A Vast Majority Of Linux's Input Improvements Are Developed By One Individual

While there is an ever increasing number of open-source developers focusing on the Linux graphics stack with the GPU drivers and related infrastructure, it's quite a different story when it comes to the Linux input side. It's basically one developer that has been working on the Linux input improvements for the past number of years.

Peter Hutterer who has been on the scene for the better part of a decade after starting to contributing to X Input 2 and Multi-Pointer X back during his university days and then going on to work for Red Hat Australia the past number of years where he has continued working on Linux input improvements for X.Org and Wayland. But throughout this time, he's been the sole main input developer.

Some of the recent Linux input accomplishments he has led include high resolution wheel scrolling, XKB user configurations, Dell Canvas Totem input support, touch arbitration, various Wacom input improvements, and other features around the generic libinput library used by both X11/Wayland.

X.Org developers Daniel Stone and Peter Hutterer along with former contributor Chase Douglas.

As he has pointed out, should anything ever happen to him the libinput library would be in bad shape. While there have been 76 contributors in total to libinput in the past two years, only 24 of them have had more than one commit while only six contributors have had more than five commits. One would just need around 50 commits to become the second-from-the-top contributor to the project.

"Either way, lest it be said that no-one saw it coming, let's ring the alarm bells now before it's too late. Ding ding!" So should anyone looking for a niche within the Linux desktop area to get involved with for open-source development and to make your name known, the input area could use your help. More details on Peter's blog.