Ubuntu Linux for Not Yet Techies

"Using the Most Popular Linux Distribution on the Planet"

by Richard Stooker, President Info Ring Press and author of Secrets of Changing to a Computer Career

Ubuntu Linux has Become Widely Popular and Downloaded in Just a Few Years

Ubuntu Linux has become one of the most popular and widely distributed version of Linux.

Ubuntu (along with its sister Kubuntu and Edubuntu) won the Linux Journal's Reader's Choice Award as best distribution.

Yet the first version of Ubuntu (nicknamed Warty Warthog) was just released October 20, 2004.

It was created by Mark Shuttleworth from South Africa, who named it after a word from an African language which means both "humanity to others" and "I am what I am because of who we all are." Kubuntu is a variation meaning "towards humanity."

Ubuntu is based on Debian and designed to be easy for newbies to use and powerful enough to appeal to power users

Shuttleworth founded the company Thawte to verify financial transactions online, and sold it to Verisign four years later for a pile of money. Ubuntu fulfills his dream of creating the best distro of Linux on the planet. Mr. Shuttleworth also came up with the Ubuntu Code of Conduct to encourage users to respect each other.

You can use Ubuntu as the only operating system on your personal computer, or install it with either Windows or Apple's Mac OS X. So that you can test drive it before committing yourself, you can use it from a Live CD to see how you like it, before installing it onto your hard drive.

As I write, the latest version of Ubuntu is Dapper Drake 6.06 LTS. The numbers refer to the month and year of release -- which was June 2006. The LTS stands for Long Term Support. Unlike earlier versions of Ubuntu, Dapper Drake will be supported for 5 years on a server and 3 years on a desktop.

The user interface is called the X Window System or just X11.

However, the default desktop for Ubuntu is Gnome. The default desktop for Kubuntu is KDE. These are the two top desktops for Linux operating systems.

Other Windows managing systems you can use are: Fluxbox, XFCE and Enlightment.

Thanks to Sun MicroSystems, Ubuntu comes with the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and Java Development Kit (JDK) as separate packages you can install.

Interested in exchanging files via peer to peer or P2P file sharing with Ubuntu Linux?

You get: BitTorrent, aMule the client for the eDonkey2000 network and LimeWire for Gnutella.

You can blog using the Drivel blog client.

MPlayer is media software that plays most audio and video player formats.

Ubuntu is designed to be mobile friendly. You can set it up to use with wireless networks and Wi Fi.

Next: Xcode

Use Your New Computer Career as a Stepping Stone to Even Greater Success

Send off for your free 7-part Techie Plus eCourse now. So that you can learn:

The 7 most important skills to even greater business achievement -- not to mention wealth and (maybe) fame
Why techies are expendable in bad times and how to protect yourself from them
Why the world's richest computer programmer has not written any code in ages
How one ex-engineer now makes $500,000 a year
The abilities most techies don't even realize they don't have -- which confines their success to their technical abilities
Why techies are expendable in bad times and how to protect yourself from them

It's fast and easy. You will receive the first part in your email box within minutes.

I respect your privacy. I will never sell, rent or trade your email address.

After you subscribe, the form will redirect you to a thank you page.

Thank you!

Rick Stooker

Permission is granted to reprint the above article in an ezine or on a website as long as it is reprinted in full, with no changes, with full credit and with this contact information and link included at the bottom. All other rights reserved.

Computer Careers (Home) Sitemap Contact Privacy

Info Ring Press

Richard Stooker

PO Box 617

130-G Ballwin Manor Dr

Ballwin, MO 63011

(636) 394-2052

rick@inforingpress.com