Canonical generates revenue through the sale of premium services related to Ubuntu and donations from those who download the Ubuntu software. Canonical provides security updates and support for each Ubuntu release, starting from the release date until the release reaches its designated end-of-life (EOL) date.
An upgrade to Ubuntu is released every six months, with long-term support (LTS) releases every two years. As of October 2023, the most-recent release is 23.10 ('Mantic Minotaur'), and the current long-term support release is 22.04 ('Jammy Jellyfish').Īs with other Linux distributions, all of the editions can run on a computer alone, or in a virtual machine.
The operating system is developed by the British company Canonical, and a community of other developers, under a meritocratic governance model. Ubuntu is officially released in multiple editions: Desktop, Server, and Core for Internet of things devices and robots. Ubuntu ( / uː ˈ b uː n t uː/ oo- BOON-too) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Free software + some proprietary device drivers
