Those of us at the Bangalore Asia Source camp (spanning eight days in Jan-Feb 2005) would have noticed that Ubuntu was pretty much the 'unofficial' GNU/Linux choice on the desktops that we mostly used.

Where does this distro come from? What is it talking about?

There's a pretty amazing story. Ubuntu blurs the dividing line between free speech and free beer!

Distrowatch.com says this about this distro: "Ubuntu Linux is a complete desktop Linux operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Manifesto: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit. "Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world."

There's an even more unusual history behind the person behind Ubuntu. My favourite tool, Wikipedia explains: "Canonical Ltd is a company founded (and funded) by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth for the promotion of open source projects. The first major product to be sponsored by the company is "Ubuntu", a Debian-based Linux distribution."

If you wanted to know who exactly Mark Shuttleworth (32) is, then go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth. This South African entrepreneur is an early "space tourist", and became the first South African in space. After selling his Internet security firm Thawle to VeriSign, he founded a venture-capital company, and the Shuttleworth Foundation, which funds educational projects in South Africa. (On 25 April 2002 Shuttleworth lifted-off aboard the Russian Soyuz TM-34 mission, traveling as space tourist for approximately $20 million US.)

Shuttleworth, "in the early 1990s he was a Debian developer, and in 2004 he returned to the GNU/Linux world by funding the development of Ubuntu Linux, a new open-source operating system, via his company Canonical Ltd." Who said Debian developers don't go far ;-)

My young friend Derek (20), a co-villager in Saligao who looks after my Debian-based desktop at home (and has self-taught himself GNU/Linux), feels Ubuntu contains too little software in its single-CD distro. But others at the camp were struck by its simplicity of use. (It gave me a little trouble with my pen drive, though.)

Whatever you feel about it, just visit this URL -- http://shipit.ubuntu.com -- and they'll send you 1, 5 or 10 CDs free of cost. Believe it or not, they'd even pay the postage (though there can be a delay sometimes). This is a nice way to build interest in FLOSS; provided you give it over to the right people!