Ubuntu Linux Distro

Our modern world seems to be filled with computers that are powered by three different operating systems: Windows, Mac, and Linux. One is developed by the corporate giant Microsoft, one is created by the tech company Apple, and the last one is an open-source operating system with distributions created by various different companies & organizations. Linux is one of the few operating systems on the market someone can get for free and there are various different distributions that someone can get in order to do work with their computer. The one I am talking about today is named after the Nguni Bantu term for "humanity". It is called Ubuntu.

Ubuntu was originally released on October 20th of 2004, about seventeen years ago from the time of this writing. The very first version of Ubuntu to be available was Ubuntu 4.10, which was nicknamed Warty Warthog. It was built from another distribution of Linux called Debian and the operating system was offered as free download and physically mailed to users free of charge in the form of a CD. The British company Canonical developed it and the company still develops on Ubuntu to this day. However, the open-source operating system is also worked on by a community of developers under a meritocratic form of governance. However, the company has a non-profit foundation handle most of the work on the operating system called the Ubuntu Foundation, a non-profit that has grown from its initial funding $10 million United States Dollars. It was created to ensure the continuity of Ubuntu even if anything happened to the Canonical corporation. Then on March 2009, Ubuntu announced that they would have developer support for third party cloud management platforms such as the platforms used at Amazon EC2 (a infrastructure-as-a-service form of cloud computing supported by the company Amazon that allows people to create virtual machines).

There are a wide variety of Linux application that are included by default for Ubuntu. Those software applications include LibreOffice(a free and open-source office productivity software suite that allows people to work on programs for word processing, creating and editing spreadsheets, producing slideshows, diagrams, drawings, working with databases, and composing mathematical formulas), Firefox (a free and open-source web browser created by the Mozilla Foundation), Thunderbird (a free and open-source email client, chat client, personal information manager, news client, and RSS developed by the same people who created the Firefox web browser), Transmission (a BitTorrent client that is free under the GNU General Public License), and a few lightweight games like Sudoku and Mines. You can also add a whole bunch of software packages using Ubuntu Software. This utility is used to install applications and automatic updates for these software programs for Ubuntu distributions. All of the default software programs are free and by default, Ubuntu is secure with user programs running with low privileges so none of them can be able to corrupt the operating system as a whole or mess with the files that have been saved by other users of Ubuntu. The sudo tool is used to assign temporary root privileges to any of the users running it. Ubuntu also supports full disk encryption as well as encryption of the home and Private directories.

Ubuntu also has a bunch of different official distributions under this particular Linux distribution. Some of these distributions include many of the same repos as regular Ubuntu but also packages for the Snap Store: a package and software development manager system that is developed for Linux. Some of these distributions include Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Core, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Studio, and Xubuntu. These are some of the main distributions I might go over in the future, but for now this article should serve as a decent introduction to a beginner for what Ubuntu is.