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Ubuntu from 2004 to 20.04 LTS

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Re: Ubuntu from 2004 to 20.04 LTS

#11

Post by bryanlarsen »

goda90 wrote: post #5
teruakohatu wrote: post #2

Does anyone know if Canonical is profitable beyond donations?

Their wikipedia page suggests they were profitable as of 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_(company) They provide support to lots of enterprises.

They get a cut every time you spin up a VM on AWS, I imagine that's what provides the bulk of their profits. Even though Ubuntu is open source, it's trademarked. If AWS didn't want to pay Canonical, they'd have to do one of two things: either provide Ubuntu unmodified or relabel it and call it something other than Ubuntu. Unmodified Ubuntu probably doesn't boot on AWS, so that's not an option. They tried avoiding payments to Red Hat with their "Amazon Linux" option, but customers far prefer the branded RHEL and Ubuntu images.

Re: Ubuntu from 2004 to 20.04 LTS

#12

Post by syntheticcdo »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #11
goda90 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their wikipedia page suggests they were profitable as of 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_(company) They provide support to lots of enterprises.

They get a cut every time you spin up a VM on AWS, I imagine that's what provides the bulk of their profits. Even though Ubuntu is open source, it's trademarked. If AWS didn't want to pay Canonical, they'd have to do one of two things: either provide Ubuntu unmodified or relabel it and call it something other than Ubuntu. Unmodified Ubuntu probably doesn't boot on AWS, so that's not an option. They tried avoiding pay…

AZ Linux is useful sometimes though, because it has all the AWS niceties installed by default, like the SSM session manager, or the ECS-optimized image.

Re: Ubuntu from 2004 to 20.04 LTS

#13

Post by tony »

trimbo wrote: post #6
whalesalad wrote: post #3

Aw man I was hoping for more artwork from each release. I remember ordering a ton of the live CD's and handing them out all over my high school back in the Warty Warthog days. Ubuntu sure has come a long way.

I was hoping for an upgrade video, like people have done for Windows Here's one that goes from Windows 1.0 -> Windows 8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WP7AkJo3OE

Ubuntu 4.10 -> 19.04: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZdrjATI8BA

Gnome 1, 2, and 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMak0R_fE2g

Re: Ubuntu from 2004 to 20.04 LTS

#14

Post by Animats »

schmorptron wrote: post #8
teruakohatu wrote: post #2

Does anyone know if Canonical is profitable beyond donations?

Is anything known that maybe their snap efforts with the snap store are maybe a tactic to get some profit from end user desktop ubuntu down the line? If their plan works out and it becomes the linux app store they could make it attractive for proprietary software vendors to sell stuff through it, and charge a percentage for being the sole gatekeeper to the snap store like apple or google.

There's much unhappiness about "snaps", the "store", and that Ubuntu 20.04 is too closely tied to the mothership. Some people are moving to Mint for that reason. Yes, there's not that much of a tie to HQ yet, but remember how Windows slowly went from a standalone OS to "software as a service".

Re: Ubuntu from 2004 to 20.04 LTS

#15

Post by jgneff »

powersnail wrote: post #10

The first Linux I installed was from a copy of RedHat that my father got for me from the IT department. At the time, it took me a while to set up, because I had no idea why there must be so many partitions, so many settings, so many options of this and that, and had to research each one on a slow internet. I understood about 50% of what I read, and scratched my head through the rest. Not to mention I didn't speak Eng…

> So how does Ubuntu differentiate itself, in 2020?

For me, by its ubiquity. It has desktop and servers images [1], cloud images for containers and virtual machines [2], and base images for all kinds of embedded devices [3], all with multiple architectures (amd64, armhf). I run it on everything from servers and desktops to QEMU ARM guests and e-readers.

[1] https://releases.ubuntu.com/20.04.1/ [2] https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/focal/current/ [3] http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-base/releases/20.04.1/relea...

Re: Ubuntu from 2004 to 20.04 LTS

#17

Post by jamesponddotco »

I was the leader of the LoCo Team[1] for my state in Brazil, helped translate Ubuntu to Brazilian Portuguese, gave talks around the country to help promote it, handled installation, and support for Ubuntu in public universities, and schools, distributed install CDs, and merchandise in install parties, and events, and had the biggest blog about Ubuntu in Brazil at the time, Ubuntu-BR-SC.

Canonical, and the Ubuntu Council recognize a few contributors, and grant them the "status" of Ubuntu Member[2] as a sign of recognition of significant, and sustained contribution to Ubuntu or the Ubuntu community.

The membership gives you a few perks, like a certificate signed by Mark Shuttleworth, an @ubuntu.com email address, and a few other stuff[3], but these perks are nothing when compared to the experiences I had along the way. I got to test Ubuntu Touch, participate in a closed beta for Steam for Linux, have a face-to-face chat with Richard Stallman, talk with Mark Shuttleworth, and meet a huge number of people so much smarter than me at a young age, which helped shape who I am as an adult.

I have been calling Ubuntu my favourite operating system since 2008, and I am what I am today because of the journey I went through with it, but as of last week, I have replaced it with openSUSE Tumbleweed on my desktop, and will probably do the same with my servers. I no longer contribute in a serious way, and the decisions Canonical is taking really rub me the wrong way.

Hopefully, I will find a new home in the openSUSE community, and a new journey will start.

[1] https://loco.ubuntu.com/about-loco/

[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Membership

[3] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Membership#The_Perks

Re: Ubuntu from 2004 to 20.04 LTS

#18

Post by abrowne »

schmorptron wrote: post #8
teruakohatu wrote: post #2

Does anyone know if Canonical is profitable beyond donations?

Is anything known that maybe their snap efforts with the snap store are maybe a tactic to get some profit from end user desktop ubuntu down the line? If their plan works out and it becomes the linux app store they could make it attractive for proprietary software vendors to sell stuff through it, and charge a percentage for being the sole gatekeeper to the snap store like apple or google.

I'm writing this from desktop linux (so I like desktop linux) but the market for linux in servers and other non-desktop uses is much bigger. Yes they target desktop software with Snaps, but also non-desktop software, which is where Snaps started originally as well. This includes being used in commercial products like some Dell networking gear (IIRC), which I imagine is another source of revenue.

Re: Ubuntu from 2004 to 20.04 LTS

#19

Post by ecnahc515 »

powersnail wrote: post #10

The first Linux I installed was from a copy of RedHat that my father got for me from the IT department. At the time, it took me a while to set up, because I had no idea why there must be so many partitions, so many settings, so many options of this and that, and had to research each one on a slow internet. I understood about 50% of what I read, and scratched my head through the rest. Not to mention I didn't speak Eng…

> They even made it easy to dual-boot with Windows, without making you go through a whole bunch of partitioning stuff. I thought it was amazing.

I forgot that was even a thing. I don't think any other Linux vendor did anything who made it that easy to just use their OS.

Re: Ubuntu from 2004 to 20.04 LTS

#20

Post by andreicek »

jamesponddotco wrote: post #17

I was the leader of the LoCo Team[1] for my state in Brazil, helped translate Ubuntu to Brazilian Portuguese, gave talks around the country to help promote it, handled installation, and support for Ubuntu in public universities, and schools, distributed install CDs, and merchandise in install parties, and events, and had the biggest blog about Ubuntu in Brazil at the time, Ubuntu-BR-SC. Canonical, and the Ubuntu Coun…

I agree with you completely. I'm looking to switch away from Ubuntu for both my personal and work servers. Do you recommend openSUSE for servers as well?
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