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Ubuntu

The Ubuntu Linux logo
Ubuntu 6.06 running GNOME
Developer	Canonical Ltd / Ubuntu Foundation
OS family	Linux
Working state	Current
Source model	FOSS
Latest release	6.06 / June 1, 2006
Repository	code.launchpad.net/ubuntu
Platforms	i386, AMD64, UltraSPARC, UltraSPARC T1, PowerPC
Kernel type	Monolithic kernel
Default user interface	GNOME Graphical User Interface
License	GPL and other licenses
Official website	www.ubuntu.com

Ubuntu, pronounced /ùbúntú/ (oo-BOON-too), is a predominantly desktop-oriented Linux distribution, based on Debian GNU/Linux. It is sponsored by Canonical Ltd (owned by Mark Shuttleworth), and the name of the distribution comes from the South African concept of ubuntu—roughly, "humanity towards others". It is released roughly every six months, more frequently than Debian. Each release comes shortly after new GNOME editions. It also has a stronger focus on usability than Debian.

Ubuntu version 6.06 LTS, codenamed "Dapper Drake", was released on June 1, 2006, and will be supported for 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server, instead of the usual 18 months. Ubuntu aims to use only free software to provide an up-to-date yet stable operating system for the average user. Ubuntu has a lively user and support community.

Kubuntu and Xubuntu are official subprojects of the Ubuntu project to bring the KDE and Xfce desktop environments to the Ubuntu core, respectively. Edubuntu is an official subproject "designed for school environments, and should be equally suitable for kids to use at home."

History and development process

Ubuntu's first release was made on October 20, 2004, which began by making a temporary fork of the Debian Linux project. It was done to provide an every 6 month release schedule, resulting in a more up to date system. Ubuntu releases always include the most recent GNOME release, and are scheduled to be released approximately one 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 closed-source add-ons as part of their business model, Ubuntu has almost stuck with Debian's philosophy and uses free (libre) software most of the time.

Ubuntu packages have generally been based on packages from Debian's unstable branch, and both distributions use Debian's deb package format and APT/Synaptic to manage installed packages. Ubuntu has contributed all changes directly and immediately back to Debian, rather than announcing them only at release time (although Debian and Ubuntu packages are not necessarily 'binary compatible' with each other ). Many Ubuntu developers are also maintainers of key packages within Debian itself. However, Ian Murdock, the founder of Debian, has criticized Ubuntu for incompatibilities between its packages and Debian's, saying that Ubuntu had diverged too far from Debian Sarge to remain compatible.

In the future, there will be a branch codenamed Grumpy Groundhog. It will be a permanently unstable development and testing branch, pulling the source directly out of the revision control of the various programs and applications that are shipped as part of Ubuntu.

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 $10 million. The purpose of the foundation is to ensure support and development for all future versions of Ubuntu but as of 2006, the foundation remains dormant. Mark Shuttleworth describes the foundation as an emergency fund in case all else fails.

The distribution

Features

Ubuntu focuses on usability, including the widespread use of the sudo tool for administrative tasks. sudo authenticates users against their own password rather than that of the target user in order to allow the delegation of specific commands to specific users on specific hosts without sharing passwords among them and while mitigating the risk of any unattended terminals. Once authentication has taken place, the system updates a timestamp and the user may then use sudo without a password for a short period of time (five minutes unless overridden in /etc/sudoers). The Ubiquity installer (previously called Espresso) included in the LiveCD version of the "Dapper" release allows installing Ubuntu to the hard disk from within the Live CD environment without the need for restarting the computer. Ubuntu furthermore emphasises accessibility and internationalization, to reach as many people as possible. As of 5.04, UTF-8 is the default character encoding.

Besides standard system tools and other small applications, Ubuntu comes with the pre-installed software OpenOffice, the internet browser Firefox, and the raster graphics editor Gimp. Several lightweight card and puzzle games are also included.

Ubuntu offers a full feature set that works straight from the standard install, but nonetheless fits on a single CD. A Live CD and a traditional install CD have been available for each release. The Live CD is used by many to test hardware compatibility before installation with the install disk. Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu CDs are mailed gratis to anyone who requests them, and CD images are available for download.

The current version's default appearance of the user interface is characterized by an orange theme. Until April 2005, Ubuntu had an optional package called ubuntu-calendar which downloaded a new desktop wallpaper every month, matching the brown colour theme. These wallpapers featured partially nude people and were criticized as overly risqué. This led to Ubuntu briefly receiving nicknames such as "Linuxxx" and "The Porn Distro".

Package classification and support

Ubuntu divides all software into four sections, called components, to reflect differences in licensing and level of support available.

Packages are assigned to components as follows:

"Free" software here includes only that which meets the Ubuntu license requirements, that is, it is published under a GPL or GPL-compatible license. (There is one caveat for Main however; it "also may contain binary firmware and selected fonts (which are used by free components of Main) that cannot be modified without permission from their authors" so long as their "redistribution is unencumbered.")

Non-free software is usually unsupported (Multiverse), but some exceptions (Restricted) are made for very important non-free software, such as non-free device drivers lack of which might prevent a user from running Ubuntu on his/her system, particularly binary-only graphics card drivers. The level of support is more limited than for main, since the developers may not have access to the source code.

It is intended that Main and Restricted should contain all software needed for a general-use Linux system. Alternative programs for the same tasks and programs for specialised applications are placed in Universe and Multiverse.

Beyond the official repositories is Ubuntu Backports, which is an officially recognized project to backport newer versions of certain software that are available only in unstable versions of Ubuntu. The repository is not comprehensive; it mostly consists of user-requested packages, which are approved if they meet quality guidelines.

Availability of proprietary software

Ubuntu has a certification system for third party software. Ubuntu certified proprietary software should work well in Ubuntu. However, many programs familiar to users of non-free operating systems like Microsoft Windows are incompatible and not Ubuntu certified. Some proprietary software that does not limit distribution is included in Ubuntu's multiverse component.

Some examples of software not distributed by Ubuntu includes:

• Software which enables playback of region-locked video DVDs, due to the questionable legal status of the DeCSS open-source DVD-decoding library in some parts of the world. (Note: the library is needed even when watching a DVD in the target region)
• Encoding and decoding libraries for many proprietary media formats such as Windows Media.
• Some popular proprietary web-browser plugins, such as Adobe's (formerly Macromedia's) Shockwave (there is no Linux version) and Flash (a workaround to the specific prohibition against redistribution in its EULA is the multiverse package "flashplugin-nonfree" which automatically downloads the Linux Flash plugin directly from Adobe's site and then installs it)

Releases

Each release has both a code name and a version number. The version number is based on the year and month of release. For example, the very first release of Ubuntu, 4.10, was released on October 20, 2004. Below is a list of previous and planned releases.

Release 6.06 is labelled as a Long Term Support (LTS) release to indicate that it will be supported with updates for 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server, with technical support available from Canonical Ltd. for this time.

Desktop vs. server version

Ubuntu is released in both the standard edition for the desktop, simply called Ubuntu, as well as a server version, Ubuntu Server Edition. Ubuntu Server Edition has been released alongside the desktop version since Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger.

Ubuntu Server Edition has a cut-down user-interface but provides server applications such as an e-mail server, a LAMP web server platform, as well as tools for DNS, file serving and database management.

Hardware requirements

For Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake the following recommended minimum hardware requirements for both standard Ubuntu for the desktop and Ubuntu Server Edition are:

Response

The Ubuntu page on Distrowatch.com has been the most frequently accessed of their comprehensive list of Linux distributions for more than one year, and Ubuntu was awarded the Reader Award for best Linux distribution at the 2005 LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in London. It has also been favourably reviewed in online and print publications. Many reviewers of Ubuntu point out a main part of Ubuntu's success is the fact it has a very large community.

Derivative projects

Several derivative distributions are officially recognized:

• Kubuntu, a desktop distribution using KDE rather than GNOME
• Edubuntu, a distribution designed for classrooms
• Xubuntu, a "lightweight" distribution based on the Xfce desktop environment

In addition, Mark Shuttleworth has endorsed the creation of an Ubuntu-libre distribution using only FSF-approved free software.

These projects are closely linked to Ubuntu. As of 2006, their releases are simultaneous with Ubuntu's, and packages are drawn from the same official repositories Ubuntu uses.

There are also several unofficial derivatives:

• nUbuntu, a distribution including many security tools.
• Ubuntu Lite, a distribution for legacy systems (older computers).
• zUbuntu, a port of Ubuntu to the IBM eServer zSeries mainframe.
• Ebuntu, a fork of Ubuntu with the Enlightenment 0.17 window manager.
• It was widely rumoured that Google was building and would be distributing an Ubuntu derivative called Goobuntu. Google confirmed that they have created a modified version of Ubuntu but also insisted that they have no plans to distribute this version outside of the company.

See also

• Comparison of Linux distributions

References

Cited references and notes

1. ^ "ubuntu/releases - Ubuntu". Retrieved 2006-03-11.
2. ^ "Announcing Beta release of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS". Retrieved 2006-04-26.
3. ^ "community - Ubuntu". Retrieved 2006-03-11.
4. ^ "XYZ computing article on kubuntu". Retrieved 2006-03-11.
5. ^ "ubuntu/relationship "Debian is the rock upon which Ubuntu is built"". Retrieved 2006-05-25.
6. "ubuntu/philosophy". Retrieved 2006-04-25.
7. "Mark Shuttleworth on binary compatibility". Retrieved 2006-04-25.
8. "internetnews.com Sarge vs. The Hoary Hedgehog?". Retrieved 2006-04-25.
9. "About Ubuntu Linux". Retrieved 2006-04-25.
10. "RootSudo - Ubuntu Wiki". Retrieved 2006-04-25.
11. "Screenshots of Espresso/Ubiquity". Retrieved 2006-05-03.
12. "Shipit - free shipment of Ubuntu CDs". Retrieved 2006-04-26.
13. "Shipit - free shipment of Kubuntu CDs". Retrieved 2006-06-21.
14. "Shipit - free shipment of Edubuntu CDs". Retrieved 2006-06-21.
15. "Humorix: The Hottest New Distribution: LinuXXX". Retrieved 2006-04-27.
16. "Community MX: LinuXXX?". Retrieved 2006-04-27.
17. "ubuntu/components". Retrieved 2006-03-16.
18. "UbuntuBackports". Retrieved 2006-03-16.
19. "parters/certification/software". Retrieved 2006-03-16.
20. "Ubuntu 4.10 announcement". Retrieved 2006-04-26.
21. ^ http://www.ubuntu.com/server
22. "DistroWatch: Linux Distribution Popularity". Retrieved 2006-04-27.
23. "LinuxWorld Expo UK 2005" (PDF). Retrieved 2006-05-09.
24. "Ubuntu - A New Approach to Desktop Linux". Retrieved 2006-05-09.
25. "Linux in Government: Linux Desktop Reviews, Part 6 - Ubuntu". Retrieved 2006-05-09.
26. "Ubuntu-libre". Retrieved 2006-04-25.
27. "Mark Shuttleworth registers gnubuntu.org (Ubuntu mailing list)". Retrieved 2006-04-25.
28. "The Register: Google at work on desktop Linux". Retrieved 2006-04-25.
29. "Slashdot: Google working on Desktop Linux". Retrieved 2006-04-25.

General references

• What is it About Ubuntu? - by Sal Cangeloso, XYZ Computing, Monday, 05 December 2005, retrieved 21 December 2005
• Once I have installed Ubuntu, will I be able to upgrade to the next release? by Viktorija, 10 April 2005, retrieved 21 December 2005
• Ubuntu & You, Part 1: Trying Today's Most Popular Linux Distribution by Thomas Pletcher, CommunityMX, 15 August 2005, retrieved 21 December 2005
• Restricted Formats last edited 2005-12-16 02:24:00 by RichRudnick, Ubuntu Wiki, retrieved 21 December 2005

Further reading in print

Currently in print

Thomas, K (2006). Beginning Ubuntu Linux. US: APress. ISBN 1590596277.

Scheduled for release in late 2006

• The Official Ubuntu Book
• Moving to Ubuntu Linux
• Ubuntu Hacks (Parts of which are available in "Rough Cuts" online PDF format)

External links

Official online resources

• Ubuntu Official Website
• Ubuntu Wiki
• Ubuntu Help
• Ubuntu-Women Website

Unofficial online resources

• Template:OSDir
• Ubuntu Linux at DistroWatch
• Blog about using Ubuntu with practical tips
• Interview with Mark Shuttleworth about Ubuntu
• Debuntu Debian and Ubuntu System and Networks Administration Tips and Tricks
• Adventures in Linux with Ubuntu Various installation notes
• Updated Unofficial Ubuntu Guide for Ubuntu 5.10 (including translations)
• EasyUbuntu Semi-automatic installation of useful programs - not sanctioned by Ubuntu
• Automatix Semi-automatic installation of useful programs (similar to EasyUbuntu, but with more options) - not sanctioned by Ubuntu
• Ubuntu Studio A guide to configuring Ubuntu into a high-performance audio workstation, comparable to dedicated audio distributions like PlanetCCRMA or DeMuDi.
• Review and Guide for Ubuntu Dapper at Lunapark6.com.

User Communities

• Ubuntu Forums
• Ubuntu IRC channel on freenode
• Ubuntu support community
• Ubuntu Guide Wiki

• LiveCD
• Ubuntu
• Linux distributions
• Debian-based distributions