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74.

A brief history of Ubuntu

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Ubuntu!history of|(

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Ubuntu was conceived in 2004 by \Index[Shuttleworth, Mark]{Mark Shuttleworth}, a successful South African entrepreneur, and his company \Index[Canonical]{\gls{Canonical}}. \marginnote{Canonical is the company that provides financial and technical support for Ubuntu. It has employees based around the world who work on developing and improving the operating system, as well as reviewing work submitted by volunteer contributors. To learn more about Canonical, go to \url{http://www.canonical.com}.} Shuttleworth recognized the power of Linux and open source, but was also aware of weaknesses that prevented mainstream use.

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\Index[Shuttleworth, Mark]{Shuttleworth} set out with clear intentions to address these weaknesses and create a system that was easy to use, completely free (see \chaplink{ch:learning-more} for the complete definition of ``free''), and could compete with other mainstream operating systems. With the \Index{Debian} system as a base, \Index[Shuttleworth, Mark]{Shuttleworth} began to build Ubuntu. Using his own funds at first, installation \acronym{CD}s were pressed and shipped worldwide at no cost to the end user. Ubuntu spread quickly, the size of the community rapidly increased, and it soon became the most popular Linux \gls{distribution} available.

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With more people working on the project than ever before, Ubuntu continues to see improvement to its core features and hardware support, and has gained the attention of large organizations worldwide. For example, in 2007, \Index{Dell} began a collaboration with \Index{Canonical} to sell computers with Ubuntu preinstalled. Additionally, in 2005, the French Police began to transition their entire computer infrastructure to a variant of Ubuntu\dash a process which has reportedly saved them ``millions of euros'' in licensing fees for Microsoft Windows. By the year 2012, the French Police anticipates that all of their computers will be running Ubuntu. \Index{Canonical} profits from this arrangement by providing technical support and custom-built software.

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\marginnote{For information on Ubuntu Server Edition, and how you can use it in your company, visit \url{http://www.ubuntu.com/server/features}.} While large organizations often find it useful to pay for support services, \Index[Shuttleworth, Mark]{Shuttleworth} has promised that the Ubuntu desktop system will always be free. As of 2010, Ubuntu is installed on nearly 2\% of the world's computers. This equates to millions of users worldwide, and is growing each year.

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Ubuntu!history of|)

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What is Linux?

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Linux|(

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Ubuntu is built on the foundation of Linux, which is a member of the \Index{Unix} family. \Index{Unix} is one of the oldest types of operating systems and has provided reliability and security in professional applications for almost half a century. Many servers around the world that store data for popular websites (such as YouTube and Google) run some variant of a \Index{Unix} system. The Linux \Index{kernel} is best described as the core, or almost the brain, of the operating system.