Is Ubuntu the way forward for Linux?

During the last three years Ubuntu has sprung from nothing to become the most popular desktop distribution of Linux. There are good reasons for Ubuntu's success. Ubuntu is firmly rooted in the Linux developer and user communities, based on Debian, the classic Linux community distribution, and employs some of the key Debian developers. Ubuntu is clean and uncomplicated which makes it attractive to entry level users, without sacrificing the traditional Debian virtues of stability, flexibility and configurability, which has made it an enticing proposition for developers.

The logical next step for Canonical, the holding company for Ubuntu, has been to capitalise on this popularity by making advances into commercial markets, offering industrial strength training and support to Linux users, and establishing partnerships with Dell and Sun to provide pre-installed Ubuntu systems.

Out of Africa

Ubuntu grew out of founder Mark Shuttleworth's ambition to promote education and the use of free software in his native South Africa. Shuttleworth founded Thawte Consulting, the internet certificate authority, when he was still a student, and sold it to VeriSign in December 1999, for approximately $575 million (£287.5 million). In April 2002 he became "the first African in space", which he described as being "the most challenging and exciting project any geek could wish for". He was a member of the crew of Soyuz TM-34, which was launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan and docked with the International Space Station two days later.

Shuttleworth spent eight days on the space station before returning to earth and devoting his considerable energies to running Cannonical, the holding company for Ubuntu, HBD (Here Be Dragons) Venture Capital, the investment company he established to fund innovation in Southern Africa, and The Shuttleworth Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to social innovation and education (usually through the implementation of free and open source software) in Southern Africa, which he intends "to continue to be a catalyst for innovative projects in social areas."

During the nineties Shuttleworth had participated in the development of Debian GNU/Linux, and it followed that he should sponsor the first release of Ubuntu in October 2005, with the purpose of distributing a commercially accessible version of Debian. The name, Ubuntu, derives from an ancient African word from the Zulu and Xhosa languages which is not easily translatable, but means something like "humanity towards others."

For Shuttleworth the attractions of Linux were obvious: "Free software brings a number of huge advantages. First, newly acquired skills can flow freely along with the tools themselves. So we can teach someone to use Linux and OpenOffice, and then they can take that software home and teach someone else, who can copy the software and take it to their business where they can teach someone else... so we see very rapid transfer of skills with software libre. Second, with free software people have the right to modify it. And this allows the software to be customised for markets that are not large enough to attract the attention of a company like Microsoft. So, for example, the Ubuntu desktop is being translated into many more languages than Microsoft Windows. This means that more people can use the desktop computer in their native language, which again lowers the barriers for technology adoption."

He also maintains that "Software Libre provides the very best IT platform for education. Not only do you have thousands of tools covering almost every area of academic interest, but you also have the ability to study the tools themselves. This means that a student with an interest in, say, astronomy, can find software that supports her interest, and then analyse the software itself. She might improve the software and make those improvements available, or just use that right as an opportunity to deepen her understanding of the subject matter," thus giving access to technical knowledge in areas that wouldn't otherwise be as readily available.