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Ubuntu Linux

'Canonical Turns 20: Shaping the Ubuntu Linux World' (zdnet.com) 38

Posted by EditorDavid from the affirming-of-others dept.
"2004 was already an eventful year for Linux," writes ZDNet's Jack Wallen. "As I reported at the time, SCO was trying to drive Linux out of business. Red Hat was abandoning Linux end-user fans for enterprise customers by closing down Red Hat Linux 9 and launching the business-friendly Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Oh, and South African tech millionaire and astronaut Mark Shuttleworth [also a Debian Linux developer] launched Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's parent company.

"Little did I — or anyone else — suspect that Canonical would become one of the world's major Linux companies."

Mark Shuttleworth answered questions from Slashdot reader in 2005 and again in 2012. And this year, Canonical celebrates its 20th anniversary. ZDNet reports: Canonical's purpose, from the beginning, was to support and share free software and open-source software... Then, as now, Ubuntu was based on Debian Linux. Unlike Debian, which never met a delivery deadline it couldn't miss, Ubuntu was set to be updated to the latest desktop, kernel, and infrastructure with a new release every six months. Canonical has kept to that cadence — except for the Ubuntu 6.06 release — for 20 years now...

Released in October 2004, Ubuntu Linux quickly became synonymous with ease of use, stability, and security, bridging the gap between the power of Linux and the usability demanded by end users. The early years of Canonical were marked by rapid innovation and community building. The Ubuntu community, a vibrant and passionate group of developers and users, became the heart and soul of the project. Forums, wikis, and IRC channels buzzed with activity as people from all over the world came together to contribute code, report bugs, write documentation, and support each other....

Canonical's influence extends beyond the desktop. Ubuntu Linux, for example, is the number one cloud operating system. Ubuntu started as a community desktop distribution, but it's become a major enterprise Linux power [also widely use as a server and Internet of Things operating system.]
The article notes Canonical's 2011 creation of the Unity desktop. ("While Ubuntu Unity still lives on — open-source projects have nine lives — it's now a sideline. Ubuntu renewed its commitment to the GNOME desktop...")

But the article also argues that "2016, on the other hand, saw the emergence of Ubuntu Snap, a containerized way to install software, which --along with its rival Red Hat's Flatpak — is helping Linux gain some desktop popularity."
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'Canonical Turns 20: Shaping the Ubuntu Linux World' More

'Canonical Turns 20: Shaping the Ubuntu Linux World'

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  • Thank you. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ChunderDownunder ( 709234 ) on Saturday March 09, 2024 @06:13PM (#64303273)

    The kickstart Shuttleworth did was the free CD mailout to most anywhere on the planet when much of the world was still on dialup or ADSL. Prior to that, local companies with a CD burner would charge $10 or so to mail out a CD in a padded envelope.

    Some missteps along the way, notably trying to compete with Red Hat and Gnome with Unity and launching a phone platform without a sustainable business model (Kudos to the UB Touch community for keeping that dream going).

    But they seem to be finding their niche in the cloud by pairing with the evil empire, MS. :) Management at the company I work for went with Ubuntu hosted in Azure, ha ha the worst of both worlds. But no, it ain't too shabby with 24/7 support and certainly not like the Ballmer era.

    I have since migrated upstream to using Debian for personal use but Ubuntu was part of that journey. Mainly because I have no need in the articles' summary of snap or flatpak as an alternative to the native .deb and the Debian packages are sufficient for my needs without a 'spin' such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Mint or whatever the current flavour of the month derivative is.

    • I once applied to work for Canonical. Prior to offering an interview, they insisted I take the computer version of something called the Thomas International General Intelligence Assessment.

      The problem with the computer version of the test is that they show you an image of something for a few moments, then they remove it from the screen and ask you questions about what you saw. If you're Aphantasic, as I am, the test is essentially impossible. I don't have a visual memory. My brain isn't wired that way. Remo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dskoll ( 99328 )

        I went through the entire Canonical job application process. It's utter bullshit. A couple of dumb online tests, writing a f***g 20+-page essay, endless rounds of interviews, and then an interview with His Nibs, Mark Shuttleworth. Shuttleworth immediately hated me and I knew 5 seconds in I wasn't getting the job. I found him unbelievably rude and aggressive.

        My impression after running this gauntlet was that Canonical is a deeply dysfunctional workplace. I ended up taking a different (really fantastic

        • I once did an interview with His Nibs Mother.

          She was rude and aggressive (must run in the family, eh?) but she sure was good at one thing ... "nudge nudge wink wink"

        • Then I guess I'm glad I refused the Thomas test and walked away.

          I have a theory: if a company is arbitrarily rigid about something that's completely in their control, they'll be arbitrarily rigid about many things. That rigidity makes for an unpleasant workplace. So, during the application process it's worth identifying one thing about which they express rigidity and challenging them to modify it.

          Before the pandemic, my test was usually to ask for a private office. Four walls and a door. They don't have to

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      One really needs to consider how prevalent Ubuntu is these days. You ask anyone about Linux and Ubuntu is pretty much the first answer.

      When I started doing Linux develoopment, we used Red Hat pretty much across the board. This continued until my work on Linux stopped and I did Windows for a number of years. Then Linux work picked up again and instead of RedHat (which had turned into Fedora) it was Ubuntu.

      Now you go anywhere and chances are, the Linux install is some flavor of Ubuntu. It's become the "generi

  • The best thing that came out of Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday March 09, 2024 @06:46PM (#64303293)

    Is Linux Mint.

    So I guess in a weird sort of way, we have Canonical to thank for Mint.

    • Re:The best thing that came out of Ubuntu (Score:5, Informative)

      by Teckla ( 630646 ) on Saturday March 09, 2024 @07:33PM (#64303347)
      These days LMDE is also available (Linux Mint Debian Edition). No Ubuntu!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Striek ( 1811980 )

        Happy LMDE desktop user here of about five years now. It's great. The desktop is rock solid stable, works great with NVidia proprietary drivers, and Steam/Vulkan/etc run great, making even modern gaming an actual choice these days. I haven't used my physical Windows install in months, although I boot it up once a month or so to keep it up to date.

        That said, it does have a few drawbacks. Most notable is the lack of community support, or at least the difficulty in finding said support. Searching for technical

    • I both agree and disagree. Cinnamon is by FAR the best DE out there in my opinion, but I upgrade machines frequently and game with typically bleeding edge hardware. WIth Mint switching to LTS only, it pretty much screwed Mint from being able to support the newest hardware out there without jumping through serious hoops. Now that UbuntuCinnamon is a fully supported variant you get the beauty and usefulness of Cinnamon without being tied to an LTS edition, so you can get that bleeding edge hardware support fr

  • They did good... at first (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09, 2024 @06:47PM (#64303295)

    Ubuntu was awesome when it came on the scene. Debian was the only distribution with good package management and it was stagnating horribly. Packages were years out of date. New versions of Debian had release dates of "never".

    Then Ubuntu came along with standard release cycles, up-to-date packages, and fixes for outstanding issues. It was awesome for a long time and became THE go-to Linux distro.

    Then they went rogue. Developing their own crap, diverting resources from other areas, focusing on gathering user data, changing things in bad ways repeating the mistakes of RedHat. It was mostly OK though because you could simply turn off the spyware and install an alternate desktop like XFCE.

    But then they got worse, forcing things on users. Then snap, fucking snap. Something that sucks up resources even when you're not using it. It doesn't even do what it's suppose to because it runs mostly as root anyway, they already had a package manager! (flatpak is no better) Now it's installed by default and can't really be turned off.

    I was with Ubuntu since the beginning but some years ago I jumped off the sinking ship.

    • Ubuntu was awesome when it came on the scene. Debian was the only distribution with good package management

      well not quite, arch Linux and pacman had been available for 2 years before Ubuntu showed up.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xwin ( 848234 )
      Debian misnamed their release tracks. Testing is what everyone should be using but the name implies it is not stable. I think even Debian Unstable is very usable and not at all unstable. Ubuntu went off in a wrong direction with snap, and all custom development. But they do have a decent installer which mostly works.

    • Re:They did good... at first (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BeaverCleaver ( 673164 ) on Saturday March 09, 2024 @08:20PM (#64303413)

      But then they got worse, forcing things on users. Then snap, fucking snap. Something that sucks up resources even when you're not using it. It doesn't even do what it's suppose to because it runs mostly as root anyway, they already had a package manager! (flatpak is no better) Now it's installed by default and can't really be turned off.

      I was very happy when Linux Mint said they wouldn't include Snap. I'm far from a "power user" but even I don't see why we need Snap. It's easy to update by clicking on the "update" button. Surely that isn't too much to ask of a user?

      • For the unsupported home Ubuntu usr SNAP  contributes zero to usability. Sometime before v_18.x LTS Cannonical crapped-out of the home-user field. When I started with U_6.06 Linux was a pure pleasure even with CUPS running over & all that !  Now .. my last two  version  installs proved to be  a mess with disc corruption and obscure error messages.  UBUNTU ... we hardly knew ya .....   

      • I'm far from a "power user" but even I don't see why we need Snap.

        They were trying to get out of having to deal with building Firefox and GNOME along with the rest of the system. They largely succeeded, except that Firefox didn't integrate with the system well for several minor versions of the OS after they went to making it a snap. This irritated me enough to start looking at other options, and I went to vanilla Debian for a while, then I removed systemd, and then I went to Devuan as a way of avoiding having to tweak a whole bunch of things as a result of doing that.

        Toda

        • They were trying to get out of having to deal with building Firefox and GNOME along with the rest of the system. They largely succeeded, except that Firefox didn't integrate with the system well for several minor versions of the OS after they went to making it a snap. This irritated me enough to start looking at other options, and I went to vanilla Debian for a while, then I removed systemd, and then I went to Devuan as a way of avoiding having to tweak a whole bunch of things as a result of doing that.

          Today Firefox offers its own apt repo, so none of this effort is needed to avoid building it. Just use their repo!

          Thanks for the info.

    • >Developing their own crap,

      Oh no, change! Unity was a good idea and so was Upstart. It just turns out that systemd beat them out and Unity was a huge maintenance burden.

      >diverting resources from other areas,

      Example? Sometimes companies trying to advance the state of software adjust their projects

      >focusing on gathering user data

      Not to give the rest of the world a pass, but in a world where Instagram, Tiktok and Doubleclick exist, Ubuntu embedding (with user consent) online-unified search or opting-

      • No, Upstart wasn't a good idea. It died only because of its design and limitations it imposed. While Unity DE still is maintained, though not part of Ubuntu anymore.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dskoll ( 99328 )

        Canonical has a strong NIH mindset. Ever heard of Juju? No? Neither has anyone else. It's orchestration software created and maintained by Canonical because they don't want to standardize on anything else.

        Ever heard of Pebble? Nope, me neither. But apparently it's a daemon manager similar to supervisord or runit.

        Go on Canonical's github. There are lots of examples of this sort of thing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      The biggest attraction was how it automagically did hardware detection, also deb was a hell of a lot easier than what Red Hat offered, in the day 'dependency hell' was a real problem.
      Also, when Ubuntu came out there was choice of desktops.
      I still don't understand why they stopped officially supporting the Kubuntu version, it was and is the most flexible DE.
      The recent inclusion of Snap is another dubious move, sure you can work around it but just the idea is flawed.
      There are alternatives like Mint and es
    • In my experience, Mandrake (afterwards Mandriva and now Mageia) was just as easy and in 2001 when I wanted to have Audacity, the instructions for RedHat pointed to some rpm packages, for SuSE to some other, for Debian to some deb, and for Mandrake it just said to do, as root: urpmi audacity

      Which I did and it showed me the glory of a distribution with a broad repository (no, I'm not implying that the others didn't have Audacity in their repos, nor that they had smaller repos, I have no idea why the audacit

  • I came across Ubuntu at the 5.10 release and actually started using it as my everyday thing at 6.06 Previously had been on Windows 2000 on my very expensive Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook and then tried Suse. But Ubuntu 6.06 was great. Really well implemented and if you had a laptop with Intel graphics and wifi it did truly work out of the box, or near enough. The great benefit for me, personally, was that it gave me a Debian system which worked. So I learned some ins and outs of Debian. And 17 years later

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 4im ( 181450 )

      You've pretty much nailed it, I had a very similar experience. Slackware, SuSE, Debian, later RHEL and SLES at work and (K)ubuntu at home, with a number of other distros and systems tested/used for a while.

      Just the other day, I installed a VM with Ubuntu server... only to find quite a lot of stuff was put there as snaps. No thank you very much. I nuked the VM and went with good ol' Debian instead. Now, I'm still unhappy about their choice of init system, but so far I can deal with it... while eyeing Devuan.

  • My first experience with Ubuntu was when I installed it on a blue & white G3 Mac. I had a little experience with Yellow Dog linux but it didn't fully work on this Mac (don't remember the details) so I thought I'd try this Ubuntu thing I'd heard about. Easy install and everything worked - sound, video, all the rest. I was pretty happy with that setup.

    Geeze... that's been a wile ago...

  • I still have an official Ubuntu install disk, back before they lost their way. I use prefer Mint for Apt and Cinnamon.
  • In 2006 I was trying out Linux as another option to buying Windows. I started out with Mandriva One. It was really cool, but had a wonky work-a-round for my wifi connection at the time. Mandriva One really impressed me with many pieces, but the struggle with drivers was crazy.

    One day a friend told me about the Ubuntu CD program. I signed up for one (I think a 3 pack), version 6.06. It came in, I inserted the CD and booted and was on the Internet like immediately. Turned out it had connected to a ne

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