Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software, using its own desktop environment. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of ubuntu ("humanity towards others").[9] Another translation could be: "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity".[citation needed]
As of 2012, according to online surveys, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution on desktop/laptop personal computers,[10][11][12][13]and most Ubuntu coverage focuses on its use in that market. However, it is also popular on servers and for cloud computing.[citation needed]
Development of Ubuntu is led by Canonical, Ltd.,[14] a UK-based company owned by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth. Canonical generates revenue through the sale of technical support and services related to Ubuntu,[15] and since version 12.10, by displaying advertisements in Unity Dash, the default file manager in desktop Ubuntu.[16][17] According to Canonical, the Ubuntu project is committed to the principles of free software development; people are encouraged to use free software, improve it, and distribute it.
Contents
1 History and development process
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History and development process
Ubuntu is a
fork of the
Debian project's
codebase. The original aim of the Ubuntu developers was to create an easy-to-use Linux desktop with new releases scheduled on a predictable six-month basis, resulting in a frequently updated system.
[8][19]
Ubuntu's first release was on 20 October 2004. Since then, Canonical has released new versions of Ubuntu every six months
[20] with commitment to support each release for eighteen months by providing security fixes,
patches to critical bugs and minor updates to programs. It was decided that every fourth release, issued on a two-year basis, would receive long-term support (LTS).
[8] LTS releases were traditionally supported for three years on the desktop and five years on the server.
[20] However with the release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, desktop support for LTS releases was extended to five years (for example, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is scheduled to be supported until April 2017). Support was extended to better accommodate business and corporate IT users of Ubuntu who operate on longer release cycles and are more conscious of the costs associated with frequent software upgrades.
[21] LTS releases get point releases to ensure that they work on newer hardware.
[22] The LTS releases can get LTS release upgrades with the first point versions. The 12.04 LTS release for instance gets the release upgrade with the 12.04.1 point release.
[23]
Ubuntu packages are based on packages from Debian's
unstable branch: both distributions use Debian's
deb package format and
package management tools (
APT and
Ubuntu Software Center). Debian and Ubuntu packages are not necessarily
binary compatible with each other, however, and sometimes .deb packages may need to be rebuilt from
source to be used in Ubuntu.
[24] Many Ubuntu developers are also maintainers of key packages within Debian. Ubuntu cooperates with Debian by pushing changes back to Debian,
[25] although there has been criticism that this does not happen often enough. In the past,
Ian Murdock, the founder of Debian, has expressed concern about Ubuntu packages potentially diverging too far from Debian to remain compatible.
[26] Before release, packages are imported from
Debian Unstable continuously and merged with Ubuntu-specific modifications. A month before release, imports are
frozen, and packagers then work to ensure that the frozen features interoperate well together.
Ubuntu is currently funded by Canonical Ltd. On 8 July 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).
[27]
On 12 March 2009, Ubuntu announced developer support for 3rd party
cloud management platforms, such as for those used at
Amazon EC2.
[28]
The latest release is Ubuntu 12.10 (
Quantal Quetzal), released on 18 October 2012.
The Ubiquity installer allows Ubuntu to be installed to the hard disk from within the
Live CD environment, without the need for restarting the computer prior to installation. Ubuntu also emphasizes
accessibility and
internationalization to reach as many people as possible.
[citation needed] Beginning with 5.04,
UTF-8 became the default
character encoding,
[32] which allows for support of a variety of non-Roman scripts.
As a security feature, the
sudo tool is used to assign temporary privileges for performing administrative tasks, allowing the root account to remain locked, and preventing inexperienced users from inadvertently making catastrophic system changes or opening security holes.
[33] PolicyKit is also being widely implemented into the desktop to further
harden the system through the
principle of least privilege.
Ubuntu comes installed with a wide range of software that includes
LibreOffice,
Firefox,
Thunderbird,
Empathy,
Transmission, and several lightweight games (such as
Sudoku and
chess). Additional software that is not installed by default (including software that used to be in the default installation such as
Evolution,
GIMP,
Pidgin, and
Synaptic) can be downloaded and installed using the
Ubuntu Software Center[35] or other
apt-based
package management tools. Programs in the Software Center are mostly free, but there are also priced products, including applications and magazines.
Ubuntu can close its own network ports using its own firewalls software. End-users can install
Gufw (GUI for Uncomplicated Firewall) and keep it enabled.
[36] GNOME (the former default desktop) offers support for more than 46 languages.
[37] Ubuntu can also run many programs designed for
Microsoft Windows (such as
Microsoft Office), through
Wine or using a Virtual Machine (such as
VMware Workstation or
VirtualBox).
The system requirements vary among Ubuntu products. For the main Ubuntu desktop product, the official Ubuntu Documentation recommends a 1 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 megabytes of RAM and 5 gigabytes of hard drive space, or better.[42] For less powerful computers, there are other Ubuntu distributions such as Lubuntu and Xubuntu.Installation
Installation of Ubuntu is generally performed with the
Live CD or a
Live USB drive. The Ubuntu OS can run directly from the CD (although this is usually slower than running Ubuntu from an
HDD), allowing a user to "test-drive" the OS for hardware compatibility and driver support. The CD also contains the
Ubiquity installer,
[43] which can then guide the user through the permanent installation process.
CD images of all current and past versions are available for download at the Ubuntu web site.
[44] Installing from the CD requires a minimum of 256
MB of
RAM.
Users can download a disk image (
.iso) of the CD, which can then either be written to a physical medium (CD or DVD), or optionally run directly from a hard drive (via
UNetbootin or
GRUB). Ubuntu is also available on
PowerPC,
SPARC, and
IA-64 platforms, although none are officially supported.
[45]
Canonical offered Ubuntu
[46] and Kubuntu
[47] Live installation CDs of the latest distribution of the operating system at no cost including paid postage for most destinations around the world via a service called ShipIt. This service closed in April 2011. The Canonical Store offers 5 CDs for £5.00. Various third-party programs such as
remastersys and
Reconstructor are available to create customised copies of the Ubuntu Live CDs.
Ubuntu and Kubuntu can be booted and run from a
USB Flash drive (as long as the
BIOS supports booting from USB), with the option of saving settings to the flashdrive. This allows a portable installation that can be run on any PC which is capable of booting from a USB drive.
[48] In newer versions of Ubuntu, the
USB creator program is available to install Ubuntu on a
USB drive (with or without a LiveCD disc).
Wubi, which is included as an option on the Live CD,[49] allows Ubuntu to be installed and run from within a virtual Windows loop device (as a large image file that is managed like any other Windows program via the Windows Control Panel). This method requires no partitioning of a Windows user's hard drive. It incurs a slight performance loss and hibernation is not supported. The filesystem is also more vulnerable to hard reboots.Package classification and support
Ubuntu divides all software into four domains to reflect differences in licensing and the degree of support available.
[31] Some unsupported applications receive updates from community members, but not from
Canonical Ltd.
| Free software | Non-free software |
Supported | Main | Restricted |
Unsupported | Universe | Multiverse |
Free software includes only software that has met the Ubuntu licensing requirements,
[31] which roughly correspond to the
Debian Free Software Guidelines. Exceptions, however, include
firmwareand
fonts, in the Main category, because although they are not allowed to be modified, their distribution is otherwise unencumbered.
[citation needed]
Non-free software is usually unsupported (Multiverse), but some exceptions (Restricted) are made for important non-free software. Supported non-free software includes device drivers that can be used to run Ubuntu on some current hardware, such as binary-only
graphics card drivers. The level of support in the Restricted category is more limited than that of Main, because the developers may not have access to the
source code. It is intended that Main and Restricted should contain all software needed for a complete desktop environment.
[31] Alternative programs for the same tasks and programs for specialized applications are placed in the Universe and Multiverse categories.
In addition to the above, in which the software
does not receive new features after an initial release,
Ubuntu Backports is an officially recognized repository for
backporting newer software from later versions of Ubuntu.
[50] The repository is not comprehensive; it consists primarily of user-requested packages, which are approved if they meet quality guidelines. Backports receives no support at all from Canonical, and is entirely community-maintained.
The
-updates repository provides stable release updates (SRU) of Ubuntu and are generally installed through update-manager. Each release is given its own -updates repository (e.g. intrepid-updates). The repository is supported by Canonical Ltd. for packages in main and restricted, and by the community for packages in universe and multiverse. All updates to the repository must meet certain requirements and go through the
-proposed repository before being made available to the public.
[51] Updates are scheduled to be available until the end of life for the release.
In addition to the -updates repository, the unstable
-proposed repository contains uploads which must be confirmed before being copied into -updates. All updates must go through this process to ensure that the patch does truly fix the bug and there is no risk of
regression.
[52] Updates in -proposed are confirmed by either Canonical or members of the community.
Canonical's
partner repository lets vendors of proprietary software deliver their products to Ubuntu users at no cost through the same familiar tools for installing and upgrading software.
[53] The software in the partner repository is officially supported with security and other important updates by its respective vendors. Canonical supports the packaging of the software for Ubuntu
[53][54] and provides guidance to vendors.
[53] The partner repository is disabled by default and can be enabled by the user.
[55] Some popular products distributed via the partner repository as of November 2011are
Adobe Flash Player,
Adobe Reader,
Braid and
Oil Rush.
[56]
[edit]Availability of third-party software
Additionally, third party application suites are available for purchase through the Canonical web-based store,[58] including software for DVD playback and media codecs.Releases
Version | Code name | Release date | Supported until |
Desktop | Server |
4.10 | Warty Warthog | 2004-10-20 | 2006-04-30 |
5.04 | Hoary Hedgehog | 2005-04-08 | 2006-10-31 |
5.10 | Breezy Badger | 2005-10-13 | 2007-04-13 |
6.06 LTS | Dapper Drake | 2006-06-01 | 2009-07-14 | 2011-06-01 |
6.10 | Edgy Eft | 2006-10-26 | 2008-04-25 |
7.04 | Feisty Fawn | 2007-04-19 | 2008-10-19 |
7.10 | Gutsy Gibbon | 2007-10-18 | 2009-04-18 |
8.04 LTS | Hardy Heron | 2008-04-24 | 2011-05-12 | 2013-04 |
8.10 | Intrepid Ibex | 2008-10-30 | 2010-04-30 |
9.04 | Jaunty Jackalope | 2009-04-23 | 2010-10-23 |
9.10 | Karmic Koala | 2009-10-29 | 2011-04-30 |
10.04 LTS | Lucid Lynx | 2010-04-29 | 2013-04 | 2015-04 |
10.10 | Maverick Meerkat | 2010-10-10 | 2012-04-10 |
11.04 | Natty Narwhal | 2011-04-28 | 2012-10-28 |
11.10 | Oneiric Ocelot | 2011-10-13 | 2013-04 |
12.04 LTS | Precise Pangolin | 2012-04-26 | 2017-04 |
12.10 | Quantal Quetzal | 2012-10-18 | 2014-04 |
13.04 | Raring Ringtail | 2013-04-18 | 2014-10 |
Old version
Older version, still supported
Latest version
Future release
|
Each Ubuntu release has a
version number that consists of the year and month number of the release.
[59] For example, the first release was Ubuntu 4.10 as it was released on 20 October 2004. Version numbers for future versions are provisional; if the release is delayed the version number changes accordingly.
Ubuntu releases are also given
alliterative code names, using an adjective and an animal (e.g., "Dapper Drake" and "Intrepid Ibex"). With the exception of the first three releases, code names are in consecutive alphabetical order, allowing a quick determination of which release is newer. "We might skip a few letters, and we'll have to wrap eventually." says Mark Shuttleworth while describing the naming scheme.
[60] Commonly, Ubuntu releases are referred to using only the adjective portion of the code name.
Releases are timed to be approximately one month after GNOME releases (which in turn are about one month after releases of
X.org). Consequently, every Ubuntu release comes with an updated version of both GNOME and X.
Upgrades between releases have to be done from one release to the next release (e.g. Ubuntu 10.04 to Ubuntu 10.10) or from one LTS release to the next LTS release (e.g. Ubuntu 8.04 LTS to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS).
[61]
Ubuntu 11.04 was released on 28 April 2011, and is code named "Natty Narwhal".
[64] The desktop interface of this release significantly differs from the previous releases because
Unity was introduced as the default GUI. It is easy to switch into "classic" GUI (
GNOME Panel).
[65] The new GUI has received strong criticism from some users as too different from and less capable than the previous Gnome Panel,
[66][67] while other users have found they prefer the new approach and the minimalism compared to the older desktop paradigm.
[68] However, those positive about Unity also believed there was much room for improvement.
[69]
With the release of Ubuntu 12.10, the desktop disc image no longer fits on a standard CD, requiring a DVD or large flash drive. There is an unofficial recompressed version that will fit on a CD.[70]
Variants
Official Ubuntu editions, which are created and maintained by Canonical and the Ubuntu community and receive full support from Canonical, its partners and the Community, are the following:
[71][72]
- Ubuntu Desktop, designed for desktop and laptop PCs. (Formerly there was also Ubuntu Netbook Edition, designed for netbooks and other ultra-portables with screens up to 10", but it was discontinued as its user interface and functionality was integrated into the desktop edition.) The desktop edition can be also installed using the alternative install CD which uses the debian-installer and allows performing certain specialist installations of Ubuntu: setting up automated deployments, upgrading from older installations without network access, LVM and/or RAID partitioning, installs on systems with less than about 256 MB of RAM (although low-memory systems may not be able to run a full desktop environment reasonably).[73]
- Ubuntu Server, made for use in servers.[74] The server install CD allows the user to install Ubuntu permanently on a computer for use as a server. It does not install a graphical user interface.
- Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix, a release meant for business users that comes with special enterprise software including Adobe Flash,Canonical Landscape, OpenJDK 6 and VMware View, while removing social networking and file sharing applications, games and development/sysadmin tools.[75] The goal of the Business Desktop Remix is not to copy other enterprise-oriented distributions, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but to make it, according to Mark Shuttleworth's blog, "easier for institutional users to evaluate Ubuntu Desktop for their specific needs."[76]
There are many
Ubuntu variants (or derivatives) based on the official Ubuntu editions. These Ubuntu variants install a set of packages that differ from the official Ubuntu distributions.
The variants recognized by Canonical as contributing significantly towards the Ubuntu project are the following:
[71]
- Edubuntu, a GNOME-based subproject and add-on for Ubuntu, designed for school environments and home users.[81]
- Kubuntu, a desktop distribution using the KDE Plasma Workspaces desktop environment.
- Lubuntu, a lightweight distribution using the LXDE desktop environment.
- Mythbuntu, designed for creating a home theater PC with MythTV and uses the Xfce desktop environment.
- Ubuntu Studio, a distribution made for professional video and audio editing, comes with higher-end free editing software.
- Xubuntu, a distribution based on the Xfce desktop environment, designed to run more efficiently on low-specification computers.
Edubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Mythbuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu are not commercially supported by Canonical.
[82]
Other variants are created and maintained by individuals and organizations outside of Canonical, and they are self-governed projects that work more or less closely with the Ubuntu community.[72]
Ubuntu Server Edition
Ubuntu also offers its operating system in a server edition. The Ubuntu 10.04 Long Term Support (LTS) release is scheduled to receive continued updates until April 2015. Starting with 12.04 the support of the LTS deskop variants has been extended to match the 5 years of the server variant. Long term support include updates to support new features of the latest computing hardware, security patches and updates to the 'Ubuntu stack' (cloud computing infrastructure).
[83]
A screenshot of the Ubuntu 12.04 Server installation boot menu
Ubuntu 10.04 Server Edition can also run on
VMware ESX Server, Oracle's
VirtualBox and VM, Citrix Systems XenServer hypervisors,
Microsoft Hyper-V, as well as
Kernel-based Virtual Machine. Ubuntu uses
AppArmor security module for the
Linux kernel which is turned on by default on key software packages, and the firewall is extended to common services used by the operating system. The home and Private directories can also be encrypted. The 10.04 server version includes MySQL 5.1, Tomcat 6, OpenJDK 6, Samba 3.4, Nagios 3, PHP 5.3, Python 2.6. Many of its services only take 30 minutes to configure.
[83]
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server Edition supports two major architectures: Intel x86 and AMD64. The server edition provides features such as file/print services, web hosting, email hosting, etc. There are a few differences between the Ubuntu Server Edition and the Ubuntu Desktop Edition although both use the same apt repositories. The main difference between the two editions is the lack of a default installation of a X window environment in the server edition, although GUIs can be installed like GNOME/Unity (Ubuntu 11.04), KDE (Kubuntu 11.04), XFCE, (Xubuntu 11.04), as well as more resource-economical GUIs such as Fluxbox, Openbox and Blackbox. Kernel versions also differ. The server edition uses a screen mode character-based interface for the installation, instead of a graphical installation process.
Ubuntu Server is also distributed free of charge. Users can choose to pay for consulting and technical support. Annual support contract with 9x5 business hour support is about $750 per server, and a contract covering 24x7 over a year costs $1,200.
Cloud computing
Ubuntu Server Edition offers technology and resources to make a
private or public cloud. Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) provides virtualization capability, applications and flexibility to help deploy a cloud within an organization. It consists of the
open core Eucalyptus,
libvirt,
KVM or
Xenvirtualization technology.
[84]
Ubuntu 11.04 added support for
OpenStack, with Eucalyptus to OpenStack migration tools to be released by Canonical in Ubuntu Server 11.10.
[85]Ubuntu 11.10 is expected to focus on OpenStack as the Ubuntu's preferred IaaS offering though Eucalyptus is also expected to be supported. Another major focus is Ubuntu Orchestra for provisioning, deploying, hosting, managing, and orchestrating enterprise data center infrastructure services, by, with, and for the Ubuntu Server.