Believe it or not but today is Ubuntu’s 13th birthday!

Thirteen terrific, and occasional tumultuous, years to the day since Mark Shuttleworth sat down to tap out the first Ubuntu release announcement.

Explaining the idea behind the (then newest) Linux distribution, Shuttleworth described it thusly:

“Ubuntu is a new Linux distribution that brings together the extraordinary breadth of Debian with a fast and easy install, regular releases (every six months), a tight selection of excellent packages installed by default and a commitment to security updates with 18 months of security and technical support for every release.”

While that ‘commitment’ to 18 months of security was cut in half back in 2013, the rest of the blurb could just as easily apply to the latest Ubuntu 17.10 release as the first.

Ubuntu 4.10 ‘Warty Warthog’ wasn’t the most glamorous looking release, but it offered open-source enthusiasts of the day a simple, straightforward install from a single CD. The distro was notable for trying to “detect as much hardware as possible, simplifying the X install.”

GNOME 2.8, Firefox 0.9, Evolution 2.0 and OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 were among the software assembled for the formative release.

13 years on and Ubuntu is back to doing what it does best: combining the best free software community has to offer with a careful, considered core base that users can rely on.

So, whatever you’re doing today, why not raise a glass of something to Ubuntu, its developers, and its users.