Ubuntu

Ubuntu is one of the best known Linux distributions. An estimated 25 million people worldwide use Ubuntu as a free operating system. The word Ubuntu comes from the African Zulu and Xhosa languages, and stands for humanity, brotherly love and community. It also indicates an attitude towards life aiming to achieve mutual respect and peaceful co-existence.

Ubuntu aims to help close the digital divide. Ubuntu is to be used to give as many people as possible free access to software. The Ubuntu motto is therefore: “Linux for human beings”. The project initiator was South African millionaire Mark Shuttleworth, who continues to work actively on this venture and on its further development.

User friendliness as the main characteristic

Ubuntu’s main characteristic is the particularly user-friendly interface. With a standard installation, common applications such as a mail client, an Internet browser and an office package are included by default. The Software Center, comparable to an app store, enables users to look for and download new applications. This is also to increase the number of available programs in the long term.

In technical terms, Ubuntu is based on the Debian operating system. Ubuntu initially used “GNOME” as its working environment, but has now migrated to “Unity”. New versions therefore always appear after updates to the working environment to be able to integrate new developments.

Free availability and broad distribution

It was initially possible to order CDs free of charge via the Ubuntu website. This service no longer free, but it is naturally possible to download all the current versions free of charge.

Ubuntu enjoys considerable media interest, and is present on a large number of systems. Wikimedia for instance uses Ubuntu servers, and the Munich municipal administration is running Ubuntu on more than 12,000 computers.

Ubuntu officially supports the x86, AMD64 and ARM architectures, and Ubuntu can be made to run on other alternative systems such as PowerPC (ppc), Sun SPARC (sparc64) and PA-RISC.

Large numbers of variations are available for Ubuntu which are adjusted to suit specific deployments. These include “Edubuntu”, which is used at schools, or “xubuntu”, which uses the very undemanding Xfce environment, enabling it to also run on older computers.

Installation notes:
We can install Ubuntu LTS version for you either in combination with the Plesk administration interface or with the KeyHelp administration tool. Ubuntu LTS can also be installed on servers with no administration interface.