We got a reason to celebrate! Happy 15th Birthday, Ubuntu!
Ubuntu, named after the African philosophy of ubuntu (translated as “humanity to others” by some, and “I am what I am because of who we all are” by other), plans to celebrate its 15th birthday three days early this year with the official release of Ubuntu 19.10 ‘Eoan Ermine’ this Thursday, October 17th, 2019, almost 15 years to the day that Ubuntu 4.10 ‘Warty Warthog’ debuted on October 20, 2004.
Original Ubuntu 4.10 “Warty Warthog” ShipIt CDs
Ubuntu has come a long way since its ‘Warty Warthog’ days. The distro is by far the most popular Linux flavor in the market right now. According to W3Techs.com, Ubuntu leads the pack with 37.4% of the market, while Debian is a close second at 21.2%.
This is a far cry from the 8.9% popularity that Ubuntu garnered when W3Techs.com first began tracking such data in January 2010. Ubuntu was the 5th most popular Linux distro back then, behind Debian, CentOS, Red Hat, and Fedora, respectively.
Not only is Ubuntu the favorite of many users, but it is also now in the workplace as well, World-wide. Many companies and individuals choose Ubuntu as their distro of choice. The top users of Ubuntu reside in the United States. However, there are also a significant number of Ubuntu users in the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, India, and the Netherlands.
Since its birth almost 14 years ago, Ubuntu has spawned many successful forks such as Linux Mint, elementary OS, Zorin OS, Pop!_OS, and KDE neon. This list does not even include some of Ubuntu’s derivatives, including Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, and Ubuntu Budgie.
The imminent official release of Ubuntu 19.10 ‘Eoan Ermine’ includes a multitude of changes, as reported earlier this month in our Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine) Beta Installation and Overview. These include:
- Gnome updated to v3.34
- Updates and Improvements to the Snap Package Distribution System
- Improved Yaru GTK Theme
- Linux Kernel Updated to v5.3
- GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Updated to v9
- Python Updated to v3.7
- Golang Updated to v1.12
- OpenJDK Updated v11
- Option to Install Experimental ZFS File System
- NVIDIA Drivers Include on ISO
- Flicker-Free Boot (for Intel Users)
Happy Birthday, Ubuntu (October 20)!
Although we are days away for the official release of ‘Eoan Ermine,’ the Ubuntu Team at Canonical is already hard at work on the next version. Ubuntu 20.04 (codename TBD) is scheduled for release on April 2020.
However, we at FOSS Linux wish the Ubuntu developers to pause and celebrate the 15th birthday of their wondrous distro. Undoubtedly, Ubuntu is used by Linux newbie and still enjoyed as the ‘go-to’ distro by many a Linux power user, alike.
