Today is Ubuntu's 20th Anniversary

I&#x27;m sure lots of people have lots of thoughts on them, but personally I&#x27;d like to give a shout out to Canonical. At least from my perspective in the early days of DigitalOcean the few interactions I did have with them were super positive, they seemed to really want us to win. I&#x27;ll always have a soft spot Ubuntu and as far as community stewards go, on average Mark Shuttleworth has been good. Thanks Ubuntu Community! Thanks Mark! Thanks Canonical!<p>To me Ubuntu is what Mandrake never became.

I believe Ubuntu has been a positive for the Linux community. While there definitely were distributions before Ubuntu that focused on the user experience (Mandrake Linux and Lindows&#x2F;Linspire come to mind), there are many people whose first experience with desktop Linux was through Ubuntu. Although I personally prefer FreeBSD for my Unix needs and Debian if I need actual Linux, Ubuntu is the distribution I recommend to those who are coming from Windows or macOS who want to try out desktop Linux. The last few times I used Ubuntu, whether it&#x27;s on actual hardware or inside a VM, it seems to be reasonably simple to install, has sensible defaults, and supports a wide range of hardware.

Seems like everyone loves to hate Ubuntu lately. From the Amazon search icon years ago, to Snaps, Mir, &quot;pro&quot; updates (which I don&#x27;t get the backlash about..).<p>But man, I started using this distro 18 years ago? And I still use it today. I can tell you, it&#x27;s gotten more usable, more stable, and easier to install, without (imo) sacrificing any of what we love about Linux systems. If you hate snaps you can just remove them.<p>It&#x27;s an OS I can easily recommend to beginners who want to dip their toes in the Linux world. They can install it without any help.<p>And I get that so much is a testament to the software Ubuntu uses getting better. But it brings it all together in such a great way.<p>I used Arch Linux for a few years. But I didn&#x27;t really like having to check message boards for any breaking changes before updating lest my system become unusable... As a busy professional and dad, I don&#x27;t see myself switching off of Ubuntu anytime soon.

Once long ago our family Windows computer had a motherboard failure and I convinced my parents to buy just a replacement motherboard in the right shape (maybe processor as well, now that I think about it), and we tried to fix it. While the data on the disk was recovered, we couldn’t get Windows to recognize this as the “same device” so we had to buy a new license. Instead I installed Ubuntu and casually taught my mom how to use it - I figured it was worth a try before buying a license.<p>She had no problems whatsoever using it for all of her work and barely noticed the change, and it brought new life to a computer that would have almost certainly ended up in a landfill 7 years early.<p>Given the hard work of the Wine&#x2F;Proton developers (and many, many others) I can only imagine the situation is even better now.

Ubuntu did a lot for the ease-of-access of Linux, and was the gateway for a lot of us.<p>In the mid-2000s, getting professionally packaged CDs, one for Live Ubuntu and one for installation, with clear instructions, and having that load into an easy to use (relatively, for the time) OS installer, made the prospect of trying out Linux so much easier and more appealing, compared to downloading it on a torrent or trying to find a friend to copy it from. That was right away a positive first impression of Linux, and probably played a part in me continuing to try it out despite many kernel panics in the early days, and then eventually moving to Linux entirely.<p>And along the way, I&#x27;ve been able to help out many others get into Linux and have an easier time of it as well. None of this might have happened if not for Ubuntu&#x27;s attitude of actively reaching out to help new users, and the end products of that.

I ordered many CDs of Ubuntu from 2005 until they don&#x27;t send it anymore. For a middle schooler, getting a package that cool from abroad is something to be proud of. Thanks Ubuntu!

Congrats Ubuntu!<p>Ubuntu was a big factor in me getting into Linux as a kid in India. In an era where the only internet we had was expensive dial-up, Ubuntu shipping CDs all the way here was such a nice act of kindness!<p>I was even able to evangelize people around me into Linux, since I was able to give away CDs.

Maybe ten something years ago my dad got a free Ubuntu boot disk somewhere. Curious how he got it because he doesn&#x27;t work with computers at all lol, but he&#x27;s a personable person and he meets a lot of people. Knowing I was into computers and programming he gave me the disk. He told me how he loved what &quot;ubuntu&quot; meant: &quot;I am because we are&quot;. Ubuntu was my first distro and I am grateful for that.

I just Googled, Warty Warthog was released October 2004. I ordered a free CD of this to my house, as a teen, and installed it — wiping Windows — without a second thought. What followed, after feverishly owning up to breaking the machine (the DSL modem only worked with Windows), was truly the start of my future in technology, computers and software. Ubuntu has stayed constant with me as many, many things have changed over these two decades.

This makes me feel my age... I ordered and got that free CD, and &quot;tested&quot; it on my windows XP laptop, with a dual boot, because this is just a test, right? I never booted XP again on that laptop, or any other since. For the past 3-4 years I&#x27;ve been planning to get off Ubuntu and move to Arch, but I keep postponing because everything just works, and I can&#x27;t risk downtime due to something not working as I&#x27;m used to.

NixOS really makes Ubuntu (and all the other distros) feel old though. I mean I _love_ Ubuntu, and I’ve used it faithfully for 12 years, but once you get used to Nix, and granted, it’s tough, but it’s just an absolute revelation in terms of confidence in one’s operating system, freedom to use so much more software, and not be worried about even very advanced configs. I could never go back.

I still have my official 4.10 Live CD. As a total oblivious person about the Linux world back then that was one of the biggest technology epiphany for me. Such a small thing yet it was just so mind blowing to run a full functioning OS from a disk that works everywhere (almost) in a &quot;non-destructive&quot; way. I&#x27;ve felt like a king to have my own OS with my own stuff on the locked down school computers. It was like finally I could do everything and it was thanks to Ubuntu<p>(even though I know since that Ubuntu wasn&#x27;t the first Live distro at all)

Ubuntu has been my favorite distro since I first tried it from one of the CDs ages ago. It was probably 5.04 or 6.06. I&#x27;ve used it off and on since then on desktops and servers. Since the middle of 2022 I started using it in place of Windows for PC gaming and it&#x27;s been (mostly) a dream come true - I can finally use a reasonable OS to run my games.<p>It&#x27;s sad to see so many Linux people try to tear Ubuntu&#x2F;Canonical down over minor technical complaints (snaps are fine, Unity was good) since they&#x27;ve done so much for Desktop Linux in particular. I hope the distro will keep going strong for another 20 years as I have no desire to switch to another.

Ubuntu was really revolutionary and helped me bring hundreds or maybe thousands of people to Linux years ago. I wish they would still have the power to push things further and do the same to mobile.

I&#x27;ve used Ubuntu on servers for probably the last twelve or so years. Mostly the reason is that it&#x27;s the path of the least resistance. Most software that has installation documentation for Linux will document Ubuntu first. Maybe Red Hat and then you are on your own. So, getting stuff running on it tends to be well documented, well supported, etc.<p>For personal use, I&#x27;ve moved away from it. I&#x27;ve had a Manjaro laptop for a few years now for some light gaming on Steam, which works great. I picked an Arch based distro because that&#x27;s what Steam uses for the Steam Deck.<p>IMHO, Ubuntu should move to rolling releases if they want to stay relevant. It doesn&#x27;t make sense to run years out of date kernels and software packages these days. Especially if you want to run e.g. games and benefit from driver upgrades. And the bi-annual upgrade cycle just creates a lot of hassle for users. I know lots of Ubuntu users that routinely wipe their laptop because it&#x27;s just easier than upgrading. Not a thing with Manjaro. I installed it nearly three years ago and it&#x27;s fully up to date. And there seems to be a steady flow of kernel work that has gradually improved support for the hardware I have. I wouldn&#x27;t want to miss out on that.<p>Now that Arch has a more usable installer, I might move over to that but I&#x27;m not in a hurry. Three years ago installing Arch was a 50 step process that was a bit challenging as it involved fiddling with boot loaders and what not just to get it to boot to a cli with a working network connection (which requires the right kernel modules to be there). Manjaro has a nice live CD that sort of makes that a whole lot easier. That sort of makes it the Ubuntu equivalent for Arch, I guess.

Apply for a job at canonical and get back to me.

I&#x27;ve been using LTS releases for just about everything since 10.04. It&#x27;s been very stable; the transition through all the init systems wasn&#x27;t that fun (sysv, upstart, systemd), but it&#x27;s mostly just always worked. And it&#x27;s sorta the default for 3rd party software to support first. Congrats to the team.

Ubuntu!<p>SchoolTool also started 20 years ago. Then Open edX, and it looks like e.g. Canvas for LMS these days.<p>To run an Ubuntu container with podman:<p><pre><code> apt-get install -y podman distrobox podman run --rm --it docker.io&#x2F;ubuntu:24.04 bash --login podman run --rm --it docker.io&#x2F;ubuntu:24.10 bash --login </code></pre> GitHub Codespaces are Ubuntu devcontainers (codespaces-linux)<p>Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) installs Ubuntu (otherwise there&#x27;s GitBash and podman-desktop for over there)<p>The jupyter&#x2F;docker-stacks containers build FROM Ubuntu:24.04 LTS: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jupyter&#x2F;docker-stacks&#x2F;blob&#x2F;main&#x2F;images&#x2F;docker-stacks-foundation&#x2F;Dockerfile">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;jupyter&#x2F;docker-stacks&#x2F;blob&#x2F;main&#x2F;images&#x2F;do...</a> :<p><pre><code> docker run -p 10000:8888 quay.io&#x2F;jupyter&#x2F;scipy-notebook:2024-10-07</code></pre>

I remember getting their free cds when I was in college. At the time I was a user of Conectiva Linux with widowmaker Desktop. Conectiva would later fuse with a french company and became Mandriva.<p>After sufering a couple of years in slack, I tried ubuntu for the first time and was my go to distro until I foun Fedora. And them I never really leave Fedora, but I still try new Ubuntu and arch from times to times.<p>I do ernjoy how easy they make everything, and while I understand that people dont like Snaps, they do work well enough for the use I do of a linux desktop. I also run Ubuntu Server on my home server.

I remember 2005 when I ordered the Ubuntu CD to the middle of nowhere with just a dial up connection and receiving a package from UK felt like magic. It was my first hands-on experience with GNU&#x2F;Linux.<p>Time flies. Things change. &quot;The year of Linux on the desktop&quot; is always next year. I am grateful to Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth for all their work that was done back then. For a lot of people, Ubuntu became their entrypoint to the world of open source, tinkering and Linux ecosystem.

Installed Ubuntu LTS on some family members PCs who use it for web browsing and Libre Office, and they are so happy, they got no issues, and I&#x27;m chill because I know they will not get OS ads, auto installed apps, or crap like that. Thanks Canonical. What a solid and user friendly OS.<p>Will have to go to their homes to change Ublock Origin for the lite version since they use Chrome tho. I think the developer should choose to update the V2 with the V3 on the Chrome Store.

Ubuntu was my first experience with linux and my first introduction to free software from around 2011, when I was 13. It changed the game for me, I ended up succeeding in my career so far quite significantly from the Ubuntu introduction to computing<p>I do wish the canonical hiring process was less goofy, as I think I&#x27;m qualified for roles there but I ended the process early years ago and now I don&#x27;t seem to be under consideration since

Ubuntu was a godsend when it came out. Linux &quot;just worked&quot; on most hardware out of the box (well, I never did get my wifi driver working, but it was amazing that everything ELSE worked).<p>Since then, Ubuntu&#x27;s role in the Linux community has changed. I don&#x27;t think anyone would seriously recommend Ubuntu to a newbie, when there are so many better options. (And that&#x27;s okay, things are allowed to change).

Can’t believe it.<p>I remember the live cds and install cds that were free to order. Brought life back to an old g3 iMac and it taught me much about grub bootloader to dual boot. Was also an early teen too.<p>20 years later and I knew I’ll be in tech. I’m 50&#x2F;50 about that.<p>My first distributor was either mandrake or suse. But this was the one I used the most. The other exciting thing at the time was knoppix.

I dislike Ubuntu, but I&#x27;m glad it exists. It gives more normie-adjacent people an alternative to frickin&#x27; Windows. And it gives the &quot;year of the Linux desktop&quot; crowd a project to base their efforts on leaving me in peace with my command-line-heavy, systemd-free, GNOME-free distros.

I owe Canonical a lot. I don&#x27;t remember exactly if I had a metered connection when they started sending out CDs, but even if we already upgraded to an unmetered connection, downloading a whole CD would not have been practical.<p>Was one of the first times to try a usable Linux installation

I like Ubuntu but I feel like Linux for the everyday user is still far away. Like on laptops battery life and sleep behavior is still not great. Does Canonical maintain a list of things they want to fix that would make it a true viable OS for users who aren’t enthusiasts?

Ubuntu was my gateway into Linux, to which I&#x27;ll be forever grateful. I really appreciated, and am doing to this day, the effort to make a nice OOTB Linux experience. I also think that the Ubuntu release names are the best in the Linux world.

Ubuntu 8.04 was my first daily driver. Got it from an issue of Linux Magazine, back when they used to include live CDs. It kept my laptop from becoming a brick after the Windows Vista installation corrupted itself during a long vacation. Everything just worked!

My first Linux distro. I think Ubuntu helped a lot of us, Windows users, to migrate to Linux.

fair to say it has been worked on much longer than 20 years, but it is a good time to recognize its role in getting people on to the linux ecosystem.<p>despite running off of a cd and memory, a live ubuntu 10 experience felt faster on my p4 old box than the windows xp installed on a scsi drive. despite the challenges with certain hardware support (broadcom wifi on 12.04; nvidia hybrid mode on laptops especially around 14.04 era), it was a relatively safe environment to learn about the linux internals at my own pace.<p>from academia to work, i continue to see it being a default choice for linux environments, and for a good reason. happy birthday!

I went Ubuntu in 2006 and haven&#x27;t looked back.<p>Hopefully it&#x27;ll be around for many more years.

Canonical have been going downhill since 2012-2014 From 2004 to 2008 they were game changing.<p>Their hiring process absolutely sucks. Crap hiring processes means you hire people that don&#x27;t have other options.

I still have all the CDs from the shipit program - such a great project.

My first distro. Not currently using it, but I&#x27;ll always recommend it for new Linux users as a gateway distro

We&#x27;ve had our differences but I am glad you exist. You are a net positive in the world. Cumple años feliz.

I use Ubuntu myself. Happy birthday to this great distro: you’ve done a lot of good in the world.

For all the hate it gets, I for one love Ubuntu. I have been an Ubuntu user since 16.04, and it&#x27;s the distro that taught me the most about Linux. Thank you Canonical. You guys are amazing!

happy birthday ubuntu.<p>a distro I liked in the past and now try to avoid whenever possible.

A happy user since 5.04! A happy Debian user prior to that.

Ubuntu seems to have lost the plot a bit adding things like advertisements for Ubuntu Pro.<p>This kind of nonsense is one of the things that people hate about Windows.<p>Also adding extra garbage into CLI sessions is something that I greatly dislike because 1) it&#x27;s very irritating and adds unnecessary noise and 2) it can break scripts. Some non-Canonical offenders include GNU parallel and Apple&#x27;s xcode CLI tools. I don&#x27;t like how vim includes political messages either, even for causes that I might otherwise support, simply because it is distracting when I want to concentrate on getting work done.

I remember using my schools high speed internet to download 4.04 since all I had was dial up.<p>Went home and put it on my old crappy laptop dual boot, had barely any drive space left since it was like 60gb drive at the time lmao.<p>I am always thankful I got into Linux since it made learning programming so much easier, and my current career involves Linux every day...

Remember how it was called &quot;linux for human beings&quot;. Now, not so much, I tried it recently and it&#x27;s clear that desktop users aren&#x27;t their current audience any-more.