For testing purposes I usually download the ubuntu kernel available from git and build it for my PC. But usually the stable version of Ubuntu kernel is not always in sync with the latest stable vanilla kernel.
The difference also is that there are some patches applied to the vanilla kernel that are tailored to the Ubuntu distribution. You can distinguish an Ubuntu kernel if you look to the source folder where you will see 3 extra folders:
- debian
- debian.master
- ubuntu
The packaging patches (debian patches) are available from the mainline kernel PPA (eg for v3.3.3 vanilla kernel are here). The problem is that I can not find also the Ubuntu Supplied Third-Party Device Driver patch so that I can apply them to the latest stable kernel from kernel.org
Am I missing something? Shouldn't be a separated patch that can be downloaded and applied to the vanilla kernel so that it can be "Ubuntu'fied"
Best Answer
The Ubuntu kernel doesn't use Debian packaging to apply patches to the kernel source, the way most Debian packages do. In terms of Debian packaging, there's a whole new upstream tarball for each kernel release.
This is done because the Ubuntu kernel team uses git to maintain kernel changes. This aligns us with upstream kernel practices and is more transparent than Debian packaging, for other kernel developers who want to see the (git) patches that make up our kernel.
You can find the Ubuntu git repositories for the kernels here:
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git
released kernels are found in ubuntu/ubuntu-.git
Instructions for building a kernel are here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/BuildYourOwnKernel
Use the section for cloning the git repo, and then examine the git logs to find the patches for the driver you want. Then use git to extract them and apply them to your baseline kernel, and build that.