Ubuntu Operating System
Fast, free and incredibly easy to use, the Ubuntu operating system powers millions of desktop PCs, laptops and servers around the world.
Enjoy the simplicity of Ubuntu's intuitive interface. Fast, secure and with thousands of apps to choose from, the sleek Ubuntu desktop experience is now optimised for multitouch devices, including laptop trackpads and touchscreens, as well as the familiar keyboard and mouse.
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS includes a wealth of smart filters to make it faster and easier to find the content you need, whether it’s stored on your computer or on the web.
Type any query into the Dash home and the Smart Scopes server will determine which categories of content are the most relevant to your search, returning only the best results. The server constantly improves its results by learning which categories and results are most useful to you over time.
If you’re interested in the future of computing and you want to see how Ubuntu will look further down the line, you can download a preview version of Unity 8, Ubuntu’s next-generation user interface. Designed to support a single user experience across the smartphone, the tablet and the PC, it uses the current version of Mir, the cross-platform display server being developed by the Ubuntu community. Do note, however, that Mir only works with open-source graphics drivers at present.
To download the preview of Unity 8, search for unity8-desktop-session-mir in the Ubuntu Software Centre.
Enjoy the simplicity of Ubuntu's intuitive interface. Fast, secure and with thousands of apps to choose from, the sleek Ubuntu desktop experience is now optimised for multitouch devices, including laptop trackpads and touchscreens, as well as the familiar keyboard and mouse.
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS includes a wealth of smart filters to make it faster and easier to find the content you need, whether it’s stored on your computer or on the web.
Type any query into the Dash home and the Smart Scopes server will determine which categories of content are the most relevant to your search, returning only the best results. The server constantly improves its results by learning which categories and results are most useful to you over time.
If you’re interested in the future of computing and you want to see how Ubuntu will look further down the line, you can download a preview version of Unity 8, Ubuntu’s next-generation user interface. Designed to support a single user experience across the smartphone, the tablet and the PC, it uses the current version of Mir, the cross-platform display server being developed by the Ubuntu community. Do note, however, that Mir only works with open-source graphics drivers at present.
To download the preview of Unity 8, search for unity8-desktop-session-mir in the Ubuntu Software Centre.
Free Introduction To Linux Course
Develop a good working knowledge of Linux using both the graphical interface and command line, covering the major Linux distribution families. Linux powers 94% of the world’s supercomputers, most of the servers powering the Internet, the majority of financial trades worldwide and a billion Android devices. In short, Linux is everywhere. It appears in many different architectures, from mainframes to server to desktop to mobile and on a staggeringly wide variety of hardware.
How some are trying to change the meaning of Open-Source
"When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.”
These freedoms are vitally important. They are essential, not just for the individual users' sake, but for society as a whole because they promote social solidarity—that is, sharing and cooperation. They become even more important as our culture and life activities are increasingly digitized. In a world of digital sounds, images, and words, free software becomes increasingly essential for freedom in general.
Tens of millions of people around the world now use free software; the public schools of some regions of India and Spain now teach all students to use the freeGNU/Linux operating system. Most of these users, however, have never heard of the ethical reasons for which we developed this system and built the free software community, because nowadays this system and community are more often spoken of as “open source”, attributing them to a different philosophy in which these freedoms are hardly mentioned.
The free software movement has campaigned for computer users' freedom since 1983. In 1984 we launched the development of the free operating system GNU, so that we could avoid the nonfree operating systems that deny freedom to their users. During the 1980s, we developed most of the essential components of the system and designed the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) to release them under—a license designed specifically to protect freedom for all users of a program.
Not all of the users and developers of free software agreed with the goals of the free software movement. In 1998, a part of the free software community splintered off and began campaigning in the name of “open source.” The term was originally proposed to avoid a possible misunderstanding of the term “free software,” but it soon became associated with philosophical views quite different from those of the free software movement.
Some of the supporters of open source considered the term a “marketing campaign for free software,” which would appeal to business executives by highlighting the software's practical benefits, while not raising issues of right and wrong that they might not like to hear. Other supporters flatly rejected the free software movement's ethical and social values. Whichever their views, when campaigning for open source, they neither cited nor advocated those values. The term “open source” quickly became associated with ideas and arguments based only on practical values, such as making or having powerful, reliable software. Most of the supporters of open source have come to it since then, and they make the same association.
The two terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, essential respect for the users' freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that nonfree software is an inferior solution to the practical problem at hand. Most discussion of “open source” pays no attention to right and wrong, only to popularity and success; here's atypical example.
For the free software movement, however, nonfree software is a social problem, and the solution is to stop using it and move to free software.
“Free software.” “Open source.” If it's the same software (or nearly so), does it matter which name you use? Yes, because different words convey different ideas. While a free program by any other name would give you the same freedom today, establishing freedom in a lasting way depends above all on teaching people to value freedom. If you want to help do this, it is essential to speak of “free software.”
We in the free software movement don't think of the open source camp as an enemy; the enemy is proprietary (nonfree) software. But we want people to know we stand for freedom, so we do not accept being mislabeled as open source supporters." (*3) ..... Richard Stallman
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
These freedoms are vitally important. They are essential, not just for the individual users' sake, but for society as a whole because they promote social solidarity—that is, sharing and cooperation. They become even more important as our culture and life activities are increasingly digitized. In a world of digital sounds, images, and words, free software becomes increasingly essential for freedom in general.
Tens of millions of people around the world now use free software; the public schools of some regions of India and Spain now teach all students to use the freeGNU/Linux operating system. Most of these users, however, have never heard of the ethical reasons for which we developed this system and built the free software community, because nowadays this system and community are more often spoken of as “open source”, attributing them to a different philosophy in which these freedoms are hardly mentioned.
The free software movement has campaigned for computer users' freedom since 1983. In 1984 we launched the development of the free operating system GNU, so that we could avoid the nonfree operating systems that deny freedom to their users. During the 1980s, we developed most of the essential components of the system and designed the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) to release them under—a license designed specifically to protect freedom for all users of a program.
Not all of the users and developers of free software agreed with the goals of the free software movement. In 1998, a part of the free software community splintered off and began campaigning in the name of “open source.” The term was originally proposed to avoid a possible misunderstanding of the term “free software,” but it soon became associated with philosophical views quite different from those of the free software movement.
Some of the supporters of open source considered the term a “marketing campaign for free software,” which would appeal to business executives by highlighting the software's practical benefits, while not raising issues of right and wrong that they might not like to hear. Other supporters flatly rejected the free software movement's ethical and social values. Whichever their views, when campaigning for open source, they neither cited nor advocated those values. The term “open source” quickly became associated with ideas and arguments based only on practical values, such as making or having powerful, reliable software. Most of the supporters of open source have come to it since then, and they make the same association.
The two terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, essential respect for the users' freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that nonfree software is an inferior solution to the practical problem at hand. Most discussion of “open source” pays no attention to right and wrong, only to popularity and success; here's atypical example.
For the free software movement, however, nonfree software is a social problem, and the solution is to stop using it and move to free software.
“Free software.” “Open source.” If it's the same software (or nearly so), does it matter which name you use? Yes, because different words convey different ideas. While a free program by any other name would give you the same freedom today, establishing freedom in a lasting way depends above all on teaching people to value freedom. If you want to help do this, it is essential to speak of “free software.”
We in the free software movement don't think of the open source camp as an enemy; the enemy is proprietary (nonfree) software. But we want people to know we stand for freedom, so we do not accept being mislabeled as open source supporters." (*3) ..... Richard Stallman
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html