Brief: On the occasion of Ubuntu’s 15th birthday, I present you 11 unknown facts about Ubuntu.
World’s most widely used Linux distribution, Ubuntu, is turning 15 today. It has been a long but wonderful journey.
15 years back, Linux was a geeks only domain. It was back in the year 2004 when a South African astronaut Mark Shuttleworth started this project to make “Linux for human being”. And since then, the world of Linux has changed forever.
During the last 15 years, Ubuntu made Linux easier with a number of “innovation” (or better implementation). Easy to use graphical installer, Wubi installer, App Stores and what not. Ubuntu has given a number of interesting things to Linux community.
But I am not going to bore you with these things. I would rather list 11 facts of Ubuntu which you would be amazed to know.
11 interesting facts about Ubuntu Linux
Unlike the timeline of 25 years of Linux, these facts are not in a chronological order. I find these facts amusing and I hope that you would too. You might know some of the facts already but no harm in reading them again, isn’t it?
- One of the fastest supercomputer runs the Chinese version of Ubuntu. Moreover, Linux runs on 100% of the top 500 fastest supercomputers.
- Ubuntu is an African word, or rather a philosophy, which means “I am what I am because of who we all are”. Its logo is Circle of Friends which is a representation of three people holding arms, representing a community that supports each other.
- As per Distrowatch, there are more than 75 active Linux distributions that are based on Ubuntu. While you are reading this – there could be more potential additions. You can read about some less known Ubuntu-based Linux distributions as well (if you’re curious).
- Ubuntu follows a strict development schedule. It releases a new stable version every six months, in April and in October. In the last 25 stable releases, only one release got delayed. It was Ubuntu 6.06 which was released in June rather than in April.
- Ubuntu 6.06.2 was the first ever LTS (long-term support) release.
- Each Ubuntu release has a code name made up of two words starting with the same alphabet. These alphabets are incremented in each release. The first word of the code name is an adjective and the second word, an endangered species or a mythical character. Read more about Ubuntu release schedule, version name, and codenames.
- Ubuntu is the world’s most popular cloud operating system. No wonder, Microsoft partnered with Canonical (Ubuntu’s parent company) for Microsoft’s own cloud system.
- A number of big enterprises use Ubuntu including Uber and Lyft. Search engine giant Google had its own custom Ubuntu called Goobuntu – which is now replaced by gLinux.
- Ubuntu is the most used operating system on web servers. Over 20% of the web runs on Ubuntu.
- French Police migrated over 80,000 desktops to Ubuntu from Windows and saved over 2 million euro. This was the biggest Ubuntu desktop migration.
- There are over a billion devices running Ubuntu, claims Canonical.
Want more facts about Ubuntu Linux and how it is impacting the technical world, watch this video on our YouTube channel:
I hope you liked these facts about Ubuntu Linux. If you have more to add in this list, feel free to use the comment section below. Also, if you liked the article, please share it on social media :)
