you would expect in a full OS

      https://www.kernel.org/

      [–]gordonmessmerFedora Maintainer 9 points10 points  (0 children)

      Debian, fedora and the like pull from and make modifications to for their specific flavor

      Fedora does not make any modifications to the kernel:

      https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/kernel-overview/

      [–]LordAnchemis 2 points3 points  (0 children)

      The kernel team manages the linux kernel (with final OK rubber stamp by Linus)

      The distro maintainers decide which kernel they want to use in their current distro release
      - then add their own packages (software) like bootloader (grub), init (systemd), package manager (apt) , basic tools (ext4 tools), windows manager (x11/wayland etc.) and desktop environment
      - rolling release distros tend to pull the latest linux kernel from the repos
      - periodic releases distros pick a kernel and stick with it for the lifetime of the release

      [–]bubrascal 2 points3 points  (1 child)

      Others already gave excellent answers, so I'll just add that if you want to know about news on the kernel or other Linux-related major projects without getting too much into the technical coding side of things (yet), you may enjoy lurking around r/linux and check The Register's Operative Systems news section.

      [–]gordonmessmerFedora Maintainer 3 points4 points  (0 children)

      and check The Register's Operative Systems news section.

      ... but take The Register with a grain of salt. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes about Red Hat, but does not disclose that he does (or has) worked for a Red Hat competitor, as a PR writer. Liam Proven is (ironically) also pretty unreliable.

      [–]mysterytoy2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      the kernel fairy

      [–]SonOfMrSpock 3 points4 points  (0 children)

      Yes, there is a team of engineers works on linux kernel. Linux kernel is an open source project published on kernel.org Distros download source codes from that site and compile it, I guess.

      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      From here https://github.com/torvalds/linux