Quick: what multisyllable word is associated with the spirit of South Africa? No, it’s not vulvuzela, that love-it-or-hate-it horn that provided a soundtrack for the World Cup, but “ubuntu,” a Bantu term for “humanity to others.” Ubuntu is also the name of — and philosophy behind — the most popular desktop variant of the Linux operating system.
inux was originally developed by a Finnish programmer named Linus Tovalds and is based on UNIX, the open source operating system that’s been used on mainframes and minicomputers for decades (Linux = Linus + Unix). It’s used in web servers, appliances, phones and cars, and runs both Google and Wikipedia. In the consumer operating system market though, it’s occupied a perennial third place, with only two percent of the market share for desktop operating systems.
Ubuntu was first released six years ago and has quickly become the most popular Linux distribution for personal computers. It’s maintained by a company called Canonical Ltd., a South African company which makes money by installing and servicing Ubuntu and Ubuntu-related software for large organizations.
According to the Canonical website, “Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It also means ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu operating system brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers.
Simon Fraser University computer scientist Toby Donaldson says Ubuntu is popular because, unlike some other versions of Linux, it’s designed to be usable “out of the box” by ordinary computer users who are used to the level of user-friendliness you find in Windows and the Mac world. Ubuntu users, he says, are very enthusiastic about the software. “I think the passion comes from the fact that many of the users are early adopters with a pioneering spirit. Plus, since Linux is a community project and not the product of a particular company, the evangelists for it tend to be the users.”
One of those evangelists is Randall Ross, founder of the ubuntu vancouver loco group.
“I knew there must be hundreds (if not thousands) of Ubuntu users across Vancouver,” Ross says. “I envisioned all the fun we could have and positive energy we could build if I could somehow bring them all together. I also envisioned the buzz that could be created if people started seeing large numbers of people meeting because they all get Ubuntu. My ‘aha’ moment was when I realized that I could build an Ubuntu ecosystem where none existed before, catalyzing Ubuntu adoption. Good things can follow from that.
Source:-http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/megabytes/2010/07/10/ubuntu-computer-operating-system-built-around-community
