linux kernel 和ubuntu的关系

from http://www.quora.com/Laymans-Terms/Whats-the-relation-between-Linux-kernel-and-Ubuntu-distribution

To start with, Linux is a kernel, and Ubuntu is a "Linux distribution". Every operating system has a kernel, and the Mac OS X kernel - XNU - actually shares a lot of qualities with Linux, kernel-wise, as Linux is based on UNIX, and so is XNU.

A kernel is the most low-level piece of the rather complicated architecture that makes up an operating system, and even within the kernel there are tons of layers. But in a nutshell, the kernel interacts with the hardware, and most of what builds on top of that, is stuff that Ubuntu includes in its  distribution . The kernel is an  abstraction layer  between the hardware and the apps. Saying that the kernel does "all the heavy lifting" may be over-simplifying things, but a kernel does some extremely heavy lifting nonetheless.

Everything that doesn't use a terminal interface, but a graphical one, is Ubuntu stuff. But it goes a lot deeper than that as a lot of stuff that only uses a terminal interface also is Ubuntu stuff.

Every version of Ubuntu comes with a specific version of the Linux kernel packaged "at the bottom". A certain version is chosen that can be thoroughly tested, as the Ubuntu developers want to make sure that everything they distribute as a package works smoothly together. As an example, the Ubuntu developers don't want to release an OS where the kernel includes such bugs as the one referenced in the article you linked. Now, I don't even know if this bug ever made it into a stable release of the Linux kernel, but unless it's someone who manually updates to the more or less bleeding edge of kernel development, Ubuntu users were not affected by this bug.