Better hardware support with Fedora vs Debian vs Ubuntu vs Kernel.org kernel ?
 

Hello,

That you have a very old hardware or one of the newest, the kernel of Linux will be always the fundamental component of your Linux distro.

On the market, you may find Debian, Ubuntu, or the very real kernel at kernel.org!

Before installing full kernel source on your Linux system, ask yourself whether you really need the full kernel source. If you are trying to compile a kernel module or a custom driver for your kernel, you do not need the full kernel source. You only need to install matching kernel header files, and that's it.

You need the full kernel source tree only if you want to build a custom kernel after modifying the kernel code in any way and/or tweaking default kernel options.

Here is how to download and install full kernel source tree from Debian or Ubuntu repositories. While you can download the official kernel source code from https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/, using distro's repositories allows you to download a kernel source with the maintainer's patches applied to it.

If you take the Fedora vs Debian vs Ubuntu vs Kernel.org (compiled yourself), you may find quite some pretty differences.

So guys, quite a difficult question: which kernel will give you a better hardware support with Fedora vs Debian vs Ubuntu vs Kernel.org kernel ?

Tux For All!

It seems to me that support must be first in the kernel for any distro to use it. AFAIK the only patching that distros do is largely to accommodate the non-vanilla usage of specific package managers and automated dependency resolution, but in any case they don't add drivers. Therefore a kernel from kernel.org will have the greatest support in it assuming you're willing to rebuild it to include what you desire. Thanks to "make oldconfig" that is only a possibly long process once.

If you want to compile a kernel "from source," then the Gentoo distribution is the way to go. (Linux From Scratch = LFS is really meant as an educational exercise, although it is an extremely good one.)

Beyond that: "hardware support" simply means that the kernel-drivers that you need are installed and available, and drivers for esoteric hardware might not be included by default.

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <Linux - General> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

I think you are confusing compiling a kernel from source and building a distro from scratch. Building a kernel from source works on any distro, no Gentoo (or similar distribution needed).

Actually, no I am not. Gentoo is a distribution that is entirely "compiled from source." And, as such, it's really the only distro that I would compile from source, because I have never been sufficiently confident that a kernel that I compiled myself would actually and completely match the binaries that are supplied with the distribution. (Your mileage may vary ...)

Additional hardware support, in a package-based distro, would come as yet another package.

Why would an application have to match with the kernel?

Slackware prides itself in being entirely Vanilla, largely because of not having to alter the base system to accommodate automated dependency resolution within it's package manager. I routinely and always have compiled a custom kernel with every Slackware release since v10.0 and on every box upon which it is installed (too many to count) and have never had to apply a patch other than for specific hardware which the kernel did not have at that time, but never to accommodate anything in the base system. FWIW I have always even totally skipped having an initrd. That's how simple and straightforward it is.

I haven't tried Gentoo in a few years so I don't know how much tweaking has been done to accommodate the automated Portage automated system but I would like to know how they have avoided that issue if it is indeed the case.

Edit: Re hardware support patching - This primarily occurred during the infancy of wifi support and hasn't been an issue for me since unless you consider the nvidia driver installer (NOT KMS) also a patch. Even if so, it is a trivial one.

Back to the original question, it could well be that any one of the large distros may include support for hardware which is not in the mainline sources. debian would probably be the most likely to support the most architectures(CPU-related hardware), and fedora (and less so ubuntu) would be more likely to contain patches which add support for the newest ancillary devices.

I run Debian Sid. When I first purchased my Lenovo Yoga 2 11, I had to use an Ubuntu kernel, since the current Debian kernels at that time (3.16) were unstable on that machine.

As far as kernel compatibility with binary packages, at least on Debian, I find libc6 will fail to install if the installed kernel is a few versions behind.

I, too, use Debian Sid and I had to install a newer kernel on this machine when I first got it so that the touchpad would work -- I compiled my own (into a Debian package for easy installation) with source straight from kernel.org. I had to do that until the Sid repositories caught up to the 4.0 kernel (I could, perhaps, have used the experimental repository but even that wasn't new enough when I first got the machine).
From my example, and generally noticing what's mentioned as being in newer kernels, I would say that if you're using brand-new hardware then Debian Stable is probably pretty darn far down your choices of distro and Sid and Fedora plus any bleeding edge ones are your first choice.