NEW YORK—Canonical Ltd. today announced the public release of its latest version of Ubuntu Linux, codenamed "Hardy Heron". The release, which was first announced late last year, was met with cheer by Linux enthusiasts and with interest by industry watchers.
Mark Shuttleworth, the South African millionaire who founded Canonical Ltd. in 2004, has been on a tour to promote the version 8.04 of the world's most popular Linux distribution. Shuttleworth, who was the second private citizen to travel to outer space in a space shuttle in 2002, was also the founder of Internet security firm Thawte—which was sold to Verisign—and has also been involved in Debian Linux and the KDE graphical user interface projects.
Rise of Ubuntu
Linux has been gaining credence among a niche user market—mostly in the server industry. Lack of robust desktop applications have led to its continuing to fall behind Microsoft Windows and Apple's Macintosh in reaching beyond its small group of computer scientists, engineers and hobbyist users.
However, Ubuntu has changed some of that. First launched in October 2004, Ubuntu has won accolades for being focussed on ease of use and installation for the end user. Ubuntu is based on yet another distribution of Linux called Debian, and the two communities interact with each other.
"Hardy Heron" brings to Linux a lot of features that desktop users would clamor for—such as the latest version of the graphic user interface called GNOME, integration with some Windows enterprise features, as well as multimedia applications.
Whether the latest version of Ubuntu Linux will make a dent on Microsoft's marketshare is something that remains to be seen, but industry experts are all keenly watching how this will play out.
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