UBUNTU

HISTORY OF UBUNTU

Born in April 2004 and at just under two years old at the time of this writing, a history of Ubuntu may seem premature. However, the last two years have been full ones for Ubuntu. With its explosive growth, it is difficult even for those involved most closely with the project to track and record some of the high points. Importantly, there are some key figures whose own history must be given to fully understand Ubuntu. This brief summary tries to quickly give you the high points of Ubuntu's history to date and the necessary background knowledge to understand where Ubuntu comes from.

Mark Shuttleworth

No history of Ubuntu can call itself complete without a history of Mark Shuttleworth. Shuttleworth is, undeniably, the most visible and important person in Ubuntu. More important from the point of view of history, Shuttleworth is also the originator and initiator of the project—he made the snowball that would eventually roll on and grow to become the Ubuntu project.
Shuttleworth was born in 1973 in Welkom, Free State in South Africa. He attended Diocesan College and obtained a business science degree in finance and information systems at the University of Cape Town. During this period, he was an avid computer hobbyist and became involved with the free and Open Source software community. He was at least marginally involved in both the Apache project and the Debian project and was the first person to upload the Apache Web server, perhaps the single most important piece of server software on GNU/Linux platforms, into the Debian project's archives.
In addition to space exploration and a less-impressive jaunt to Antarctica, Shuttleworth played an active role as both a philanthropist and a venture capitalist. In 2001, Shuttleworth founded the Shuttleworth Foundation (TSF)—a nonprofit organization based in South Africa. The foundation was chartered to fund, develop, and drive social innovation in the field of education. Of course, the means by which TSF attempts to achieve these goals frequently involved free software. Through these projects, the organization has been one of the most visible proponents of free and Open Source software in South Africa and even the world. In the venture capital area, Shuttleworth worked to foster research, development, and entrepreneurship in South Africa with strategic injections of cash into start-ups through a new venture capital firm called HBD—an acronym that stood for "Here Be Dragons." During this period, Shuttleworth was busy brainstorming his next big project—the project that would eventually become Ubuntu.

The Warthogs

There has been no lack of projects attempting to wrap GNU, Linux, and other pieces of free and Open Source software into a neat, workable, and user-friendly package. Mark Shuttleworth, like many other people, believed that the philosophical and pragmatic benefits offered by free software put it on a course for widespread success. That said, none of the offerings were particularly impressive. Something was missing from all of them. Shuttleworth saw this as an opportunity. If someone could build the great free software distribution that helped push GNU/Linux into the mainstream, he would come to occupy a position of strategic importance.
The list is now a familiar list of features to most Ubuntu users. Many of these traits will be covered in more depth later in this chapter. The group wanted

• Predictable and frequent release cycles
• A strong focus on localization and accessibility
• A strong focus on ease of use and user-friendliness on the desktop
• A strong focus on Python as the single programming language through which the entire system can be built and expanded
• A community-driven approach that worked with existing free software projects and a method by which the groups give back as they go—not just at the time of release
• A new set of tools designed around the process of building distributions that allowed developers to work within an ecosystem of different projects and that allowed users to give back in whatever way they could.

What Does Ubuntu Mean?

At this point, the Warthogs had a great team, a set of goals, and a decent idea of how to achieve most of them. The team did not, on the other hand, have a name for their project. Shuttleworth argued strongly that they should call the project "Ubuntu."
Ubuntu is a concept and a term from several South African languages, including Zulu and Xhosa. It refers to a South African ideology or ethic that, while difficult to express in English, might roughly be translated as "humanity toward others," or "I am because we are." Others have described ubuntu as "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity." The famous South African human rights champion Archbishop Desmond Tutu explained ubuntu in this way:
Ubuntu played an important role as a founding principle in post-apartheid South Africa and remains a concept familiar to most South Africans today.

Creating Canonical

With time, the company was named Canonical. The name was a nod to the project's optimistic goals of becoming the canonical place for services and support for free and Open Source software and for Ubuntu in particular. "Canonical" of course, refers to something that is accepted as authoritative. It is a common word in the computer programmer lexicon. It's important to note that being "canonical" is like being standard—it is not coercive. Unlike holding a monopoly, becoming the canonical location for something implies a similar sort of success—but never one that cannot be undone, and never one that is exclusive. Other companies will support Ubuntu and build operating systems based on it—but as long as Canonical is doing a good job, its role will remain central.

Kubuntu

 Kubuntu(/kuːˈbuːntuː/ koo-BOON-too) is an official derivative of the Ubuntu operating system which uses the KDE Plasma Desktop instead of the Unity graphical environment. As part of the Ubuntu project, Kubuntu uses the same underlying systems, every package in Kubuntu shares the same repositories as Ubuntu,^[3] and it is released regularly on the same schedule as Ubuntu.^[4] It is possible to install both the KDE Plasma Desktop (kubuntu-desktop) as well as the Unity desktop (ubuntu-desktop) on the same machine.
Kubuntu was sponsored by Canonical Ltd. until 2012, and thereafter by Blue Systems. During the changeover Kubuntu retained use of Ubuntu project servers and existing developers

 MEANING OF THE  NAME KUBUNTU

"Kubuntu" means "towards humanity" in Bemba, and is derived from ubuntu ("humanity"). The K at the beginning represents the KDE community on whose platform Kubuntu is built. By coincidence, Kubuntu also means "free" in Kirundi.^[6]
“Kubuntu” is a registered trademark held by Canonical.

Software Ubuntu Kubuntu Kernel & Core Linux Kernel & Ubuntu Core Graphics X.Org Server Sound PulseAudio Multimedia GStreamer Desktop Unity Plasma Desktop Primary Toolkit GTK+, Nux & Qt Qt Browser Firefox Rekonq Office LibreOffice Email & PIM Thunderbird Kontact