Ubuntu lives in a special place between Windows and Mac OS X reserved only for Linux: more shine than Windows, less than OS X, resulting in a steaming pile of mediocrity.

Once upon a time, the way to get a patch into the mainline kernel was to email it to Linus Torvalds. A hopeful developer would then wait for Linus to release a new kernel tree to see whether the patch had been included or not. In the latter case, the more persistent developers would resend the patch. Often, developers had to be persistent indeed if they wanted their code to be merged.

I’ve been spending some time adding Magic Trackpad functionality to the current Magic Mouse driver in the kernel. I’m pleased to report that the changes have landed both in Ubuntu and upstream in Jiri Kosina’s HID tree as it awaits merging into Linus’ tree. It will be available in Ubuntu 10.10 and hopefully in Linux 2.6.37.

If you need something fixed or done, then you make that contribution upstream. Doing everything upstream is the only way that Linux will remain un-fragmented. Without upstream there is no Linux community.

"There is quite a bit of software whose upstream authors decide that, as they are already using Git for development, the main distribution channel should be GitHub - This allows, yes, for quite a bit of flexibility, which many authors have taken advantage of. So, I just registered and set up http://githubredir.debian.net/ to make it easier for packagers to take advantage of it..."

There are plenty of textbooks and teaching materials that can help you to learn foreign languages one way or another. Yet, there is no way to learn a foreign language without memorizing vocabulary and looking up words in a dictionary.

The GNU diff and patch utilities let you compare files to generate a patch that describes the changes between files. You can then apply the patch file on that machine or another. You might think to use diff and patch on XML files, since they are just text files -- and depending on your application, diff and patch might serve your needs well.

It's one of the best tools out there to make a disaster recovery disc or make an ISO of your own customized Ubuntu. It's an equivalent to Windows backup and restore (if you use it only for system recovery and not to recover your personal files).

Andrew Tridgell has published a patch that could make the Linux implementation of the FAT filesystem impervious to Microsoft patent claims of the kind that forced a settlement from TomTom. The patch alters the VFAT code so that it does not generate both short and long filenames.