A Quick History of Ubuntu: from 4.10 to 19.04, from GNOME to Unity to GNOME 3

Ubuntu, while still one of the major Linux distros, is pretty much always at the center of a love / hate relationship these days. In today's video, I'd like to take a look a Ubuntu's history. Let's go !

Ubuntu's inception
The first version, Ubuntu 4.10, Warty Warthog was released in Octobre 2004. It sported a GNOME 2.8 default interface, with a clear departure from the mainly blue themes of the time, using a brown GTK theme and wallpaper, with the default GNOME icons.

4.10 was followed by Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary Hedgehog and 5.10 Breezy Badger, which added an update manager, support for hibernation and suspend, as well as a tool to add and remove installed programs, a menu editor called Alacarte.

Ubuntu's maturity
Following Breezy Badger was Dapper Drake. It was the first long term support release of Ubuntu, meaning it would be supported by Canonical for three years. It is also the first and only Ubuntu release to be delayed, releasing in June, hence the version number 6.06. Dapper Drake introduced a whole new theme called Human, complete with new icons and switching to a more vivid orange instead of the previous dull brown. It focused on ease of installation, merging the Live CD and install CD in one image, and providing a graphical installer for the first time. Branding was also more present, with a custom splash screen at startup displaying the ubuntu logo.

This was the start of a four years cycle of refinements and maturity for Ubuntu. Seven more releases would follow, further refining the Human GNOME theme, and adding new applications on the default install.

Redesign
Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx was released in April of 2010. It was an LTS version, and it sported a whole new theme, mixing more subtle orange with purple (or aubergine) colors. This theme was supposed to be lighter on the eyes, with more contrast, and more pleasing colors, and the window controls were moved to the left of the windows. This change divided users, some applauding the departure from pure orange and the more modern look and feel, and some thinking these changes were made to copy Mac OS X, thinking that Ubuntu was diluting its identity.

The Unity era
A desktop environment has never been so ironically named as Ubuntu's Unity. With the release of GNOME 3.0 and GNOME Shell, Ubuntu's theme decided to implement their own desktop environment, called Unity. GNOME Shell 3.0 was a radical departure from the usual desktop metaphor, which rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, including the Ubuntu desktop team.

It featured a top bar with a global and a dock, and was reminiscent of Mac OS X,and implemented the "Dash", a way to search for about anything on your computer in just one place. Unity, ironically, divided the community like never before. Whether that move was justified, Unity just wasn't polished enough on 11.04, and the release was buggy and didn't work that well on older machines, with a lot of resource overhead.

The next releases, ranging from 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot to Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus, marched on with Unity, and refined the experience. Some apps were switched out for others.

Of course, this is also around the same period, with the release of Ubuntu 12.10 QUantal Quetzal, that controversy started rearing up its head, with the addition of an Amazon web app and lens to the Dash, through which Canonical hoped to bring in some revenue.

Ubuntu 17.04 would be the last version to ship with Unity. Canonical announced in APril 2017 that Unity 8 and MIR, as well as the Ubuntu touch project would be cancelled.

Back to GNOME
Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark, shipped with GNOME 3, with little customization: a dock was added on the left side of the screen to mimick Unity's default behaviour, but this stopped at that. Wayland was the default for this version, replacing X.Org.

Finally, the next version, 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish, shipped with the brand new Yaru theme, and the Suru icons. This refreshed the whole desktop, and made it look more modern, with more vibrant colors and well designed icons.
The current version, 19.04, introduced little change to the default desktop, apart from adding some desktop icon functionality using a GNOME extension

Ubuntu is still a solid package today, but its ease of use and configuration that put it ahead of other distributions when it first started are mostly replicated by other desktop distributions, and the rise of rolling releases, and flatpaks is putting the older debian packages to the test.

[TheLinuxEXP]

Which Ubuntu version did you use back in the day ? What was your first distro ? I started with 6.06 on a crappy laptop and a USB wifi adapter that drove me nuts !

[lukeh.]

Ubuntu 4.10: Desktop Icons!

Ubuntu 19.04: Wait, that's illegal.

[MordecaiTheAwesomeBluejay]

Ubuntu 7.10 was the very first time i ever use Linux. I was using a program that y'all may remember called Wubi, so i don't have to nuke my Windows XP installation. My very first experience with Ubuntu was not great. Because it didn't recognize my Wi-Fi adapter. So i couldn't update it, or surf the web. Thankfully my love with Linux was growing in the future when it gotten better, over the years

[funnyjoke]

My favorite was probably 16.04, I really miss Unity

[primalpenguin]

I believe Ubuntu 12.04 was the very first distro I tried and what got me interested in Linux.

[jnchuika]

8.04 was the most pleasant to use at the time. 16.04 was most robust one tho

[williambaldwin]

4.10, the first was my first Ubuntu. Running 18.04 right on on this computer. I do miss that Classic Ubuntu feel though. I want the Ubuntu startup sound and the loading splash screen back!

[cristhianecheverry]

Thanks for the video, it's always nice to remember, I started at 10.04, now I'm on 19.04, we miss Unity and its top panel, we'll see what the future holds.

[casperes]

The cube desktop effects were awesome. Loved those effects.

[Vednier]

So, 19.04 is another service release basically just refreshing apps and kernel. And thats fine imho.

[moneyisenergy]

That video was a blessing! Thank you for making it! I rmemeber all the versions :D :D

[GabrielDubatti]

Being in Ubuntu since 10.04. I moved to Ubuntu Mate around 16.04. My daughters were using Ubuntu 14.04 until I moved them to Mate this year.

[malcytull]

A great video, thank you for sharing. I've been on Linux Mint for the last few months & can't get over how good it is & it's free, when doing the updates, it doesn't require a restart either!

[jannikmeissner]

I also started out with Ubuntu… in fact, my little sister used my old Dell Laptop with Ubuntu 10.04 installed on it for about two years. She later gave it to a friend who used the same 2004 laptop probably until it was 10 years old.

[justjadethings]

I've tried every version of gnome but I cannot work without the gnome 3 activities overview. It is so useful

[sonulohani]

I appreciate canonical for putting so much effort for bringing out the best changes and for free. I still love ubuntu and use it as my primary os.

[dimgrav]

Simply put, if you use Linux for work, chances are you use Ubuntu or one of its modern derivatives (e.g. Elementary or Pop!_OS). And for a good reason. It works. Always. Unless you break it by being reckless, the system won't let you down.

[neffscape]

I'm very late to the party but congrats Nick for this video. I don't remember exactly how, but I discovered ubuntu almost by accident in 2004, when warty came out. I was a desperate xp user, looking for something better and struggling with SuSE, Mandrake and the other "easy" linux distros of that period. At the time, the problem was that free of charge linux distros were almost "trial" products to make you buy a big, fat boxed version with all the things you actually needed, such as additional restricted drivers, full featured software and other amenities. Distros like debian were already available but they were extremely difficult to install and if you happened to be a newbie, it sucked to be you. Ubuntu was different: it had all what people needed to actually switch to linux. They gave you a single CD with everything you needed and if you wanted something else, everything was ready do download with synaptic. They chose for you a single DE forcing you to use GNOME or either KDE (if you chose Kubuntu instead), but avoiding the usual mess that newbies caused by installing "everything" offered by other distros during the setup process. It also packed so many drivers that ubuntu basically worked out of the box without hassles. It was brown and ugly but it worked like magic, and for free. I was hooked immediately and I switched entirely from xp. I then used basically all the gnome 2 based versions until I destroyed my pc and I finally got a mac. I used mac os for several years and I came back to the modern era of linux in 2019. I still feel ubuntu as familiar as it once was, but something is changed... And I think it's the ambition of really bringing linux desktop to the masses. Actually nobody is trying anymore as ubuntu once did, and it's really sad.

[saidbakr]

The idea of inventing new DE in Unity was a great one, but it may be a matter of resources available to build robust foundation for that project.

[carlosa.peraltafranco]

Why the different Ubuntu flavors don't have an unified (or at least aligned) theming and design language? Like for example Manjaro, that has several desktop environments (Gnome, Xfce, KDE) but all share icons, colours and other design cues.