As of 2012, according to online surveys, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution on desktop/laptop personal computers,and most Ubuntu coverage focuses on its use in that market. However, it is also popular on servers and for cloud computing.
Development of Ubuntu is led by Canonical, Ltd., 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, and since version 12.10, by displaying advertisements in Unity Dash, the default file manager in desktop Ubuntu. 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.
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.
Ubuntu's first release was on 20 October 2004. Since then, Canonical has released new versions of Ubuntu every six months 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). LTS releases were traditionally supported for three years on the desktop and five years on the server.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. LTS releases get point releases to ensure that they work on newer hardware.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.
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. Many Ubuntu developers are also maintainers of key packages within Debian. Ubuntu cooperates with Debian by pushing changes back to Debian, 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.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).
On 12 March 2009, Ubuntu announced developer support for 3rd party cloud management platforms, such as for those used at Amazon EC2.
The latest release is Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal), released on 18 October 2012.
Mark Shuttleworth announced on 31 October 2011 that Ubuntu's support for smartphones, tablets, TVs and smart screens is scheduled to be added by Ubuntu 14.04. On 9 January 2012, Canonical announced Ubuntu TV at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Features
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 theUbiquity installer, 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. 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.
Canonical offered Ubuntu and Kubuntu 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. 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, 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. Some unsupported applications receive updates from community members, but not from Canonical Ltd.
Ubuntu is composed of many software packages, the vast majority of which are distributed under a free software license. The only exceptions are some proprietary hardware drivers.The main license used is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) which, along with the GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU LGPL), explicitly declares that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, develop and improve the software. On the other hand, there is also proprietary software available that can run on Ubuntu.
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 emphasizesaccessibility and internationalization to reach as many people as possible.[citation needed] Beginning with 5.04, UTF-8 became the default character encoding, 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. PolicyKit is also being widely implemented into the desktop to further harden the system through the principle of least privilege.
Ubuntu Desktop includes a graphical desktop environment. In versions prior to 11.04 the default GUI was GNOME Panel but it was dropped in favor of Unity, a graphical interface Canonical first developed for the Ubuntu Netbook Edition.
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 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. GNOME (the former default desktop) offers support for more than 46 languages.Ubuntu can also run many programs designed for Microsoft Windows (such as Microsoft Office), through Wine or using a Virtual Machine (such asVMware Workstation or VirtualBox).
Ubuntu compiles their packages using gcc features such as PIE and Buffer overflow protection to harden their software.These extra features greatly increase security at the performance expense of 1% in 32 bit and 0.01% in 64 bit.As of version 12.04, Ubuntu supports the ARM and x86 (32 bit and 64 bit) architectures. There is unofficial support for PowerPC.
System requirements
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. For less powerful computers, there are other Ubuntu distributions such as Lubuntu and Xubuntu.
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.
Canonical offered Ubuntu and Kubuntu 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. 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, 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. Some unsupported applications receive updates from community members, but not from Canonical Ltd.
Ubuntu is composed of many software packages, the vast majority of which are distributed under a free software license. The only exceptions are some proprietary hardware drivers.The main license used is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) which, along with the GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU LGPL), explicitly declares that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, develop and improve the software. On the other hand, there is also proprietary software available that can run on Ubuntu.
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 emphasizesaccessibility and internationalization to reach as many people as possible.[citation needed] Beginning with 5.04, UTF-8 became the default character encoding, 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. PolicyKit is also being widely implemented into the desktop to further harden the system through the principle of least privilege.
Ubuntu Desktop includes a graphical desktop environment. In versions prior to 11.04 the default GUI was GNOME Panel but it was dropped in favor of Unity, a graphical interface Canonical first developed for the Ubuntu Netbook Edition.
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 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. GNOME (the former default desktop) offers support for more than 46 languages.Ubuntu can also run many programs designed for Microsoft Windows (such as Microsoft Office), through Wine or using a Virtual Machine (such asVMware Workstation or VirtualBox).
Ubuntu compiles their packages using gcc features such as PIE and Buffer overflow protection to harden their software.These extra features greatly increase security at the performance expense of 1% in 32 bit and 0.01% in 64 bit.As of version 12.04, Ubuntu supports the ARM and x86 (32 bit and 64 bit) architectures. There is unofficial support for PowerPC.
System requirements
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. For less powerful computers, there are other Ubuntu distributions such as Lubuntu and Xubuntu.
| Free software | Non-free software | |
|---|---|---|
| Supported | Main | Restricted |
| Unsupported | Universe | Multiverse |
Installation
Free software includes only software that has met the Ubuntu licensing requirements, 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. 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. 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.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. 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. 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 and provides guidance to vendors. The partner repository is disabled by default and can be enabled by the user. Some popular products distributed via the partner repository as of November 2011are Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader, Braid and Oil Rush.
Availability of third-party software
See also: Medibuntu and GetDeb
Ubuntu has a certification system for third party software. Some third-party software that does not limit distribution is included in Ubuntu's multiverse component. The package ubuntu-restricted-extras additionally contains software that may be legally restricted, including support for MP3 and DVD playback, Microsoft TrueType core fonts, Sun's Java runtime environment,Adobe's Flash Player plugin, many common audio/video codecs, and unrar, an unarchiver for files compressed in the RAR file format.
Additionally, third party application suites are available for purchase through the Canonical web-based store, including software for DVD playback and media codecs.
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