Ubuntu turns 20 years old. On this day like today… That is, on this day like yesterday, two decades ago, the journey of the distribution that gave it its own name began – its own, an African word that alludes to the community: “I am because we are” to the Linux desktop, at least for the “general public.” It’s not that before the arrival of Ubuntu there weren’t other distributions pointing in the same direction and doing very well, but it was Canonical’s system that managed to become the most visible face of the ecosystem.
In fact, if Ubuntu launched its first version on October 20, 2004, it would not take long to take the lead on the Linux desktop with a curious motto, calling itself “Linux for human beings,” and a strategy recognized by the creator himself. of the Linux kernel: “What Ubuntu did very well was make Debian usable,” Linus Torvalds commented at the time. The truth is that everything that was is maintained, that is its greatest merit, even when the scene has evolved so much that it is difficult to compare.
Giving a brief review of the history of the project, if we remember the twentieth anniversary of Canonical at the beginning of the year, we now do the same with the distribution that has been its reason for being. The first version to see the light was Ubuntu 4.10 ‘Warty Warthog’ and since then forty more have dropped, all of them numbered based on the month and year of their release and named in spelling order such as animal/adjective synergy until reaching the latest Ubuntu 24.10 ‘Oracular Oriole’ (they’ve already turned the alphabet around).
Since then, Ubuntu has been forging the idiosyncrasy that characterizes it with more successes than errors, although there is everything in its history. Among the first, for example, is having created a large selection of official flavors, ultimately converted into one of the best Linux distributions for PCeach based on the base provided by Ubuntu, but also on a different desktop environment. We are talking about Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Unity, Ubuntu Cinnamon, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Studio and Edubuntu, that is, ten official editions, counting the main one.
Canonical commemorates the launch of Ubuntu 4.10 with this wallpaper in Ubuntu 24.10
There were not always so many, but it did not take long for them to begin to occur: with the second version of the system, Ubuntu 5.04 ‘Hoary Hedgehog’, the first version also for x86-64-bit architectures, Kubuntu appeared, based on the KDE software; With Ubuntu 5.10 ‘Breezy Badger’ it was the turn of Xubuntu and its Ubuntu offer, but prefers an alternative desktop.
As can be seen, Ubuntu has maintained a cadence of two annual releases since its inception, one in April and another in October, with two years of support for each one. In April 2006, however, Canonical gave the formula a twist to introduce an extended support version with more than one purpose: Ubuntu 6.04 ‘Dapper Drake’ LTS was the first of its kind and with it everything changed: support time was redefined, the first server versions were established…
Although from the beginning Ubuntu could be used for different purposes, read desktop or server, the proposal focused above all on the PC. With Ubuntu 6.04 LTS this changed, precisely due to the new support policies: the intermediate versions reduced their maintenance to a year and a half, while the LTS versions extended it to four years. However, the dichotomy of Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server would not be completed until the next LTS version, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS ‘Hardy Heron’, a release from which specific packages and configurations were introduced for each edition.
In all this, it is worth remembering one of the great highlights of Ubuntu: the CDs that it sent to everyone for free to install the system without having to download it, to share… The gift ended in 2011, but without a doubt, it marked an era. An aggressive and very expensive expansion strategy, but one that brought good results to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu on CD and free… For Windows and Mac!
Thanks to all these changes, Ubuntu not only became the great Linux distribution for PC, supported by an increasingly larger community, but also gave rise to its business adoption, both on the desktop and on servers. In 2010 Ubuntu no longer had a rival in terms of popularity and its installations in all types of organizations throughout the world were growing exponentially. The same thing happened at that time with the derivative distributions that thrived in its shadow, some of which are now well-known options.
Back in 2011, Mark Shuttleworth, founder and CEO of Canonical and Ubuntu, took matters into his own hands and announced the great undertaking that Ubuntu had ahead of it: the search for convergencea commitment to a multi-platform system that would dominate all types of devices, including personal computers, but also the then-burgeoning smart phones and televisions, all with an open source foundation, Linux and an interface up to the task. That interface in pursuit of unity was, of course, Unity.
It wasn’t as fast as it might seem. Unity was developed little by little, first as a light version of Ubuntu specifically for Netbooks, the mini-laptops that were so successful in those years. The invention lasted a couple of years, although it did not disappear, but was integrated into Ubuntu, already under the name Unity. Its debut was in Ubuntu 11.04 ‘Natty Narwhal’ and the issue did not cause much trouble: abandoning a stable experience like the one offered by GNOME 2 for an ambitious, but half-finished alternative, it generated a lot of displeasure (the incipient GNOME 3 was also not a success ).
The first Unity…
But the move turned out well for Canonical. That is, Unity became a great desktop, but the dream of convergence faded and Ubuntu returned to GNOME. This was in 2017, mind you. In between there was a little bit of everything: a Dropbox attempt called Ubuntu One started and discontinued between one thing and another; the controversial development of the Mir graphics server, which put Shuttleworth itself on the warpath against the Open Source tea Party and which was never used for what it was designed for, but which is still alive and in use…
And of course Ubuntu Phonewhich was nothing other than Ubuntu itself with Unity 8, a new version of the desktop with which to achieve convergence, which was distributed for use on smartphones without achieving anything, although it is also still alive, developed independently , but without losing links with Ubuntu. The Ubuntu Phone adventure ended with the launch of several mobile phones and a tablet, whose support was maintained until those same dates. (in that last news you will find links to the analyzes we dedicated to three of them).
In addition to all this, in this review of Ubuntu’s history we cannot miss a mention of the odyssey of Ubuntu Edge, which was intended to be the flagship of Ubuntu Phone. A terminal designed by Canonical itself and whose manufacturing was attempted to be financed with a fundraising campaign. crowdfunfig which, despite not achieving its ambitious goal of $32 million, set the bar very, very high. The total raised – and returned – exceeded 12 million dollars, becoming the most successful initiative of its kind to date.
Ubuntu Phone in its most recognizable form, that of the Aquaris E5 HD
However, not everything went badly for Canonical. At the same time that the push to make a place for itself in the consumer market became unviable, the progress of the company, its products and services, took shape in the professional field, making Ubuntu an economically viable project. And for many years it operated at a loss, with the contribution of Mark Shuttleworth’s initial investment. The phenomenon of cloud services and business solutions They were and continue to be the source of income on which the company’s business is based and, therefore, the development of the old Ubuntu for PC.
Thus, Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server were joined over time by others, such as Ubuntu Core, a specific edition for the Internet of Things that has resulted in one of Canonical’s future bets for different scenarios… And of course, If we refer to Ubuntu Core, we must talk about Snap, the package format and application distribution system for desktop and server, another initiative from the house that has generated discussion everywhere, but unlike some of the mentions, it seems be going well.
Snapcraft, much more than an application store
Ubuntu is currently found throughout the technology sector supply chain: Ubuntu is on all major service platformsand who says Ubuntu, means all the professional services offered by the company, centralized, but not exclusive to the Ubuntu Pro subscription, its basic offer, thanks to which the LTS versions now enjoy 12 years of support. The truth is that Ubuntu’s tentacles are difficult to count from the outside, because it doesn’t stop moving. As an example, MicroCloud and Everything LTS, two of their most recent releases.
All in all, here at MuyLinux we are mainly dedicated to the desktop and, as can be seen from the number of links in this article, our trajectory has been closely linked to that of Ubuntu, but at the end of the day we are talking about, it bears repeating. , Linux desktop reference. Even today, yes… With less luster than it once had? Well yes, but not because now the competition also does it very well, part of the Linux user base on PC has acquired enough experience to look for the alternative that best suits their tastes and needs… But Ubuntu turns 20 years old …
And it had to be celebrated. With this in-depth review, despite which it is very likely that we have left things unsaid, but also with the interview with Oliver Smith, head of Ubuntu Desktop that we published a few days ago. Canonical, for its part, has celebrated with the launch of Ubuntu 24.10, although it is more advisable to trust Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and let yourself go.
