Ubuntu Linux News

Ubuntu (IPA: [uːˈbuːntuː] in English, [ùɓúntú] in Zulu) is a free computer operating system based on the Linux kernel. Its name comes from the Zulu word ubuntu, loosely translated as “humanity” or “A person is a person only through other people”. Ubuntu’s goals include providing an up-to-date, stable operating system for the average user, with a strong focus on usability and ease of installation. Ubuntu has been rated as the most popular Linux distribution, claiming approximately 30% of desktop Linux installations in a survey.

Ubuntu is free and open source, meaning that not only is it distributed without charge, but it may also be freely improved upon. Ubuntu is sponsored by Canonical Ltd, which is owned by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth. Instead of selling Ubuntu itself, Canonical makes money by selling paid support for Ubuntu. By keeping Ubuntu free and open Canonical is able to leverage the talents of outside developers willing to contribute rather than having to do all development within the company itself.

Kubuntu and Xubuntu are official subprojects of the Ubuntu project, aiming to bring the KDE and Xfce desktop environments, respectively, to the Ubuntu core (by default Ubuntu uses GNOME for its desktop environment). Edubuntu is an official subproject designed for school environments and should be equally suitable for children to use at home. Gobuntu is an official subproject that is aimed at adhering strictly to the Free Software Foundation’s Four Freedoms. Ubuntu JeOS (pronounced “Juice”) is the newest official subproject. JeOS is a concept for what an operating system should look like in the context of a virtual appliance.

Ubuntu releases new versions every six months, and supports those releases for 18 months with daily security fixes and patches to critical bugs. LTS (Long Term Support) releases, which occur every two years, are supported for three years for desktops and five years for servers. The most recent version, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron), was released on April 24, 2008, although an update, Ubuntu 8.04.1 has been released. The next version will be 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) and is scheduled for release in October 2008.

Ubuntu’s first release was on October 20, 2004, as a temporary fork of the Debian project. This was done so that a new version of Ubuntu could be released every six months, resulting in a more frequently updated system. Ubuntu releases always include the most recent GNOME release, and are scheduled to be released about a month after GNOME. In contrast with previous general-purpose forks of Debian—such as MEPIS, Xandros, Linspire, Progeny and Libranet, many of which relied on proprietary and closed source add-ons as part of their business model—Ubuntu has stayed closer to Debian’s philosophy and uses free (libre) software most of the time.

The Ubuntu logo and typography has remained the same since that first release. The hand-drawn, lowercase OpenType font used is called Ubuntu-Title and was created by Andy Fitzsimon. The font is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and use with logos derived from the Ubuntu logo is encouraged. The font is available as a package for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu packages have generally been based on packages from Debian’s unstable branch: both distributions use Debian’s deb package format and APT/Synaptic to manage installed packages, although Debian and Ubuntu packages are not necessarily binary compatible with each other. Ubuntu cooperates with Debian—to some extent pushing changes back to Debian, although there has been criticism concerning lack of occurrence. Many Ubuntu developers are also maintainers of key packages within Debian. However, Ian Murdock, the founder of Debian, criticized Ubuntu packages for incompatibilities with Debian, saying Ubuntu had diverged too far from Debian Sarge to remain compatible.

Ubuntu is currently funded by Canonical Ltd. On July 8, 2005, Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical Ltd announced the creation of the Ubuntu Foundation and provided an initial funding of US$10 million. The purpose of the foundation is to ensure the support and development for all future versions of Ubuntu. Mark Shuttleworth describes the foundation as an emergency fund in case Canonical’s involvement ends.

Ubuntu 8.04, released on April 24, 2008, is the current Long Term Support (LTS) release. Canonical has released previous LTS versions separated by two years, and has committed to releasing the next LTS version in 2010, two years after 8.04.

A number of vendors offer computers with Ubuntu pre-installed. Dell and Tesco have provided this option since 2007, while System 76 has done so since November 2005. Dell and System76 customers are able to choose between 30-day, three-month, and yearly Ubuntu support plans through Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company. Dell offers Ubuntu-driven computers for sale in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Spain, and Latin America. Selected Dell machines running Ubuntu 7.10 and 8.04 have proprietary, legal DVD playback capabilities using LinDVD. Dell computers running Ubuntu 8.04 include extra support for ATI Video Graphics, Dell Wireless, Fingerprint Readers, HDMI, Bluetooth and MP3/WMA/WMV.