Ubuntu

Ubuntu

Αρχείο:Ubuntu Logo.svg
Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" running GNOME.
Οικογένεια λογισμικού	Linux
Κατάσταση λειτουργίας	Current
Διαθέσιμο σε	multilingual
Μοντέλο ενημερώσεων	APT
Package manager	dpkg
Προεπιλεγμένη διεπαφή χρήστη	GNOME
Επίσημη ιστοσελίδα	C++, C, κέλυφος Unix, Python

Ubuntu (IPA pronunciation: [/u'buntu/]) is a widely used Linux distribution predominantly targeted at personal computers. Based on Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu concentrates on usability, regular releases, ease of installation, and freedom from legal restrictions. Ubuntu is sponsored by Canonical Ltd., a private company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth.

The name of the distribution comes from the Zulu and Xhosa concept of ubuntu, which means “I am what I am because of who we all are”. Ubuntu’s slogan – “Linux for Human Beings”, encapsulates one of its main goals – making Linux more available and easy to use.

The most recent version, Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn), was released on April 19 2007. Version 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) is scheduled for release on October 18 2007.

History and development

Originally refered to as no-name-yet.com, Ubuntu's first release on October 20 2004 began as a temporary fork of Debian GNU/Linux, with the aim of drawing from Debian's code regularly in order to allow for a new version of Ubuntu to be released every six months, in step with the six month GNOME release cycle. In contrast to other general-purpose forks of Debian such as Xandros, Linspire and Libranet, Canonical remains close to Debian's philosophy with Ubuntu and use predominantly free software rather than making the inclusion of proprietary applications part of their business model.

Ubuntu uses Debian's Advanced Packaging Tool to manage installed packages. Ubuntu packages are generally based on packages from Debian's unstable repository; however, they are not always compatible with each other. Several Ubuntu developers are also maintainers of packages within Debian's repositories, and Ubuntu changes are contributed back to Debian as they are made, rather than being announced only at release time. Ian Murdock, the founder of Debian, criticised Ubuntu in April 2005 for incompatibilities between its packages and those of Debian sarge, saying that Ubuntu had diverged too far to remain compatible.

Bugs in Ubuntu are tracked through the Launchpad web interface, which integrates with the Bazaar version control system in a similar way to SourceForge's integration with CVS.

Ubuntu is currently funded by Mark Shuttleworth through Canonical Ltd. On July 8 2005, Canonical 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, but as of 2006, the foundation remains dormant. Shuttleworth describes the foundation as an emergency fund should Canonical's involvement end.

Features

Usability

Ubuntu uses GNOME as its desktop environment, which is intended to provide a free, simple and intuitive interface while offering a full range of modern desktop applications. While Ubuntu includes common productivity software including OpenOffice.org, the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the GIMP image editor, it aims to avoid overlap in its default feature set rather than providing many different choices of similar packages.

After the initial Ubuntu installation, the user is greeted with an orange-brown desktop which contains no desktop icons by default. General desktop applications are located under the Applications menu, a desktop launcher menu in the top-left corner. Open windows can be viewed on the taskbar along the bottom of the screen. The default user interface in Ubuntu is characterized by shades of orange and brown, although the user retains the option to customize the look and behavior of the desktop in a variety of ways. Ubuntu is available in over 40 languages. It also allows users to submit additional translations by using the Rosetta Translation tool.

Ubuntu's focus on usability includes the widespread use of the sudo tool, which allows users to carry out administrative tasks without initiating a potentially unsafe superuser session.

Distribution

Ubuntu ships as an ISO image that fits on a single CD or alternatively, in the case of the older version, Dapper Drake 6.06 LTS, and just released Feisty Fawn 7.04, mailed free to anyone requesting them via Canonical's ShipIt service. This is intended to reduce the amount of time it takes to download Ubuntu and the possibility of losing part of the installation software and/or to aid those users who are not comfortable/able to burn an ISO image to CD. Many Linux distributions necessitate the downloading of multiple ISO images and hours of installation process, while Ubuntu is one of the few distributions that can be installed quickly, and from a single CD. Additionally, all Ubuntu versions since 4.10 can be downloaded for free.

Since version 6.06 LTS, Ubuntu's disc has served both as a Live CD and an install disc. This disc boots into a fully featured desktop, allowing the user to see whether his or her hardware is compatible and experiment with the applications available. The CD also allows the user to install Ubuntu to the hard disk using the Ubiquity application, and preserves documents created on the live desktop. An alternate install disc using the text-mode debian-installer is also available, aimed towards those with lower system specifications, towards administrators installing Ubuntu on many systems, and for complex disk partitioning.

There are two types of releases: one for desktop and laptop computers and one for servers. The desktop and laptop version is available for x86, x86-64, and PowerPC Macintosh computers. The server edition is available for these platforms in addition to SPARC and does not ship as a Live CD (using the text-mode installer exclusively).

Accessibility

Ubuntu emphasizes accessibility and internationalisation, to reach as many people as possible. Since version 5.04, UTF-8 has been the default character encoding. High-visibility themes, screen-reading software, and an on-screen keyboard all come with Ubuntu.

Canonical's Rosetta tool is a part of the Launchpad web-based application which allows Ubuntu users to contribute translations of Ubuntu software in a straightforward way.

"Humanity"

Ubuntu places particular emphasis on community involvement with the development process.

Ubuntu has a number of official web forums where discussion of the operating system is encouraged. Canonical hosts a number of mailing lists for the project and the developer mailing lists and Ubuntu's developer conferences remain open to users. Ubuntu's regular development conferences are open to the general public.

Users are encouraged to make use of The Fridge, a community weblog intended to keep users informed with Ubuntu-related news.

The Human user interface theme in Ubuntu is characterised by shades of brown and orange, with art intended to mimic African tribal imagery. Illustrations of human beings in global communities feature prominently in Ubuntu promotional artwork.

Package classification and support

Browsing Ubuntu core packages in Synaptic.

Ubuntu divides all software into four sections, called components, to reflect differences in licensing and level of support available. The components are Main, Restricted, Universe and Multiverse.

Main and Universe contain software which meets the Ubuntu license requirements, which correspond roughly to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Main may also contain binary firmware and selected fonts used in supported software that cannot be modified without permission. In all cases, redistribution is unencumbered.

Non-free device drivers remain in the Restricted component, where support is present because of their importance, but limited due to lack of, or limited, access to the source code.

It is intended that Main and Restricted contain all software needed for a general-use desktop operating system. Other, unsupported programs are placed in Universe (free) and Multiverse (Non-free). Multiverse contains software packages which may infringe on U.S. and international patent or copyright law. Examples of these include software that enables the playback of patented media formats. Due to the questionable legal status of unofficial DVD-decoding in some parts of the world, Libdvdcss was removed from Ubuntu's official repository, but can still be downloaded at the VideoLAN Project's website. Encoding and decoding libraries for many proprietary media formats such as Windows Media are also unavailable by default.

Ubuntu Backports 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.

Unofficial utilities such as EasyUbuntu and Automatix aim to automate the installation and configuration of software which is not officially packaged for Ubuntu for legal or philosophical reasons. They are not recommended by the Ubuntu development team and have been accused of breaking updates.

Ubuntu has a certification system for third-party proprietary software, and Canonical manage a special repository for certified proprietary packages named Commercial, which includes software that Canonical have obtained special permission to distribute. As of this writing, the repository includes the Opera web browser and the RealPlayer media player.

Δείτε επίσης: Linux distribution#Proprietary software

Releases

Each Ubuntu release has an alliterative code name and a version number based on the year and month of release (Example: April, 2007 saw the release of 7.04 Feisty Fawn). Canonical provides support and security updates for most Ubuntu versions for 18 months after release. There are three current versions of Ubuntu: 6.06 Dapper LTS (Long term support), 6.10 Edgy Eft and 7.04 Feisty Fawn, which was released on April 19, 2007.

List of releases

Version	Release date	Code name	Supported until	Notes
4.10	20 October 2004	Warty Warthog	April 30, 2006	Initial release, support for x86, x86-64, PowerPC. ShipIt service used
5.04	8 April 2005	Hoary Hedgehog	October 31, 2006	Inclusion of update-manager/upgrade-notifier, Kickstart compatibility, improved laptop support
5.10	13 October 2005	Breezy Badger	April 13, 2007	Graphical boot process with progress bar (USplash), OEM Installer Support, Launchpad tracking, GCC 4.0
6.06 LTS	1 June 2006	Dapper Drake	June, 2009 (desktops); June, 2011 (servers)	First to be distributed as a single compact disc (LiveCD and Install), Ubiquity installer
6.10	26 October 2006	Edgy Eft	April, 2008	Automated problem reports, Upstart
7.04	19 April 2007	Feisty Fawn	October, 2008	Migration assistant, KVM, Easy codec/restricted drivers installation, Gnome Control Center, Desktop effects, Easier connections to wireless networks (WPA support), PowerPC no longer officially supported
7.10	18 October 2007	Gutsy Gibbon	April, 2009	Default graphical desktop effects, unattended installation, Click'N'Run options

Long Term Support

Ubuntu support periods.

Release 6.06 LTS, codenamed "Dapper Drake", is the first Long Term Support release of Ubuntu. Canonical intends to support LTS releases with updates longer than other Ubuntu releases. Package updates are planned and paid technical support is available for three years on the desktop and five years on the server.

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS initially included GNOME 2.14, Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.3, OpenOffice.org 2.0.2, Xorg 7.0, GCC 4.0.3, and version 2.6.15 of the Linux kernel. The first maintenance release, version 6.06.1, appeared on 10 August 2006, and is still distributed alongside more recent releases.

Version 6.06 was the first to be distributed as a single compact disc that served both as a Live CD and an install disc. This disc boots into a full-featured desktop, allowing users to see whether their hardware is compatible and experiment with the applications available and then install Ubuntu to the hard disk using the Ubiquity graphical installer. The installation process preserves documents created on the live desktop. An alternate install disc using the text-mode debian-installer is available for download, and is aimed at people with lower system specifications, administrators installing on many systems, and for complex disk partitioning including the use of LVM or RAID.

Because of the longer support cycle, ShipIt program continued to ship Dapper, rather than switching to newer Edgy Eft. However, since 11 April 2007, Feisty Fawn is available for ordering on the ShipIt website.

Previous release

Αρχείο:B000K2P4WW.01. SS500 SCLZZZZZZZ V36961148 .jpg

Ubuntu 6.10 DVD

Ubuntu 6.10 CD

The previous Ubuntu release, version 6.10, known as "Edgy Eft", debuted new features such as a new System V init daemon replacement called Upstart, as well as improvements to the memory usage of applications like Evolution and Nautilus which led to an increase in the speed of system boot up and application launch compared to version 6.06. Major applications in this release include GNOME 2.16.1, Mozilla Firefox 2.0, OpenOffice.org 2.0.4, X.Org Server 7.1.1, GCC 4.1.1, and version 2.6.17 of the Linux kernel.

Like previous releases, Edgy allows for direct upgrades from the previous version. Upgrading from version 6.06 is not performed automatically like normal package upgrades, requiring a special switch to Update Manager. Other methods, such as the dist-upgrade feature of apt-get, are not recommended. Some users reported serious trouble in the process.

Development

The next stable release will be Ubuntu 7.10, codenamed "Gutsy Gibbon". Currently, this release is scheduled for 18 October 2007. Gibbon is planned to also include a version containing only software that can be modified and redistributed, that is free software, in conjunction with gNewSense.

System requirements

The current Ubuntu release, 7.04, requires 256 megabytes of RAM, and, when installed to the hard disk, requires at least three gigabytes of hard-disk space if installed as the usual Desktop installation. The Server installation requires 64MB of RAM and 500MB of hard disk space.

Variants

Xubuntu 6.06 default desktop configuration.

Variants of Ubuntu are divided into two two broad categories:

1. Subsets of the distribution created by and within Ubuntu with a custom installer or live CD that highlight certain aspects or software within the distribution. These are variously referred to as subproject, or flavors. They are analogous to "custom distributions" in the Debian community.
2. Derivatives of Ubuntu created by individuals, groups or organization working outside of the Ubuntu project but using or tracking Ubuntu software. These projects are technically forks of Ubuntu.

Official/internal variants

There are several official variants of Ubuntu available, with releases simultaneous with Ubuntu's, as their packages are drawn from the same repositories. They are:

• Kubuntu, which uses KDE instead of GNOME as the default desktop environment.
• Edubuntu, "designed for school environments, and should be equally suitable for kids to use at home."
• Xubuntu, which uses the Xfce as the default desktop environment and is designed for less powerful computers.
• Ubuntu Server Edition, which provides server applications.

Kubuntu, Ubuntu and Edubuntu can be ordered as CDs from the ShipIt service. However, the server edition and Xubuntu cannot be ordered.

Unofficial derivatives

Other derivates include unofficial variants that usually use alternate windowing systems.

• Fluxbuntu uses the Fluxbox window manager. It is intended for use on machines too slow to run a full desktop environment well.
• Ubuntu Lite shares a similar goal, but uses IceWM instead.
• Elbuntu uses the Enlightenment window manager.

Specific derivates

Mark Shuttleworth has also endorsed the creation of an Ubuntu distribution using only Free Software Foundation-approved free software. While an official 'Ubuntu-Libre' version has never been released, due to package management difficulties, gNewSense, a project somewhat similar to the proposed 'Ubuntu-Libre', was released on November 2, 2006. However, it is not an official version of Ubuntu.

• LinuxMCE (Linux Media Center Edition) is a alternative to Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition based on Ubuntu.
• Scibuntu aims to make scientific programs more accessible.
• Ubuntu Studio is a release geared towards multimedia production. Not yet released.

It was widely rumoured that Google would be distributing an Ubuntu derivative called Goobuntu. Google confirmed that it has created a modified version of Ubuntu but insisted there are no plans to distribute it outside the company.

xUbuntu(not to be confused with Xubuntu) is an PC-/Xbox-enabled version of Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution. xUbuntu is not a stand-alone, independent distribution. The install process, the bootloader, the kernel and the kernel modules - are all customized for PC and Xbox (i386).

Support

The Ubuntu website offers both commercial and community support. Community support is free while commercial requires payments.

Community support is available in the forms of forums, IRC channels, blogs and documentation.

Ubuntu's Documentation lists extensive guides on all branches of Ubuntu, such as Ubuntu server version, Kubuntu and Xubuntu. There are also extensive documentation to help with installation for i386, amd64, powerpc, sparc, hppa and ia64 machines. Extracts from the official Ubuntu book are also included. Documentations are available in HTML and PDF form.

The community documentation is an alternative to the official documentation. The community documentation is available in many languages such as, but not limited to: Hebrew, German, French, Russian, Italian, Korean and Chinese. Community Documentations are available on topics such as installation, maintenance, hardware, applications, switching from other operating systems and drivers.

Version	Codename	Sub-version	Release date
4.10	Warty Warthog	Sounder	20 October 2004
5.04	Hoary Hedgehog	Array	8 April 2005
5.10	Breezy Badger	Colony	13 October 2005
6.06 LTS	Dapper Drake	Flight	1 June 2006
6.06.1 LTS	Dapper Drake Point One	Flight	10 August 2006
6.10	Edgy Eft	Knot	6 October 2006
7.04	Feisty Fawn	Herd	19 April 2007
7.10	Gutsy Gibbon	Tribe 1	7 June 2007
		Tribe 2	28 June 2007
		Tribe 3	19 July 2007
		Tribe 4	9 August 2007
		Tribe 5	23 August 2007
		Tribe 6	6 September 2007
		Beta Release	27 September 2007
		Release Candidate	11 October 2007
		Ubuntu 7.10 Final Release	18 October 2007

Legend:
no longer supported	still supported	current	trial version	planned

Community

Ubuntu-Women is a women-oriented project under Ubuntu and sponsored by Canonical to provide a platform and encouragement for women to contribute to free and open source software.

Started in January 2006, the goal of Ubuntu-Women is to supplement and inspire women to be more aware of the technical aspects of the Ubuntu world. Here, women can communicate openly and ask questions without any fear of being ridiculed. By getting involved in this project one gets the opportunity to create new FLOSS software.

Participation in Ubuntu-Women is open to anyone using Ubuntu and is not restricted to women and you will find men and women working in tandem across Ubuntu.

Each-One-Teach-One is a mentoring program where women can interact with experts who volunteer in specific technical, documentation, translation fields which provides them the necessary information and support to grow in the Ubuntu world.

Response

Statistics from Google Trends suggest that since late 2005, Google has been receiving increasingly more searches for Ubuntu than for other popular Linux distributions. The Ubuntu page on DistroWatch has been the most frequently accessed of a comprehensive list of Linux distributions for more than a year. Ubuntu was awarded the Reader Award for best Linux distribution at the 2005 LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in London. It has been favourably reviewed in online and print publications. At Debconf 6 in May 2006, Mark Shuttleworth stated that "about 6 million Breezy CDs" had been distributed through Ubuntu's ShipIt program. Many reviewers of Ubuntu point out a main part of Ubuntu's success is its community. Ubuntu was voted distribution of 2006 on LinuxQuestions.org.

The French Parliament has decided to switch to Ubuntu in June 2007.

Ubuntu and Canonical have received some criticism from the free software community for the decision to include a larger number of proprietary drivers in the default installation for version 7.04, and as a result have decided to make these drivers optional. Ubuntu has also received criticism from the Debian community, citing that Ubuntu developers have forked the OS significantly enough to cause a break between Debian and Ubuntu developers.

Further reading

• Hill, Benjamin Mako (2006). The Official Ubuntu Book. U.S.: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-243594-2. 
• Thomas, K. (2007). Beginning Ubuntu Linux, Second Edition. U.S.: Apress. ISBN 1-590-59820-2. 
• Oxer, Jonathan (2006). Ubuntu Hacks. U.S.: O'Reilly Media. ISBN 0-596-52720-9. 
• Gagne, M. (2007). Moving to Ubuntu Linux. U.S.: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-321-42722-X. 
• Hudson, A. (2006). Ubuntu Unleashed. UK.: SAMS. ISBN 0-672-32909-3. 

External links

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• Ubuntu - Official website of the main distribution
• Peek Into Ubuntu - Movie showing some aspects of Ubuntu (Ogg Theora format/codec - How to play Ogg Theora).
• Πρότυπο:OSDir
• Ubuntu στο DistroWatch