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

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 !

Wait a sec... Old Ubuntu versions (pre-2010) are still runnable on old PC hardware or using VM software?

I don't like gnome much because it seems slower than other environments especially unity

got worse each year lol

I still remember my dad using Ubuntu 5.04 for making backups every time he formatted a disk.

Ubuntu was always an ambitious project since its inception and had immense potential till they switched back to Gnome 3 and canned almost all projects. Today Ubuntu is an empty shell of its former self, and it makes me incredibly sad.

Ubuntu was the first distribution I ever used, and Ubuntu 10.04 was the first version of it that I used. So when it quickly went from something my old computers could run pretty well, to a desktop called Unity that didn't run well on anything hurt me so much. I learned about more distributions like Mint and Zorin at the time, and I wanted to help everyone I could switch to Linux because it was cooler. But, turns out, it was damn near impossible because everybody had that one thing they needed to do that Linux simply didn't do well. Linux was like a brand new toy when I started using it as a senior in high school. Now, it's just the biggest disappointment I've ever faced as a tech person.

i like gnome 2 over gnome 3

Don't know what the older users meant by "Unity is the best", I mean, I started using ubuntu from gnome, and It works just fine :/

I got hold of Ubuntu CD which came with a magazine. I dont remember the version. It was Hardy heron, I believe. Back in 2006/7.i did not bother to learn Linux much initially for some years. It was like install Ubuntu and check some site directing what to do after installing ubuntu. Copy paste stuff.. Then at some point it became my main os. And I started learning.. Here I am in 2021,running pop os,arch,manjaro and passing through graphics and running windows on vm if and when needed.... 😂 Thank you Ubuntu!

My favorite Ubuntu ever was the one they sent you in a CD thru mail, it was my first experience with Linux , also knoppix was another great distro .i had to switch when they change to gnome 3 .

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.

My first Ubuntu distro was 10.04 lots 😊

Love it or hate it, you can't ignore it

linux for humans

It’s weird watching this video in 2021, when the “most recent” Ubuntu release in this video reached it’s end-of-life over a year ago.

2004-2014: Ubuntu - "Linux for all"
2015-now: Ubuntu - "I can' install Debian"

Rumour: Microsoft will buy Ubuntu???

I have 10.04 on an old laptop just to play around with every now and then.

I miss unity (2)

Is it safe to say now that they actually succeeded? I mean, the Desktop experience has come a loooong way.

👍👍👍👍👍

👌👌👌👌👌

Unity was a huge mistake... Released on the wrong time, not polished, competing against gnome... They should stick to Gnome 3 from the beginning. Now they have to maintain this frankenstein gnome in order not to hurt their loyal users... I like gnome as it is, I have no reason to go back to Ubuntu now.

Gnome is 2.8 looks like today’s raspbian

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

ubuntu 20.04 is very good :)

You are using Virtual Box right?
That bar below annoys me a lot :)

Kubuntu looks better for starters

does anyone have an analysis and comparison of all ubuntu os versions in terms of CPU allocation scheme and Virtual memory?

my favorite Linux !

my first distro is linux mint cinnamon,but to be honest sometimes i am not feels happy because "mint" is too biased to tell it as similar ui to windows,and from my experience No,its similar to but not similar to modern windows starting from WINDOWS7 its feels more like better version of windows vista,so from my prespective de that looks like traditional windows is :

Xfce/lxqt/de kde 3 : windows xp or windows 2000 or windows 9x or windows classic like ui

chinnamon : better version of WINDOWS vista

kde 4 : windows vista/7 like ui

plasma/kde 5 : better version of windows 10 and modern version of windows 7

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.

6.6 and 8.4 was the best one. There are reasons why they become the gold standard .. and reasons why they lost it. With Yaru coming in 20.4 (dark folder icons) i have to say i miss the old brown theme.

I honestly really like Ubuntu's interface. It was best with Unity though

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.

Man, I remember trying out linux for the first time in my life back in 2012 and it was ubuntu. I hated it. I literally called it a "retarded version of MacOS". Then removed it and tried linux mint the cinnamon version and liked it a little better than ubuntu, but still didn't want to switch from windows. Left forever back to windows until 6 months ago after getting tired of shitwindows. Now, running manjaro and man, linux has come a long ways. It is now superior to windows and MacOS in every way. Wow.

I came along after Unity was a thing and I still miss GNOME 2
Those three menus were weapons from a more civilized age

I started using Linux as a daily driver with Ubuntu 8.10, I dual booted it with Windows, and hardly ever needed to boot into Windows
Sadly I have been using Windows exclusively since 2014 for video production, wish Adobe would port its creative suite to Linux, then I'd never look back

I use arch btw.

I am using Ubuntu 19.04.

First version I used was 14.04. I had a netbook with Windows 7 Starter that would BSOD at boot, so I used an Ubuntu live USB with persistence.

Compiz effects rules 😎.

oh 8.04! I wish I had that original CD now.

My first Ubuntu was 10.10

I tried Ubuntu 5.04 on a Pentium II, I had standing around. But I really started using Ubuntu in a dual boot with Windows Vista in 2008, when I bought my last new laptop for work. When I retired I stopped using Windows and went full time to Ubuntu. Till 2014 I used it on a Pentium 4, from 2014 till May 2019 I used it on my 4 core Phenom II and now I'm on Ubuntu 19.04 with my Ryzen 3 2200G. I love Ubuntu, it is boringly reliable.

That was... brief, and in very little detail. Why not add more exposition about each release?

16.04 was my first (still new to linux)

By the way, I use Arch