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There's a kind of war going on and we're all caught in the middle. In that war, the two superpowers are Microsoft and Apple. The battlefield is the operating system. Numerous ad campaigns give the impression that these are the only two choices out there for anyone looking to buy a computer. But there's a small group of rebels out there who know better. Their OS of choice is Linux and they back a very different philosophy than the one followed by the big companies.

Ubuntu relies on the architecture of Linux to communicate with a computer's hardware so that software can do what it's supposed to do. Ubuntu commands follow the rules and procedures that hundreds of other Linux distros also use. But Ubuntu has its own style and list of features. 2 days ago  The entire Ubuntu software repository—save for specifically architecture-targeted packages, which start with names like i386—is available and supported on the Pi.

Linux is an open-source operating system. To really understand what that means, we need to define some terms. An operating system is a layer of software on a computer that acts as a foundation for computer programs. It's the OS's job to monitor computer resources and allocate those resources to programs that need them. When you execute a program, the OS acts like a supervisor and makes sure the program has the processing power, memory and any other resources it might need to function. Operating systems make it easy for program developers to write software -- without an OS, the programmer would have to create software to work directly from the hardware itself.

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That covers what an operating system is, but what about open source? Operating systems like Windows and Mac OS X are compiled. They're easy for machines to understand. But compiled code is difficult for humans to understand -- it's extremely complex. That means it's not easy for the average user to see how Microsoft or Apple put their operating systems together.

Unlike compiled OSes, an open-source operating system includes the source code for the OS. Developers write software in source code. There are many different coding languages but they all share a common trait: It's relatively easy for humans to understand it (assuming that human has studied the language). Machines can't understand source code, which is why developers feed the source code through a compiler.

Because Linux includes the source code for the operating system, you can see how the OS works just by downloading it. You'll have to understand programming languages but there's no level of secrecy with what makes Linux tick. The benefit of this approach is that many Linux users are also the developers for the OS. If a user sees a bug or vulnerability, he or she can whip up some code to fix the problem and contribute to the next version of Linux. The same is true for features -- if you think of a cool function that you believe Linux should support, you can build it into the source code.

You could also build your own operating system using the Linux kernel -- its foundation -- as the basis for your OS. That brings us to Ubuntu. Let's take a look at what Ubuntu is and how it relates to Linux.

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Ubuntu is a distribution -- or distro -- of Linux. In Linux lingo, a distribution is a version of the operating system that has the Linux kernel as its foundation. There are literally hundreds of different Linux distros out in the wild. Many are free and have communities of users who provide each other with guidance and support. But installing a free Linux distro with limited support options can be intimidating to the average computer user. That's where Ubuntu comes in.

Ubuntu, distributed by a company named Canonical, is an example of a commercial project based on the Linux kernel. Founded by businessman and philanthropist Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical's mission is to provide a software platform that is free for users and developers. Rather than charge for the operating system, Canonical's business depends upon providing commercial support for its products. It also helps companies and organizations design computer systems with an eye on efficiency and cost management.

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What that means for you is that Ubuntu is a free operating system you can install on a computer. Getting a copy is simple -- you can visit the Ubuntu Web site and download the OS directly. You'll need to have either a CD or USB drive to save the OS. Once you've copied the OS to the drive or CD, you can boot your computer using Ubuntu.

One cool feature of Ubuntu is that Canonical doesn't care if you have a fear of commitment. Booting from the USB drive or CD lets you play with the Ubuntu OS without overwriting your computer's native OS. If you're a loyal Windows user or Mac OS X devotee, you don't need to feel guilty. You can see Ubuntu on the side without hurting your long-term OS relationship.

If you find Ubuntu to be exactly what you need, you can load it on your computer to either run side-by-side with your existing OS, or you can break up with your old SOOS -- that's significant other operating system -- and start seeing Ubuntu exclusively. There's even an option to run Ubuntu within Windows itself as if it were any other piece of software.

Next, we'll take a look at what sets Ubuntu apart from a basic Linux OS. Steermouse mac.

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At Ubuntu's heart is the Linux kernel. Ubuntu relies on the architecture of Linux to communicate with a computer's hardware so that software can do what it's supposed to do. Ubuntu commands follow the rules and procedures that hundreds of other Linux distros also use. But Ubuntu has its own style and list of features.

Ubuntu has a graphical user interface (GUI), making it similar to other popular operating systems like Windows, Mac OS and even smartphone systems like Android. The OS represents applications as icons or menu choices that you can select using keyboard commands or a mouse -- there's no need to learn a library of commands or terms. If you've used other operating systems that rely on a GUI, you can navigate through Ubuntu easily.

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The operating system supports a wide variety of software. You'll find dozens of examples of productivity applications, media software and communications programs that run on Linux and, in turn, Ubuntu. Some of them are compatible with applications that run on other operating systems, such as Microsoft's Office suite.

In fact, Ubuntu will support software that's compatible for Linux. In the end, Ubuntu is just one attempt at leveraging the Linux operating system in a way that's easy and intuitive for the end user. Behind the scenes and at its very core, Ubuntu is Linux. It's just the outward shell that sets it apart from a basic Linux distribution.

If you're curious about Ubuntu, you can download it for free and give it a try without risk. You don't have to replace your current operating system. Who knows? You might find that you prefer Ubuntu's approach and your next machine might well be a Linux system.

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Sources

  • Canonical. 'Overview.' (Sept. 17, 2011) http://www.canonical.com/about-canonical/overview
  • Hess, Kenneth. 'Commercial Linux Distro Support: Which is Best?' internet.com. March 3, 2009. (Sept. 17, 2011) http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3808206/Commercial-Linux-Distro-Support-Which-is-Best.htm
  • Hess, Kenneth. 'The 10 Best Linux Distributions.' DaniWeb. Oct. 11, 2008. (Sept. 17, 2011) http://www.daniweb.com/hardware-and-software/linux-and-unix/linux-servers-and-apache/news/219749
  • Smith, Rod. 'Linux Distributions Guide.' March 27, 2004. (Sept. 17, 2011) http://www.rodsbooks.com/distribs/
  • Shuttleworth, Mark. 'Biography.' 2007. (Sept. 17, 2011) http://www.markshuttleworth.com/biography
  • Ubuntu. (Sept. 17, 2011) http://www.ubuntu.com/
Last week, Canonical released the latest intermediate version of Ubuntu, 20.10 'Groovy Gorilla'—which, for the first time, adds first-class platform support for the Raspberry Pi 4.

Groovy Gorilla itself is a pretty typical interim release, offering an updated GNOME version (3.38) with lots of bugfixes and small feature additions, such as drag-and-drop organization of folders and shortcuts in the Applications grid. Support has also been added for Windows Active Directory in the Ubiquity OS installer itself.

Canonical embraces the Pi

While it has been possible for some time to install Ubuntu on Raspberry Pi hardware, up until now that has been strictly a community effort. The Pi itself ships with Raspberry Pi OS, a Debian-based distribution whose origins began with the Pi community, but which has since been officially adopted and supported by the Raspberry Pi Foundation itself. And while Canonical added the Pi as a supported platform in 20.04 Focal Fossa earlier this year, that support was only for the Ubuntu Server distribution—not Desktop.

Check Ubuntu Architecture

With 20.10 Groovy Gorilla, Canonical has added full desktop support for the Pi 4. Martin Wimpress, Canonical's director of engineering for the Ubuntu Desktop, says this means the Pi is now a 'first-class citizen.' Canonical guarantees the same level of integration, QA, and support from kernel to userspace that it does for an x86 PC. The entire Ubuntu software repository—save for specifically architecture-targeted packages, which start with names like i386—is available and supported on the Pi.

There are some caveats—if you want to install Ubuntu 20.10 Desktop on the Pi, you'll need a 4GiB or 8GiB Pi 4, not one of the earlier versions. As long as you meet the hardware requirements, the rest is a breeze—Ubuntu 20.10 Desktop is an option in the standard Raspberry Pi Imager now; the Imager itself is available for Linux, Windows, or Mac platforms. All you need to do is insert a 4GiB or larger SD card, run the imager, choose your OS, and click 'write.' A few minutes later, you can put your SD card in your Pi 4 and boot it up.

Raspberry Pi 4 as a desktop PC platform

In light of this new initiative, we spoke at some length to Wimpress and the Pi Foundation's founder, Eben Upton. The Raspberry Pi was not originally conceived as a real alternative to a traditional desktop PC. Instead, it was intended to serve as a vehicle for schoolchildren to learn about 'real computing'—primarily meaning programming, not consumption—on a device inexpensive enough for anyone to afford.

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While the Pi has certainly served that educational purpose, its low cost, easy availability, and recognizable branding made it an immediate darling of the maker communities as well. Earlier versions of the Pi were not powerful platforms, but they were cheap, flexible, and ubiquitous—making them ideal for hacked-together little one-off projects for fun or convenience.

In much the same spirit that the maker community took a little educational device and turned it into their favorite general-purpose gadget, the Linux community has long been interested in trying to turn it into a desktop PC, with varying degrees of success. According to Upton, those efforts took on a dramatic uptick in March and April of this year in the UK. As both traditional PCs and Chromebooks became nearly unavailable due to demand for suddenly remote-schooled kids, the Raspberry Pi—which sells 600,000 to 700,000 units per month, making the Raspberry Pi Foundation one of the top-ten PC manufacturers—suddenly became a much more widely adopted alternative.

With a 64-bit quad-core Cortex A72 CPU at 1.5GHz, 4 or 8 GiB DDR4 RAM, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and support for driving two 4K displays via micro-HDMI out—as well as hardware H.264 and H.265 decoding—the Pi 4 compares on paper pretty well with low-end traditional laptops. In fact, low-end laptops seem to be racing down to meet the Pi as fast as it's rushing up to meet them, with cost-cutting measures like soldered RAM and eMMC storage.

Where the Pi 4 still comes up short for mainstream, non-geek appeal is the fact that it's generally sold as a bare system board, which still needs an SD card, an operating system, and a case. But at $60—and in the midst of an otherwise supply-starved pandemic—those drawbacks begin seeming less important.

Ubuntu

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What that means for you is that Ubuntu is a free operating system you can install on a computer. Getting a copy is simple -- you can visit the Ubuntu Web site and download the OS directly. You'll need to have either a CD or USB drive to save the OS. Once you've copied the OS to the drive or CD, you can boot your computer using Ubuntu.

One cool feature of Ubuntu is that Canonical doesn't care if you have a fear of commitment. Booting from the USB drive or CD lets you play with the Ubuntu OS without overwriting your computer's native OS. If you're a loyal Windows user or Mac OS X devotee, you don't need to feel guilty. You can see Ubuntu on the side without hurting your long-term OS relationship.

If you find Ubuntu to be exactly what you need, you can load it on your computer to either run side-by-side with your existing OS, or you can break up with your old SOOS -- that's significant other operating system -- and start seeing Ubuntu exclusively. There's even an option to run Ubuntu within Windows itself as if it were any other piece of software.

Next, we'll take a look at what sets Ubuntu apart from a basic Linux OS. Steermouse mac.

Advertisement

At Ubuntu's heart is the Linux kernel. Ubuntu relies on the architecture of Linux to communicate with a computer's hardware so that software can do what it's supposed to do. Ubuntu commands follow the rules and procedures that hundreds of other Linux distros also use. But Ubuntu has its own style and list of features.

Ubuntu has a graphical user interface (GUI), making it similar to other popular operating systems like Windows, Mac OS and even smartphone systems like Android. The OS represents applications as icons or menu choices that you can select using keyboard commands or a mouse -- there's no need to learn a library of commands or terms. If you've used other operating systems that rely on a GUI, you can navigate through Ubuntu easily.

Advertisement

Advertisement

The operating system supports a wide variety of software. You'll find dozens of examples of productivity applications, media software and communications programs that run on Linux and, in turn, Ubuntu. Some of them are compatible with applications that run on other operating systems, such as Microsoft's Office suite.

In fact, Ubuntu will support software that's compatible for Linux. In the end, Ubuntu is just one attempt at leveraging the Linux operating system in a way that's easy and intuitive for the end user. Behind the scenes and at its very core, Ubuntu is Linux. It's just the outward shell that sets it apart from a basic Linux distribution.

If you're curious about Ubuntu, you can download it for free and give it a try without risk. You don't have to replace your current operating system. Who knows? You might find that you prefer Ubuntu's approach and your next machine might well be a Linux system.

Together 3 3 6 1. Advertisement

Related Articles

More Great Links

Free Ubuntu Software

Sources

  • Canonical. 'Overview.' (Sept. 17, 2011) http://www.canonical.com/about-canonical/overview
  • Hess, Kenneth. 'Commercial Linux Distro Support: Which is Best?' internet.com. March 3, 2009. (Sept. 17, 2011) http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3808206/Commercial-Linux-Distro-Support-Which-is-Best.htm
  • Hess, Kenneth. 'The 10 Best Linux Distributions.' DaniWeb. Oct. 11, 2008. (Sept. 17, 2011) http://www.daniweb.com/hardware-and-software/linux-and-unix/linux-servers-and-apache/news/219749
  • Smith, Rod. 'Linux Distributions Guide.' March 27, 2004. (Sept. 17, 2011) http://www.rodsbooks.com/distribs/
  • Shuttleworth, Mark. 'Biography.' 2007. (Sept. 17, 2011) http://www.markshuttleworth.com/biography
  • Ubuntu. (Sept. 17, 2011) http://www.ubuntu.com/
Last week, Canonical released the latest intermediate version of Ubuntu, 20.10 'Groovy Gorilla'—which, for the first time, adds first-class platform support for the Raspberry Pi 4.

Groovy Gorilla itself is a pretty typical interim release, offering an updated GNOME version (3.38) with lots of bugfixes and small feature additions, such as drag-and-drop organization of folders and shortcuts in the Applications grid. Support has also been added for Windows Active Directory in the Ubiquity OS installer itself.

Canonical embraces the Pi

While it has been possible for some time to install Ubuntu on Raspberry Pi hardware, up until now that has been strictly a community effort. The Pi itself ships with Raspberry Pi OS, a Debian-based distribution whose origins began with the Pi community, but which has since been officially adopted and supported by the Raspberry Pi Foundation itself. And while Canonical added the Pi as a supported platform in 20.04 Focal Fossa earlier this year, that support was only for the Ubuntu Server distribution—not Desktop.

Check Ubuntu Architecture

With 20.10 Groovy Gorilla, Canonical has added full desktop support for the Pi 4. Martin Wimpress, Canonical's director of engineering for the Ubuntu Desktop, says this means the Pi is now a 'first-class citizen.' Canonical guarantees the same level of integration, QA, and support from kernel to userspace that it does for an x86 PC. The entire Ubuntu software repository—save for specifically architecture-targeted packages, which start with names like i386—is available and supported on the Pi.

There are some caveats—if you want to install Ubuntu 20.10 Desktop on the Pi, you'll need a 4GiB or 8GiB Pi 4, not one of the earlier versions. As long as you meet the hardware requirements, the rest is a breeze—Ubuntu 20.10 Desktop is an option in the standard Raspberry Pi Imager now; the Imager itself is available for Linux, Windows, or Mac platforms. All you need to do is insert a 4GiB or larger SD card, run the imager, choose your OS, and click 'write.' A few minutes later, you can put your SD card in your Pi 4 and boot it up.

Raspberry Pi 4 as a desktop PC platform

In light of this new initiative, we spoke at some length to Wimpress and the Pi Foundation's founder, Eben Upton. The Raspberry Pi was not originally conceived as a real alternative to a traditional desktop PC. Instead, it was intended to serve as a vehicle for schoolchildren to learn about 'real computing'—primarily meaning programming, not consumption—on a device inexpensive enough for anyone to afford.

Advertisement

While the Pi has certainly served that educational purpose, its low cost, easy availability, and recognizable branding made it an immediate darling of the maker communities as well. Earlier versions of the Pi were not powerful platforms, but they were cheap, flexible, and ubiquitous—making them ideal for hacked-together little one-off projects for fun or convenience.

In much the same spirit that the maker community took a little educational device and turned it into their favorite general-purpose gadget, the Linux community has long been interested in trying to turn it into a desktop PC, with varying degrees of success. According to Upton, those efforts took on a dramatic uptick in March and April of this year in the UK. As both traditional PCs and Chromebooks became nearly unavailable due to demand for suddenly remote-schooled kids, the Raspberry Pi—which sells 600,000 to 700,000 units per month, making the Raspberry Pi Foundation one of the top-ten PC manufacturers—suddenly became a much more widely adopted alternative.

With a 64-bit quad-core Cortex A72 CPU at 1.5GHz, 4 or 8 GiB DDR4 RAM, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and support for driving two 4K displays via micro-HDMI out—as well as hardware H.264 and H.265 decoding—the Pi 4 compares on paper pretty well with low-end traditional laptops. In fact, low-end laptops seem to be racing down to meet the Pi as fast as it's rushing up to meet them, with cost-cutting measures like soldered RAM and eMMC storage.

Where the Pi 4 still comes up short for mainstream, non-geek appeal is the fact that it's generally sold as a bare system board, which still needs an SD card, an operating system, and a case. But at $60—and in the midst of an otherwise supply-starved pandemic—those drawbacks begin seeming less important.

Collaboration between Canonical and the Pi Foundation

Wimpress told us that Canonical has now devoted several teams directly to Raspberry Pi 4 support—including kernel engineering, foundations engineering, and desktop teams for that platform. All teams are working directly with engineers at the Pi Foundation.

Ubuntu Architecture Software Download

Upton says that the Canonical engineers 'sync up' with their Raspberry Pi Foundation counterparts every couple of weeks, and the collaboration helps the Foundation do things in a more standards-based way—meaning in part that the Foundation's own work adheres better to general Linux best practices, and in part that the work done to make Linux better on the Pi goes back upstream to the wider Linux community itself.

In addition to the general software engineering, Canonical brings significant hardware QA resources to the collaboration. With the Pi 4 now adopted as a first-class Ubuntu hardware platform, Canonical's massive Taipei-based hardware QA department (where regression tests are done on thousands of hardware units, looking for problems) now includes a fleet of Raspberry Pi devices.

Ubuntu Architecture Software Developer

The Pi Foundation, in turn, now provides Canonical with pre-release samples of new hardware models, helping make sure that Ubuntu support for new hardware is top-notch on launch day for those new models instead of needing to play catch-up for several months afterward.





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