Ubuntu and the Desktop Surge
2004-2008. Mark Shuttleworth pours millions into making Linux usable. Ubuntu reshapes the entire distro landscape. Fedora detaches from Red Hat to become the leading-edge community release.
10 moments in this segment.
- — Fedora. Founder: Red Hat · Based on: Red Hat Linux · First release: 2003 When Red Hat retired Red Hat Linux in 2003 to focus on Enterprise Linux, Fedora became the open community release — six-month cadence, latest GNOME, latest kernel, leading-edge packages. Linus Torvalds famously runs Fedora.
- — Ubuntu. Founder: Mark Shuttleworth · Canonical · Based on: Debian · First release: 2004 Mark Shuttleworth bankrolled Canonical in 2004 to make Linux easy enough for a non-developer. Ubuntu 4.10 ("Warty Warthog") shipped October 20 2004 with the polish, the six-month cadence, the named releases, and the famous ShipIt program (free physical CDs mailed worldwide). For a decade it was synonymous with "desktop Linux."
- — CentOS. Founder: cAOs Linux team · Based on: Red Hat Enterprise Linux · First release: 2004 CentOS 2.1 shipped in May 2004 as a binary-compatible rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux — same packages, no support contract, free. Became the default web-server OS for a generation of sysadmins. Red Hat acquired the project in 2014; killed CentOS Linux in 2020 in favor of CentOS Stream (which leads RHEL rather than tailing it).
- — openSUSE. Founder: Novell · Based on: SUSE · First release: 2005 When Novell acquired SUSE in 2003, they opened the development process in 2005 as the openSUSE project. KDE-first by default, but the YaST installer + Zypper package manager keep the unique European-distro DNA visible.
- — Kubuntu. Founder: Jonathan Riddell · Based on: Ubuntu · First release: 2005 KDE-default Ubuntu derivative released October 2005. For 14 years gave KDE users an Ubuntu-quality polished experience without abandoning the K-applications. Canonical drops it from official support in 2012; the community keeps it alive.
- — Linux Mint. Founder: Clément Lefèbvre · Based on: Ubuntu · First release: 2006 Clément Lefèbvre launched Mint in 2006 as a friendlier Ubuntu — multimedia codecs preinstalled, the Cinnamon desktop instead of GNOME 3, a tamer release cadence anchored on Ubuntu LTS. By 2017 it was the most-downloaded desktop distro on DistroWatch.
- — Xubuntu. Founder: Canonical · Based on: Ubuntu · First release: 2006 Ubuntu derivative shipping the XFCE desktop instead of GNOME. Designed for older or low-powered machines. Released alongside the main Ubuntu since 6.06.
- — Lubuntu. Founder: Mario Behling · Based on: Ubuntu · First release: 2009 Ubuntu derivative for low-spec machines, originally shipping LXDE then LXQt. The go-to install for resurrecting old laptops and ARM single-board computers.
- — elementary OS (early). Founder: Daniel Foré · Based on: Ubuntu · First release: 2011 See Section V — but this 2011 early release pioneered the "macOS-style polish on Linux" pattern that Pop!_OS, Zorin, and others later followed.
- — Ubuntu MATE. Founder: Martin Wimpress · Based on: Ubuntu · First release: 2014 When Ubuntu replaced GNOME 2 with Unity (2010), many users mourned the old desktop. Wimpress shipped Ubuntu MATE in 2014 — the GNOME 2 fork "MATE" running on top of an Ubuntu base. The conservatives' choice.
