So, that Ubuntu logo with the three dots – it’s people holding hands, from the original Warty login.
CREDIT: Wikimedia/Ubuntu
Without Ubuntu, the current Linux landscape would be unrecognisable. Back in October 2004, the first 4.10 (2004.10) release of Ubuntu, with its intriguing Warty Warthog code name, leapt from obscurity to being one of the most downloaded Linux distributions of the year. And that’s in spite of it sporting a less-than-attractive brown wallpaper. Perhaps the motto of “Linux for Human Beings” might have been on to something – radical departures such as enabling user accounts to make system-wide admin changes flew in the face of the classic novice-baffling Linux behaviour of the time. Being backed by an actual for-profit organisation was another departure, rather than the rag-tag hacking teams or lone coders that had preceded it, with those successes coming more by accident than by design. It seemed Ubuntu was set up for success from the start. The vision came from Mark Shuttleworth, a Debian developer who benefited from the dotcom bubble, which turned him into a multi-millionaire and happy philanthropist. His passion to give back to the open source community that had helped establish him, helped establish Ubuntu – a Zulu word meaning humanity to others – a Linux distro made for humans.