What Open Source Should Be: Ubuntu's 'Flavor' Culture

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The well-known Linux distribution Ubuntu has changed its LOGO again after 12 years. Although the color and icon shape have changed, its core icon, the three hand-in-hand villains, is still inherited, and even more close embrace:

Under the leadership of South African billionaire Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu has become one of the most widely used Linux desktop operating systems in the world.

Ubuntu’s rapid global popularity is largely due to the development policy that Shuttleworth established for the Ubuntu community from its early days - to unite all forces that can be united. This is also the meaning of Ubuntu’s LOGO “circle of friends”.

Ubuntu was originally based on a fork of another well-known Linux distribution, Debian. When talking about the difference between Ubuntu and its big brother, Shuttleworth believes that the development policy that the Debian community has always adhered to has helped it become an absolutely neutral, fair, and free Linux distribution. But on the other hand, the strict community system also hinders the possibility of close cooperation between Debian and more external companies, which makes Debian always popular among a small group of community developers, and it is difficult to promote to more ordinary in the hands of the user.

In order to make up for the shortcomings of Debian, Ubuntu under Canonical’s corporate governance takes a more open and inclusive attitude towards cooperation with external parties, because their core goal is to enable more people to use Linux systems. For this goal, the Ubuntu community core team has carried out a lot of work, including optimizing the operating system graphical interface, enhancing the ease of use of the system; incorporating more partners, improving the pre-installation, certification and support of third-party hardware and software, and expanding users coverage, etc.

Unique flavor culture

This open and inclusive development approach has brought a unique “flavor” culture to the Ubuntu community.

▲ Ubuntu’s unique flavor culture

Unlike other open source projects that have some community-autonomous fork distributions, the Ubuntu community uses the term “flavor” to describe its different flavors of fork distributions. Because these official flavors are endorsed and supported by the Ubuntu Core Team Technical Committee, and built and tested using the same standards as the original Ubuntu development, their bugs or bugs are also monitored, tracked, and fixed by Ubuntu team members. Additionally, updated versions of these flavors are usually released simultaneously within a few days of the official Ubuntu release.

That is to say, in order to cover as many users with different preferences as possible, Ubuntu actively cooperates and communicates with different communities and different commercial companies. Based on different desktop environment components, languages ​​and usage habits of different countries, Ubuntu has developed a number of Versions with different characteristics are developed and maintained by members of the Ubuntu core team. This culture of fully integrating internal and external forces has played a key role in the rapid spread of Ubuntu around the world.

Flavor created by technological competition

Kubuntu was the first flavor release from the Ubuntu community, released in 2005 with Ubuntu 5.04 “Hoary Hedgehog”. It was born for a very simple purpose: to provide Ubuntu with KDE as a desktop environment for users who prefer KDE.

In the early days of Ubuntu (before 11.04), GNOME has been the official default desktop environment for Ubuntu (it was switched to Unity after 11.04, and switched back to GNOME Shell after 17.10). As the two established desktop environments in the open source community, the rivalry between GNOME and KDE has a long history.

▲ Ubuntu 21.10 based on GNOME 40

The GNOME project was launched in August 1997 by Miguel De Icaza, a 26-year-old Mexican programmer at the time. GNOME chooses to fully follow the GPL’s GTK graphical interface library as the basis, and KDE is based on Qt, so people generally refer to the two camps of GNOME and KDE as GNOME/GTK and KDE/Qt.

Because KDE came out earlier than GNOME, it has an advantage in the foundation, so that KDE has been suppressing GNOME in the early days.

After entering 2004, KDE and GNOME maintained rapid development. The KDE camp launched versions 3.2 and 3.3 in February and August respectively, while GNOME launched versions 2.6 and 2.8 in March and September, and the two versions were upgraded at a similar pace. By version 3.3, KDE is very mature. It has a large number of application software including KOffice, Konqueror browser, Kmail suite, KDE instant messaging, and most of them have reached the usable standard, and their functions are no less than Windows 2000. And GNOME has achieved a big leap during this period. The level of GNOME 2.8 is not inferior to KDE 3.3, and the technical characteristics of the two are very distinct at this time: GNOME is simple, efficient, and runs faster than KDE. Beyond Apple’s Mac OS evolution; KDE has a relatively gorgeous interface and rich functions, and its usage habits and development direction are more similar to Microsoft’s Windows.

▲ Kubuntu 21.10 is close to the desktop experience of Windows

KDE-based Kubuntu provides users with a more Windows-like experience, providing familiar functions such as the start menu, taskbar, and system tray. It is called the most Windows-like Ubuntu flavor version.

Flavor generated by user needs

Although the competitive development of GNOME and KDE has promoted the popularization of Ubuntu to users who are familiar with Mac and Windows, its function stacking for ease of operation inevitably sacrifices some system performance and memory resources. It seems too bloated for some advanced users. There are some calls for “burden reduction” in the Ubuntu community. As a result, Xubuntu , a flavored version based on another lightweight desktop environment, Xfce, was born in the community.

▲ Simpler and lighter Xubuntu

In June 2006, with the release of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS “Dapper Drake”, Xfce-based Xubuntu was released at the same time. Xubuntu’s positioning is very clear: a lightweight desktop operating system that works out of the box. Its lightweight structure saves a lot of CPU and memory resources, and the lightweight and fast features of its desktop environment are favored by many developers. This also makes Xfce ideal for older hosts that cannot allocate too many resources to the desktop due to limited hardware. On the other hand, Xfce is more flexible than GNOME in configurability and can meet the individual configuration needs of advanced users. These all make Xubuntu popular among some developers who advocate simplicity and elegance.

In this way, the Ubuntu community maintains a strong inclusiveness, and actively cooperates with major communities or companies for different user needs and different usage scenarios. After Kubuntu and Xubuntu, different flavored versions have been born in the Ubuntu community, such as Ubuntu Studio for workers in the fields of audio and video production, graphic design, photography and desktop publishing , based on the desktop environment LXDE (later migrated to LXQt) Another lightweight flavored version of Lubuntu , continuing the GNOME 2 style, Ubuntu MATE based on the MATE desktop environment, Ubuntu Budgie based on the Budgie desktop environment, and more.

Flavor born from regional characteristics

In Ubuntu’s development policy of uniting all, the huge Chinese market is naturally also in its plan. At the same time, since the establishment of the China Open Source Software Promotion Alliance in 2004, China has also been committed to developing the Linux operating system ecosystem to break through the monopoly of the American Windows system.

In 2012, Mark Shuttleworth came to China, visited the National University of Defense Technology and communicated with relevant domestic institutions, and initially determined the way of community cooperation. The following year, the China Software and Integrated Chip Promotion Center (CSIP) under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China announced the establishment of the CCN Open Source Joint Promotion Laboratory, which consists of CSIP, Canonical Corporation, and National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), aiming to cooperate Develop a flavored version of Ubuntu for Chinese users - Ubuntu Kylin (Ubuntu Kylin).

Although Canonical, which provides open source solutions for the Chinese government, was ridiculed by some foreign media and netizens at the time, the Ubuntu community represented by Shuttleworth did not take it seriously. “The release of Ubuntu Kylin has brought the Chinese open source community into the global Ubuntu community,” said Shuttleworth. “Through Ubuntu Kylin, China now has its own secure and stable desktop operating system, produced with the Ubuntu global community. Ubuntu will mature Combining technology with a mature ecosystem and strong OEM and ISV partners, this move enables Joint Labs to bring these advantages to China across the full range of platforms: desktop, server, cloud, tablet and mobile.”

▲ Ubuntu Kylin, which is in line with the habits of Chinese people

Ubuntu Kylin has also become the first version of the officially certified flavor version of Ubuntu that is distinguished by regional characteristics. In addition to localizing the language, the Ubuntu Kylin team has also developed many Linux versions of software commonly used by Chinese users with domestic software manufacturers, and fed back the code to the upstream Ubuntu community, which has contributed to the healthy development of the Linux software ecosystem in China. certain positive effect.

Epilogue

Whether it is the desktop environment camp that used to compete with each other, the conflicting needs of users with different technical backgrounds, or the countries or regions affected by geopolitics, in the Ubuntu community, all these technical disputes, user needs and regional characteristics have been obtained. In order to maximize the retention, it has created a unique flavor culture in the open source community.

At present, almost all the mainstream open source desktop environments on the market have been absorbed by the Ubuntu community, and with official support, different flavors of distributions have been derived to tap all potential users in different countries and regions around the world as much as possible. The various flavors still maintain close cooperation under the framework of the UBuntu community, which makes different flavors have their own characteristics while inheriting the core functions of the latest official Ubuntu version, promoting the common development and progress of the entire Ubuntu community.

▲ Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth

Since the creation of Ubuntu in 2004, Mark Shuttleworth - the rich man and “space hero” from South Africa, has lived up to his original ideal - to make open and free open source software known and accepted by the general public. Today, Shuttleworth, who is over 500 years old, is still active in the front line of promoting Ubuntu, and is committed to continuing the noble spirit contained in the old African language “Ubuntu” in the open source software world.

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