Ubuntu celebrates tenth anniversary first release

Spread the love

The popular Linux distribution Ubuntu released its first release ten years ago. Version 14.04 now forms the basis of Canonicals Ubuntu, while version 14.10 will be available later this week. Canonical also wants to win over the mobile market with Ubuntu in the long run.

Ubuntu is based on the Debian distribution and uses, among other things, Debian’s deb format for installing files. On October 20, 2004, the first Ubuntu release, 4.10 Warty Warthog, was released. The first versions of Ubuntu were relatively user-friendly and complete, so the distribution quickly gained the necessary following. In 2005, millionaire Mark Shuttleworth founded Canonical, along with the Ubuntu Foundation. The latter organization aimed to promote the community behind Ubuntu and open source software.

Canonical and the various independent developers behind Ubuntu soon came to a schedule of two releases per year, with six months in between. A so-called Long Term Support release is released every two years, in which support and updates are provided for five years instead of nine months.

Initially, the Ubuntu releases were based on the Gnome desktop environment, but Canonical eventually developed its own desktop environment called Unity. According to Canonical, Unity’s goal is to develop a gui that can be used on various devices, including mobile devices. The Ubuntu community received Unity with mixed feelings. However, dissatisfied users had plenty of alternatives, as numerous Ubuntu derivatives emerged, such as Kubuntu with the KDE desktop and Xubuntu based on the Xfce gui.

Canonical now has one of the most popular Linux distributions and Ubuntu is also doing better in the server market. The company also wants to make the move to the mobile market and has been developing an Ubuntu version for smartphones and tablets under the name Ubuntu Touch for some time. However, the first mobiles with the operating system have yet to appear on the market.

In April, Canonical released the latest LTS release of Ubuntu with version 14.04. Ubuntu 14.10 will be released later this month, with the Unity 7 interface still predominant.

You might also like