Government by algorithm (also known as Algorithmic regulation, Regulation by algorithms, Algorithmic governance, Algorithmic legal order or Algocracy) is an alternative form of government or social ordering, where the usage of computer algorithms, especially of artificial intelligence and blockchain,
is applied to regulations, law enforcement, and generally any aspect of
everyday life such as transportation or land registration. Alternatively, algorithmic regulation is defined as setting the
standard, monitoring and modification of behaviour by means of
computational algorithms — automation of judiciary is in its scope.
Government by algorithm raises new challenges that are not captured in the e-Government literature and the practice of public administration. Some sources equate cyberocracy, which is a hypothetical form of government that rules by the effective use of information, with algorithmic governance, although algorithms are not the only means of processing information. Nello Cristianini and Teresa Scantamburlo argued that the combination of a human society and an algorithmic regulation forms a social machine.
History
In 1962, head of the Department of technical physics in Kiev, Alexander Kharkevich, published an article in the journal "Communist" about a computer network for processing of information and control of economy. In fact, he proposed to make a network like the modern Internet for the needs of algorithmic governance.
Also in the 1960s and 1970s, Herbert A. Simon championed expert systems as tools for rationalization and evaluation of administrative behavior. The automation of rule-based processes was an ambition of tax agencies over many decades resulting in varying success. Early work from this period includes Thorne McCarty's influential TAXMAN project in the US and Ronald Stamper's LEGOL project in the UK. The Honourable Justice Michael Kirby published a paper in 1998, where he expressed optimism that the then-available computer technologies such as legal expert system could evolve to computer systems, which will strongly affect the practice of courts. In 2006, attorney Lawrence Lessig known for the slogan "Code is law" wrote:
"[T]he invisible hand of cyberspace is building an architecture that is quite the opposite of its
architecture at its birth. This invisible hand, pushed by government and by commerce, is constructing
an architecture that will perfect control and make highly efficient regulation possible"
Written
laws are not replaced but stressed to test its efficiency. Algorithmic
regulation is supposed to be a system of governance where more exact
data collected from citizens via their smart devices and computers are
used for more efficiency in organizing human life as a collective. As Deloitte
estimated in 2017, automation of US government work could save 96.7
million federal hours annually, with a potential savings of $3.3
billion; at the high end, this rises to 1.2 billion hours and potential
annual savings of $41.1 billion. According to a study of Stanford University, 45% of the studied US federal agencies have experimented with AI and related machine learning (ML) tools up to 2020.
In 2013, algorithmic regulation was coined by Tim O'Reilly, Founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media Inc.:
Sometimes the "rules" aren't really even rules. Gordon
Bruce, the former CIO of the city of Honolulu, explained to me that when
he entered government from the private sector and tried to make
changes, he was told, "That's against the law." His reply was "OK. Show
me the law." "Well, it isn't really a law. It's a regulation." "OK. Show
me the regulation." "Well, it isn't really a regulation. It's a policy
that was put in place by Mr. Somebody twenty years ago." "Great. We can
change that!""
[...]
Laws should specify goals, rights, outcomes, authorities, and limits. If
specified broadly, those laws can stand the test of time.
Regulations, which specify how to execute those laws in much more
detail, should be regarded in much the same way that programmers regard
their code and algorithms, that is, as a constantly updated toolset to
achieve the outcomes specified in the laws.
[...]
It's time for government to enter the age of big data. Algorithmic
regulation is an idea whose time has come.
A 2019 poll made by Center for the Governance of Change at IE University
in Spain showed that 25% of citizens from selected European countries
are somewhat or totally in favor of letting an artificial intelligence
make important decisions about the running of their country. The following table shows detailed results:
53% of these applications were produced by in-house experts. Commercial providers of residual applications include Palantir Technologies. From 2012, NOPD started a secretive collaboration with Palantir Technologies in the field of predictive policing. According to the words of James Carville, he was impetus of this project and "[n]o one in New Orleans even knows about this".
AI politicians
In 2018, an activist named Michihito Matsuda ran for mayor in the Tama city area of Tokyo as a human proxy for an artificial intelligence program. While election posters and campaign material used the term 'robot', and displayed stock images of a feminine android, the 'AI mayor' was in fact a machine learning algorithm trained using Tama city datasets. The project was backed by high-profile executives Tetsuzo Matsumoto of Softbank and Norio Murakami of Google. Michihito Matsuda came third in the election, being defeated by Hiroyuki Abe. Organisers claimed that the 'AI mayor' was programmed to analyze citizen petitions put forward to the city council in a more 'fair and balanced' way than human politicians.
In 2019, AI-powered messenger chatbot SAM participated in the discussions on social media connected to electoral race in New Zealand.
The creator of SAM, Nick Gerritsen, believes SAM will be advanced
enough to run as a candidate by late 2020, when New Zealand has its next
general election.
AI judges
According to the statement of Beijing Internet Court, China is the first country to create an internet court or cyber court. Chinese AI judge is a virtual recreation
of an actual female judge. She "will help the court's judges complete
repetitive basic work, including litigation reception, thus enabling
professional practitioners to focus better on their trial work".
Also Estonia plans to employ artificial intelligence to decide small-claim cases of less than €7,000.
COMPAS software is used in USA to assess the risk of recidivism in courts.
Reputation systems
Tim O'Reilly suggested that data sources and reputation systems combined in algorithmic regulation can outperform traditional regulations.
For instance, once taxi-drivers are rated by passengers, the quality of
their services will improve automatically and "drivers who provide poor
service are eliminated". O'Reilly's suggestion is based on control-theoreric concept of feed-back loop — improvements and disimprovements of reputation enforce desired behavior. The usage of feed-loops for the management of social systems is already been suggested in management cybernetics by Stafford Beer before.
The Chinese Social Credit System is closely related to China's mass surveillance systems such as the Skynet, which incorporates facial recognition system, big data analysistechnology and AI. This system provides assessments of trustworthiness of individuals and businesses. Among behavior, which is considered as misconduct by the system, jaywalking and failing to correctly sort personal waste are cited. Behavior listed as positive factors of credit ratings includes donating blood, donating to charity, volunteering for community services, and so on.
Chinese Social Credit System enables punishments of "untrustworthy"
citizens like denying purchase of tickets and rewards for "trustworthy"
citizen like less waiting time in hospitals and government agencies.
Management of infection
In February 2020, China launched a mobile app to deal with Coronavirus outbreak.
Users are asked to enter their name and ID number. The app is able to
detect 'close contact' using surveillance data and therefore a potential
risk of infection. Every user can also check the status of three other
users. If a potential risk is detected, the app not only recommends
self-quarantine, it also alerts local health officials.
Cellphone data is used to locate infected patients in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and other countries.
In March 2020, the Israeli government enabled security agencies to
track mobile phone data of people supposed to have coronavirus. The
measure was taken to enforce quarantine and protect those who may come
into contact with infected citizens. Also in March 2020, Deutsche Telekom shared private cellphone data with the federal government agency, Robert Koch Institute, in order to research and prevent the spread of the virus. Russia deployed facial recognition technology to detect quarantine breakers. Italian regional health commissioner Giulio Gallera said that "40% of people are continuing to move around anyway", as he has been informed by mobile phone operators. In USA, Europe and UK, Palantir Technologies is taken in charge to provide COVID-19 tracking services.
Blockchain
Cryptocurrencies, Smart Contracts and Decentralized Autonomous Organization are mentioned as means to replace traditional ways of governance. Cryptocurrencies are currencies, which are enabled by algorithms without a governmental central bank. Smart contracts are self-executable contracts, whose objectives are the reduction of need in trusted governmental intermediators, arbitrations and enforcement costs. A decentralized autonomous organization is an organization represented by smart contracts that is transparent, controlled by shareholders and not influenced by a central government.
Criticism
The are potential risks associated with the use of algorithms in government. Those include algorithms becoming susceptible to bias, a lack of transparency in how an algorithm may make decisions, and the accountability for any such decisions. There is also a serious concern that gaming by the regulated parties might occur, once more transparency is brought into the decision making by algorithmic governance, regulated parties might try to manipulate their outcome in own favor and even use adversarial machine learning. According to Harari,
the conflict between democracy and dictatorship is seen as a conflict
of two different data-processing systems — AI and algorithms may swing
the advantage toward the latter by processing enormous amounts of
information centrally. Also, the contributors in the 2019's documentary iHuman express apprehension of "infinitely stable dictatorships" being created by governmental use of AI.
Regulation of algorithmic governance
The Netherlands employed an algorithmic system SyRI (Systeem Risico
Indicatie) to detect citizens perceived being high risk for committing welfare fraud, which quietly flagged thousands of people to investigators. This caused a public protest. The district court of Hague shut down SyRI referencing Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
A smart contract is a computer program
or a transaction protocol which is intended to automatically execute,
control or document legally relevant events and actions according to the
terms of a contract or an agreement.
The objectives of smart contracts are the reduction of need in trusted
intermediators, arbitrations and enforcement costs, fraud losses, as
well as the reduction of malicious and accidental exceptions.
Vending machine is mentioned as the oldest piece of technology equivalent to smart contract implementation. 2014's white paper about cryptocurrencyEthereum mentions Bitcoin protocol to be a weak version of the concept of smart contracts as defined by Nick Szabo.
Since Ethereum, various cryptocurrencies support scripting languages
for more advanced smart contracts between untrusted parties. In the cryptocurrency space, smart contracts are digitally signed in the same way a cryptocurrency transaction is signed. The signing keys are held in a cryptocurrency wallet.
History
Smart contracts were first proposed in the early 1990s by computer scientist, lawyer and cryptographer Nick Szabo,
who coined the term, using it to refer to "a set of promises, specified
in digital form, including protocols within which the parties perform
on these promises". In 1998, the term was utilized to describe objects in rights management service layer of the system The Stanford Infobus, which was a part of Stanford Digital Library Project.
Legal status of smart contracts
A smart contract does not necessarily constitute a valid binding
agreement at law. Some legal academics claim that smart contracts are
not legal agreements, but rather means of performing obligations
deriving from other agreements such as technological means for the automation of payment obligations or obligations consisting in the transfer of tokens or cryptocurrencies.
With the 2015's implementation of Ethereum, based on blockchains,
"smart contract" is mostly used more specifically in the sense of
general purpose computation that takes place on a blockchain or
distributed ledger. Indeed the US National Institute of Standards and
Technology describes a "smart contract" as a "collection of code and
data (sometimes referred to as functions and state) that is deployed
using cryptographically signed transactions on the blockchain network". In this interpretation, used for example by the Ethereum Foundation or IBM,
a smart contract is not necessarily related to the classical concept of
a contract, but can be any kind of computer program. A smart contract
also can be regarded as a secured stored procedure
as its execution and codified effects like the transfer of some value
between parties are strictly enforced and can not be manipulated, after a
transaction with specific contract details is stored into a blockchain
or distributed ledger. That's because the actual execution of contracts
is controlled and audited by the platform, not by any arbitrary
server-side programs connecting to the platform.
In 2017, by implementing the Decree on Development of Digital Economy, Belarus
has become the first-ever country to legalize smart contracts.
Belarusian lawyer Denis Aleinikov is considered to be the author of a
smart contract legal concept introduced by the decree.
In 2018, a US Senate
report said: "While smart contracts might sound new, the concept is
rooted in basic contract law. Usually, the judicial system adjudicates
contractual disputes and enforces terms, but it is also common to have
another arbitration method, especially for international transactions.
With smart contracts, a program enforces the contract built into the
code." A number of states in the US have passed legislation on the use of smart contracts, such as Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee, and Wyoming.
Smart contracts should therefore be distinguished from smart
legal contracts. The latter refers to a traditional natural language
legally-binding agreement which has certain terms expressed and
implemented in machine readable code.
Notable examples of implementation of smart contracts include the following:
Bitcoin provides a Turing-incomplete script language that allows the creation of custom smart contracts on top of Bitcoin like multisignature accounts, payment channels, escrows, time locks, atomic cross-chain trading, oracles, or multi-party lottery with no operator.
Ethereum implements a Turing-complete language on its blockchain, a prominent smart contract framework.
Ripple (Codius), smart contract development halted in 2015
DAML is a smart contract language implementation based on GHC.
Blockchain domains are another emerging technology powered by smart contracts. They are built from a collection of complex smart contracts.
Replicated titles and contract execution
In 1998, Szabo proposed that smart contract infrastructure can be
implemented by replicated asset registries and contract execution using cryptographic hash chains and Byzantine fault-tolerant replication. Askemos implemented this approach
in 2002 using Scheme
(later adding SQLite) as contract script language.
One proposal for using bitcoin for replicated asset registration and contract execution is called "colored coins".
Replicated titles for potentially arbitrary forms of property, along
with replicated contract execution, are implemented in different
projects.
As of 2015, UBS was experimenting with "smart bonds" that use the bitcoinblockchain
in which payment streams could hypothetically be fully automated, creating a self-paying instrument.
Security issues
A blockchain-based smart contract is visible to all users of said
blockchain. However, this leads to a situation where bugs, including
security holes, are visible to all yet may not be quickly fixed. Such an attack, difficult to fix quickly, was successfully executed on The DAO in June 2016, draining US$50 million in Ether while developers attempted to come to a solution that would gain consensus.
The DAO program had a time delay in place before the hacker could
remove the funds; a hard fork of the Ethereum software was done to claw
back the funds from the attacker before the time limit expired.
Issues in Ethereum smart contracts, in particular, include
ambiguities and easy-but-insecure constructs in its contract language
Solidity, compiler bugs, Ethereum Virtual Machine bugs, attacks on the
blockchain network, the immutability of bugs and that there is no
central source documenting known vulnerabilities, attacks and
problematic constructs.
Ubuntu is released every six months, with long-term support (LTS) releases every two years. As of 23 April 2020, the latest release and also the most recent long-term support release is 20.04 ("Focal Fossa"), which is supported until 2025 under public support and until 2030 as a paid option.
Ubuntu is developed by Canonical, and a community of other developers, under a meritocratic governance model.
Canonical provides security updates and support for each Ubuntu
release, starting from the release date and until the release reaches
its designated end-of-life (EOL) date. Canonical generates revenue through the sale of premium services related to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is named after the Nguni philosophy of ubuntu, which Canonical indicates means "humanity to others" with a connotation of "I am what I am because of who we all are".
History
Ubuntu is built on Debian's
architecture and infrastructure, and comprises Linux server, desktop
and discontinued phone and tablet operating system versions. Ubuntu releases updated versions predictably every six months, and each release receives free support for nine months (eighteen months prior to 13.04) with security fixes, high-impact bug fixes and conservative, substantially beneficial low-risk bug fixes. The first release was in October 2004.
Current long-term support
(LTS) releases are supported for five years, and are released every two
years. Since the release of Ubuntu 6.06, every fourth release receives long-term support (LTS).
Long-term support includes updates for new hardware, security patches
and updates to the 'Ubuntu stack' (cloud computing infrastructure).
The first LTS releases were supported for three years on the desktop
and five years on the server; since Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, desktop support
for LTS releases was increased to five years as well.
LTS releases get regular point releases with support for new hardware
and integration of all the updates published in that series to date.
Ubuntu packages are based on packages from Debian's unstable
branch, which are synchronised every six months. Both distributions use
Debian's debpackage format and package management tools (e.g. APT and Ubuntu Software). Debian and Ubuntu packages are not necessarily binary compatible with each other, however, so packages may need to be rebuilt from source to be used in Ubuntu.
Many Ubuntu developers are also maintainers of key packages within
Debian. Ubuntu cooperates with Debian by pushing changes back to Debian, although there has been criticism that this does not happen often enough. Ian Murdock,
the founder of Debian, had expressed concern about Ubuntu packages
potentially diverging too far from Debian to remain compatible. Before release, packages are imported from Debian unstable continuously and merged with Ubuntu-specific modifications. One month before release, imports are frozen, and packagers then work to ensure that the frozen features interoperate well together.
Ubuntu is currently funded by Canonical Ltd. On 8 July 2005, Mark Shuttleworth
and Canonical announced the creation of the Ubuntu Foundation and
provided an initial funding of US$10 million. The purpose of the
foundation is to ensure the support and development
for all future versions of Ubuntu. Mark Shuttleworth describes the
foundation goal as to ensure the continuity of the Ubuntu project.
On 12 March 2009, Ubuntu announced developer support for third-party cloud management platforms, such as those used at Amazon EC2.
GNOME 3 has been the default GUI for Ubuntu Desktop, while Unity is still the default in old versions, up to 18.04 LTS.
Shuttleworth wrote on 8 April 2017, "We will invest in Ubuntu GNOME
with the intent of delivering a fantastic all-GNOME desktop. We're
helping the Ubuntu GNOME team, not creating something different or
competitive with that effort. While I am passionate about the design
ideas in Unity, and hope GNOME may be more open to them now, I think we
should respect the GNOME design leadership by delivering GNOME the way
GNOME wants it delivered. Our role in that, as usual, will be to make
sure that upgrades, integration, security, performance and the full
experience are fantastic." Shuttleworth also mentioned that Canonical will cease development for Ubuntu Phone, Tablet, and convergence.
32-biti386
processors have been supported up to Ubuntu 18.04, but users "will not
be allowed to upgrade to Ubuntu 18.10 as dropping support for that
architecture is being evaluated". It was decided to support "legacy software", i.e. select 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS.
Features
A default installation of Ubuntu contains a wide range of software that includes LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Transmission, and several lightweight games such as Sudoku and chess. Many additional software packages are accessible from the built in Ubuntu Software (previously Ubuntu Software Center) as well as any other APT-based package management tools. Many additional software packages that are no longer installed by default, such as Evolution, GIMP, Pidgin, and Synaptic, are still accessible in the repositories still installable by the main tool or by any other APT-based package management tool. Cross-distribution snap packages and flatpaks are also available,
that both allow installing software, such as some of Microsoft's
software, in most of the major Linux operating systems (such as any
currently supported Ubuntu version and in Fedora). The default file
manager is GNOME Files, formerly called Nautilus.
All of the application software installed by default is free
software. In addition, Ubuntu redistributes some hardware drivers that
are available only in binary format, but such packages are clearly
marked in the restricted component.
Security
Ubuntu aims to be secure by default. User programs run with low privileges and cannot corrupt the operating system or other users' files. For increased security, the sudo tool is used to assign temporary privileges for performing administrative tasks, which allows the root account
to remain locked and helps prevent inexperienced users from
inadvertently making catastrophic system changes or opening security
holes. Polkit is also being widely implemented into the desktop.
Most network ports are closed by default to prevent hacking. A built-in firewall allows end-users who install network servers to control access. A GUI (GUI for Uncomplicated Firewall) is available to configure it. Ubuntu compiles its packages using GCC features such as PIE and buffer overflow protection to harden its software. These extra features greatly increase security at the performance expense of 1% in 32-bit and 0.01% in 64-bit.
Ubuntu also supports full disk encryption as well as encryption of the home and Private directories.
Installation
The system requirements vary among Ubuntu products. For the Ubuntu desktop release 20.04 LTS, a PC with at least 2 GHz dual-core processor, 4 GB of RAM and 25 GB of free disk space is recommended. For less powerful computers, there are other Ubuntu distributions such as Lubuntu and Xubuntu. Ubuntu supports the ARM architecture. It is also available on Power ISA, while older PowerPC architecture was at one point unofficially supported, and now newer Power ISA CPUs (POWER8) are supported.
Live images are the typical way for users to assess and subsequently install Ubuntu. These can be downloaded as a disk image (.iso) and subsequently burnt to a DVD and booted, or run via UNetbootin directly from a USB drive (making, respectively, a live DVD or live USB medium). Running Ubuntu in this way is slower than running it from a hard drive,
but does not alter the computer unless specifically instructed by the
user. If the user chooses to boot the live image rather than execute an
installer at boot time, there is still the option to then use an
installer called Ubiquity to install Ubuntu once booted into the live environment. Disk images of all current and past versions are available for download at the Ubuntu web site.
Various third-party programs such as Reconstructor are available to
create customized copies of the Ubuntu Live DVDs (or CDs). "Minimal CDs"
are available (for server use) that fit on a CD.
Additionally, USB flash drive installations can be used to boot Ubuntu and Kubuntu
in a way that allows permanent saving of user settings and portability
of the USB-installed system between physical machines (however, the
computers' BIOS must support booting from USB). In newer versions of Ubuntu, the Ubuntu Live USB creator can be used to install Ubuntu on a USB drive (with or without a live CD or DVD). Creating a bootable USB drive with persistence is as simple as dragging a slider to determine how much space to reserve for persistence; for this, Ubuntu employs casper.
The desktop edition can also be installed using the Netboot image (a.k.a. netboot tarball) which uses the debian-installer
and allows certain specialist installations of Ubuntu: setting up
automated deployments, upgrading from older installations without
network access, LVM or RAID
partitioning, installs on systems with less than about 256 MB of RAM
(although low-memory systems may not be able to run a full desktop
environment reasonably).
Package classification and support
Ubuntu divides most software into four domains to reflect differences in licensing and the degree of support available. Some unsupported applications receive updates from community members, but not from Canonical Ltd.
Non-free software is usually unsupported (Multiverse), but some
exceptions (Restricted) are made for important non-free software.
Supported non-free software includes device drivers that can be used to
run Ubuntu on some current hardware, such as binary-only graphics carddrivers.
The level of support in the Restricted category is more limited than
that of Main, because the developers may not have access to the source code. It is intended that Main and Restricted should contain all software needed for a complete desktop environment.
Alternative programs for the same tasks and programs for specialized
applications are placed in the Universe and Multiverse categories.
In addition to the above, in which the software does not receive new features after an initial release, Ubuntu Backports is an officially recognized repository for backporting newer software from later versions of Ubuntu.
The repository is not comprehensive; it consists primarily of
user-requested packages, which are approved if they meet quality
guidelines. Backports receives no support at all from Canonical, and is
entirely community-maintained.
The -updates repository provides stable release updates
(SRU) of Ubuntu and are generally installed through update-manager. Each
release is given its own -updates repository (e.g. intrepid-updates).
The repository is supported by Canonical Ltd. for packages in main and
restricted, and by the community for packages in universe and
multiverse. All updates to the repository must meet certain requirements
and go through the -proposed repository before being made available to the public. Updates are scheduled to be available until the end of life for the release.
In addition to the -updates repository, the unstable -proposed
repository contains uploads which must be confirmed before being copied
into -updates. All updates must go through this process to ensure that
the patch does truly fix the bug and there is no risk of regression. Updates in -proposed are confirmed by either Canonical or members of the community.
Canonical's partner repository lets vendors of proprietary
software deliver their products to Ubuntu users at no cost through the
same familiar tools for installing and upgrading software.
The software in the partner repository is officially supported with
security and other important updates by its respective vendors.
Canonical supports the packaging of the software for Ubuntu and provides guidance to vendors. The partner repository is disabled by default and can be enabled by the user. Some popular products distributed via the partner repository as of 28 April 2013 are Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader and Skype. The free software Wine compatibility layer can be installed to allow users to run Windows software.
Package Archives
A Personal Package Archive (PPA) is a software repository for uploading source packages to be built and published as an Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) repository by Launchpad. While the term is used exclusively within Ubuntu, Launchpad's host, Canonical, envisions adoption beyond the Ubuntu community.
Additionally, third-party application suites are available for purchase through Ubuntu Software, including many games such as Braid and Oil Rush, software for DVD playback and media codecs.
Releases
Each Ubuntu release has a version number that consists of the year and month number of the release. For example, the first release was Ubuntu 4.10 as it was released on 20 October 2004.
Ubuntu releases are also given alliterativecode names, using an adjective and an animal (e.g. "Xenial Xerus").
With the exception of the first two releases, code names are in
alphabetical order, allowing a quick determination of which release is
newer, at least until restarting the cycle with the release of Artful Aardvark in October 2017.
Commonly, Ubuntu releases are referred to using only the adjective
portion of the code name; for example, the 18.04 LTS release is commonly
known as "Bionic". Releases are timed to be approximately one month
after GNOME releases.
Upgrades from one LTS release to the next LTS release (e.g. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and then to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS) are supported,
while upgrades from non-LTS have only supported upgrade to the next
release, regardless of its LTS status (e.g. Ubuntu 15.10 to Ubuntu 16.04
LTS).
LTS releases have optional extended security maintenance (ESM) support available, including 14.04 "Trusty" that is otherwise out of public support, adding support for that version up to 2022.
Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat),
was released on 10 October 2010 (10–10–10). This departed from the
traditional schedule of releasing at the end of October in order to get
"the perfect 10", and makes a playful reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books, since, in binary, 101010 equals decimal 42, the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything" within the series.
Ubuntu (16.04.5 and later) requires a 2 GB or larger installation medium. However, there is an option to install it with a Minimal CD.
Variants
Ubuntu family tree
Ubuntu Desktop (formally named as Ubuntu Desktop Edition, and simply
called Ubuntu) is the variant officially recommended for most users. It
is designed for desktop and laptop PCs and officially supported by
Canonical. From Ubuntu 17.10, GNOME Shell
is the default desktop environment. From Ubuntu 11.04 to Ubuntu 17.04,
the Unity desktop interface was default. A number of other variants are
distinguished simply by each featuring a different desktop environment. LXQt and Xfce are often recommended for use with older PCs that may have less memory and processing power available.
Official distributions
These
Ubuntu variants simply install an initial set of packages different
from the original Ubuntu, but since they draw additional packages and
updates from the same repositories as Ubuntu, all of the same software
is available for each of them.
Lubuntu is a project that is an official derivative of the Ubuntu
operating system that is "lighter, less resource hungry and more
energy-efficient", using the LXQtdesktop environment (used LXDE before 18.10).
An official derivative of Ubuntu using MATE, a desktop environment forked from the now-defunct GNOME 2 code base, with an emphasis on the desktop metaphor.
Ubuntu Server
Ubuntu has a server edition that uses the same APT repositories as the Ubuntu Desktop Edition. The differences between them are the absence of an X Window environment
in a default installation of the server edition (although one can
easily be installed, including Unity, GNOME, KDE or Xfce), and some
alterations to the installation process. The server edition uses a screen-mode, character-based interface
for the installation, instead of a graphical installation process. This
enables installation on machines with a serial or "dumb terminal"
interface without graphics support.
The server edition (like the desktop version) supports hardware virtualization and can be run in a virtual machine, either inside a host operating system or in a hypervisor, such as VMwareESXi, Oracle, CitrixXenServer, MicrosoftHyper-V, QEMU, a Kernel-based Virtual Machine, or any other IBM PC compatible emulator or virtualizer. AppArmor security module for the Linux kernel is used by default on key software packages, and the firewall is extended to common services used by the operating system.
Has minimum requirements of: 112 MB, while a recommended minimum (without desktop) is 512 MB RAM, and 1 GB RAM for "live server", 300 MHz CPU, and 1 GB disk space (2.5 GB for all features to be installed).
It has up-to-date versions of key server software pre-installed,
including: Tomcat (v8), PostgreSQL (v9.5), Docker v(1.10), Puppet
(v3.8.5), Qemu (v2.5), Libvirt (v1.3.1), LXC (v2.0), and MySQL (v5.6).
An official derivative of Ubuntu using Xfce.
Xubuntu is intended for use on less-powerful computers or those who
seek a highly efficient desktop environment on faster systems, and uses
mostly GTK+ applications.
Ubuntu had some official distributions that have been discontinued, such as Edubuntu; including some previously supported by Canonical, like Ubuntu Touch, that is now maintained by volunteers (UBports Community).
Cloud computing
Cloud Ubuntu Orange Box
Ubuntu
offers Ubuntu Cloud Images which are pre-installed disk images that
have been customized by Ubuntu engineering to run on cloud-platforms
such as Amazon EC2, OpenStack, Microsoft Azure and LXC. Ubuntu is also prevalent on VPS platforms such as DigitalOcean.
Ubuntu has support for OpenStack, with Eucalyptus to OpenStack migration tools added by Canonical. Ubuntu 11.10 added focus on OpenStack as the Ubuntu's preferred IaaS offering though Eucalyptus is also supported. Another major focus is Canonical Juju
for provisioning, deploying, hosting, managing, and orchestrating
enterprise data center infrastructure services, by, with, and for the
Ubuntu Server.
Eucalyptus interface
Adoption and reception
Installed base
As Ubuntu is distributed freely and there is no registration process, Ubuntu usage can only be roughly estimated. In 2015, Canonical's Ubuntu Insights page stated "Ubuntu now has over 40 million desktop users and counting".
W3Techs Web Technology Surveys estimated in April 2020 that:
Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution for running web servers, used by 39.6% of "all the websites" they analyze, and Ubuntu alone powers more websites than Microsoft Windows.
All Linux distributions in total power well over twice the number of
hosts as Windows for websites based on W3Techs numbers. Ubuntu and
Debian only (which Ubuntu is based on, with the same package manager and
thus administered the same way) make up 56.6% of all Linux
distributions for web serving use; the usage of Ubuntu surpassed Debian
(for such server use) in May 2016.
Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution among the top 1000
sites and gains around 500 of the top 10 million websites per day.
W3Techs analyzes the top 10 million websites only.
Wikimedia Foundation data (based on user agent)
for September 2013 shows that Ubuntu generated the most page requests
to Wikimedia sites, including Wikipedia, among recognizable Linux
distributions.
Large-scale deployments
The public sector has also adopted Ubuntu. As of January 2009, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Macedonia deployed more than 180,000 Ubuntu-based classroom desktops, and has encouraged every student in the country to use Ubuntu-powered computer workstations; the Spanish school system has 195,000 Ubuntu desktops. The French police, having already started using open-source software in 2005 by replacing Microsoft Office with OpenOffice.org, decided to transition to Ubuntu from Windows XP after the release of Windows Vista in 2006. By March 2009, the Gendarmerie Nationale had already switched 5000 workstations to Ubuntu.
Based on the success of that transition, it planned to switch 15,000
more over by the end of 2009 and to have switched all 90,000
workstations over by 2015 (GendBuntu project).
Lt. Colonel Guimard announced that the move was very easy and allowed
for a 70% saving on the IT budget without having to reduce its
capabilities. In 2011, Ubuntu 10.04 was adopted by the Indian justice system.
The Government of Kerala adopted Ubuntu for the legislators in Kerala
and the government schools of Kerala began to use customized IT@School Project
Ubuntu 10.04 which contains specially created software for students.
Previously, Windows was used in the schools. Textbooks were also remade
with an Ubuntu syllabus and was used in schools as of 2011.
The city of Munich, Germany, forked Kubuntu 10.04 LTS and created LiMux for use on the city's computers.
After originally planning to migrate 12,000 desktop computers to LiMux,
it was announced in December 2013 that the project had completed
successfully with the migration of 14,800 out of 15,500 desktop
computers,
but still keeping about 5000 Windows clients for unported applications.
In February 2017 the majority coalition decided, against heavy protest
from the opposition, to evaluate the migration back to Windows, after Microsoft had decided to move its company headquarters to Munich. Governing Mayor Dieter Reiter cited lack of compatibility with systems outside of the administrative sector, such as requiring a governmental mail server to send e-mails to his personal smartphone, as reasons for the return, but has been criticised for evaluating administrative IT based on private and business standards.
In March 2012, the government of Iceland launched a project to
get all public institutions using free and open-source software.
Already, several government agencies and schools have adopted Ubuntu.
The government cited cost savings as a big factor for the decision, and
also stated that open-source software avoids vendor lock-in.
A 12-month project was launched to migrate the biggest public
institutions in Iceland to using open-source software, and help ease the
migration for others. US president Barack Obama's successful campaign for re-election in 2012 used Ubuntu in its IT department. In August 2014, the city of Turin, Italy, announced its migration from Windows XP to Ubuntu for the 8,300 desktop computers used by the municipality, becoming the first city in Italy to adopt Ubuntu.
Reception
Ubuntu was awarded the Reader Award for best Linux distribution at the 2005 LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in London, received favorable reviews in online and print publications, and has won InfoWorld's 2007 Bossie Award for Best Open Source Client OS. In early 2008, PC World
named Ubuntu the "best all-around Linux distribution available today",
though it criticized the lack of an integrated desktop effects manager.
Chris DiBona, the program manager for open-source software at Google,
said "I think Ubuntu has captured people's imaginations around the Linux
desktop," and "If there is a hope for the Linux desktop, it would be
them". As of January 2009, almost half of Google's 20,000 employees used Goobuntu, a slightly modified version of Ubuntu. In 2012, ZDNet reported that Ubuntu was still Google's desktop of choice. In March 2016, Matt Hartley picked a list of best Linux distributions for Datamation; he chose Ubuntu as number one.
In 2008, Jamie Hyneman, co-host of the American television series MythBusters, advocated Linux (giving the example of Ubuntu) as a solution to software bloat. Other celebrity users of Ubuntu include science fiction writer Cory Doctorow and actor Stephen Fry.
In January 2014, the UK's authority for computer security, CESG, reported that Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
was "the only operating system that passes as many as 9 out of 12
requirements without any significant risks", though it was unclear if
any other Linux distributions were tested.
32-bit controversy
In
June 2019, Canonical announced that they would be purging support for
32-bit applications and libraries in Ubuntu 19.10. Because Steam's Linux client depends on these 32-bit libraries, Valve
announced that they would no longer be supporting Ubuntu. After uproar
from the Linux gaming community, Canonical backtracked on this decision
and decided to support select 32-bit libraries. As a result, Valve will
support Ubuntu 19.10 again.
Conformity with European data privacy law
Soon after being introduced, doubts emerged on the conformance of the shopping lens with the European Data Protection Directive.
A petition was later signed by over 50 Ubuntu users and delivered to
Canonical demanding various modifications to the feature in order to
clearly frame it within European law. Canonical did not reply.
In 2013, a formal complaint on the shopping lens was filed with the Information Commissioner's Office
(ICO), the UK data privacy office. Almost one year later the ICO ruled
in favour of Canonical, considering the various improvements introduced
to the feature in the meantime to render it conformable with the Data Protection Directive.
According to European rules, this ruling is automatically effective in
the entirety of the European Union. However, the ruling also made clear
that at the time of introduction the feature was not legal, among other
things, since it was missing a privacy policy statement.
Local communities (LoCos)
In an effort to reach out to users who are less technical, and to
foster a sense of community around the distribution, Local Communities,
better known as "LoCos", have been established throughout the world.
Originally, each country had one LoCo Team. However, in some areas, most
notably the United States and Canada, each state or province may
establish a team. A LoCo Council approves teams based upon their efforts to aid in either the development or the promotion of Ubuntu.
Hardware vendor support
Ubuntu works closely with OEMs to jointly make Ubuntu available on a wide range of devices. A number of vendors offer computers with Ubuntu pre-installed, including Dell, Hasee, Sharp Corporation, and Cirrus7. Specifically, Dell offers the XPS 13 laptop, Developer Edition with Ubuntu pre-installed. Together, Dell, Lenovo, HP, and Acer offer over 200 desktop and over 400 laptop PCs preloaded with Ubuntu. System76 PCs are also sold with Ubuntu. Dell and System76 customers are able to choose between 30-day, three-month, and yearly Ubuntu support plans through Canonical. Dell computers (running Ubuntu 10.04) include extra support for ATI/AMD Video Graphics, Dell Wireless, Fingerprint Readers, HDMI, Bluetooth, DVD playback (using LinDVD), and MP3/WMA/WMV. Asus is also selling some Eee PCs with Ubuntu pre-installed and announced "many more" models running Ubuntu for 2011. Vodafone has made available a notebook for the South-African market called "Webbook".
Dell sells computers (initially Inspiron 14R and 15R laptops)
pre-loaded with Ubuntu in India and China, with 850 and 350 retail
outlets respectively.
Starting in 2013, Alienware began offering its X51 model gaming desktop
pre-installed with Ubuntu at a lower price than if it were
pre-installed with Windows.
While Linux already works on IBM's mainframe system (Linux on IBM Z), IBM in collaboration with Canonical (and SUSE; "Linux Foundation will form a new Open Mainframe Project") announced Ubuntu support for their z/Architecture for the first time (IBM claimed their system, IBM zEnterprise System, version z13, the most powerful computer in the world in 2015; it was then the largest computer by transistor count; again claimed fastest in 2017 with IBM z14), at the time of their "biggest code drop" ("LinuxOne") in Linux history.
In early 2015, Intel launched the Intel Compute Stick small form factor computer available preloaded with Ubuntu or Windows operating systems.
Windows subsystem
In March 2016, Microsoft announced that it would support the Ubuntu userland on top of the Windows 10kernel by implementing the Linux system calls as a subsystem (and in 2019 Microsoft announced the new WSL 2 subsystem that includes a Linux kernel, that Canonical announced will have "full support for Ubuntu"). It focuses on command-line tools like Bash and is therefore aimed at programmers. As of the Fall Creators Update, this feature is fully available to the public. As of 2019, other Linux variants are also supported.
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