Canonical?

Canonical employs a few very capable kernel hackers. Sure they don't contribute as much as the RH or Novell guys, but maybe that it because their time is spent providing high quality kernel support. Think about it ;)

Perhaps it doesn't matter too much either way? Kernel contributors tend to be individuals rather than companies, so if one company would have to lay off people, other linux companies who have more success can hire them.

It would be worrying if the company which is more successful would not allow upstream contributions.

/Simon

I know a couple dozen people who use ubuntu as their distro, all day long.

I think it is going to depend a lot on what groups you are with as far as how many people use what distro.

I used slakware for 10+ years so I'm not a non-technical user, and I decided to switch to ubuntu.

Well, it all depends how you look at it, if webstatistics are anything to go by, Linux has something like 1% of the desktop. That means 1 in a 100 is a Linux-desktop. Have you seen what a 100 desktops are running in the past months ? I know I haven't. Actually, possible not even in years (ok, if I don't count the LUG-meeting I visited). I also know their are a lot of people who are like minded and they use Linux 'together'. So these Linux desktops also are clustered together. That means it's even less likely you'll see a Linux desktop in the wild. I use it every day and I know 5 people who use it atleast a few times a week.

> On the other hand, I have met many people
> who have a Ubuntu Live CD, or a partition,
> which they boot probably once a month. This
> is a fake user base. Their primary OS with
> very few exceptions is Windows.

Agreed in general that these aren't true users, and that there are
probably a lot of Ubuntu LiveCDs and installs in that group. However,
it's important to note that the *ix way of computing is a decently large
change in computing mindset, and that some portion of these will
ultimately become full-time Linux users.

(FWIW, I was in this segment for 2-3 years, around the turn of the
century, with Mandrake the distribution I was playing with. Then MS
decided they were going a different way than I was, and basically gave me
that last push I needed to make the jump, when they went the eXPrivacy and
remote authorization route. This for a user who had previously considered
most MS software "too important" to risk warezing, and who had previously
been spending probably 50% of his computing dollars on MS directly. But
after the push, I soon discovered how liberating the land of freedomware
was, and now look back at proprietaryware much like a defector looking
back at his former home -- I have a lot of friends and family I left
behind and will do what I can to help them make the jump as well, but
it's nowhere I want to be or can even visit, unless the regime changes and
becomes free as well. I no longer even consider proprietaryware, nor
could I without serious legal issues, as I can no longer agree to all
the !#@! demanded of proprietaryware users, whose masters, those supplying
the proprietaryware, really /do/ seem to think of them as slaves, not
actual human beings, with few if any rights worth considering.)

> These are probably the people who upgrade
> their Ubuntu every 6 months - I am sure
> that nobody who actually uses their computer
> would be crazy enough to do an upgrade so
> frequently.

Why not? I actually use my computer, running Gentoo, and upgrade on
average 2-3 times a week. In fact, I hate going a full week without an
upgrade as the changes start getting too large to easily cope with all at
once. Thus, I'd argue that six month upgrades, far from being too
frequent, are WAYYY too infrequent, by three orders of magnitude!

FWIW, I found the same issue on Mandrake and quickly switched to Cooker,
where the rolling updates were MUCH easier to cope with and most of the
big issues the release version upgraders had to cope with were incremental
changes I had dealt with as a matter of course tiny incremental bits at a
time, long months before. Six months is simply WAY too long for easy
upgrades, and going longer than that, you're needlessly losing out on
updates and features that make computing both easier and more pleasant.

Duncan

I have been using Ubuntu for two years, exclusively. Before Ubuntu I used Red Hat.

I work at a start-up with about 10 Linux users and all but one use Ubuntu(the other uses Suse). Everyone I know that uses it are happy and yes we do *real* Linux programming stuff.

Important point!
If [their organization cannot persist (which is true if they live in the red)] then
anyone requesting more from them could at-best see short-term benefits until they run out of cash reserves.

They've enhanced the open source desktop with Upstart & invited more independent developers to open source with Quickly and Launchpad.