Ubuntu Linux Review
I use Ubuntu Linux both client side (for personal use) and server side (in my organization). I find the operating system very …
Overview
What is Ubuntu?
Ubuntu Linux is a Linux-based operating system for personal computers, tablets and smartphones. There is also a Server version which is used on physical or virtual servers in the data center.
Recent Reviews
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Reviewer Pros & Cons
CTO (Chief Technical Officer)
SIBIN Tech Solutions (Information Technology & Services, 51-200 employees)
Product Demos
Create Ubuntu Linux VM In Azure Portal
YouTube
Linux Basics: How to change Screen Resolution in Linux (Command Line)
YouTube
Linux Basics: How to Sudo in Linux without Password
YouTube
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Ubuntu?
Ubuntu is an open-source operating system developed by Canonical Ltd. According to the vendor, it aims to provide a secure, reliable, and customizable platform for desktops, servers, and cloud computing. It is said to be suitable for businesses of all sizes and widely used by IT professionals, software developers, system administrators, educational institutions, and researchers. With its comprehensive application suite, multi-language support, and highly customizable interface, Ubuntu is said to cater to the diverse needs of various professions and industries, including IT, software development, education, and research.
Key Features
Secure Operating System: According to the vendor, Ubuntu is known for its robust security features, including a built-in firewall and virus protection software. It offers long-term support releases with five years of security patches and updates, ensuring ongoing protection against emerging threats.
Open Source Software: The vendor states that Ubuntu is an open-source operating system, freely available for download, use, and sharing. It fosters transparency, customization, and continuous improvement through community contributions, making it a collaborative platform.
Comprehensive Application Suite: Ubuntu comes pre-installed with a wide range of essential applications, including an office suite, web browsers, email clients, and media players. Users can access thousands of additional applications through the Ubuntu Software Centre, expanding the system's functionality.
Multi-Language Support: According to the vendor, Ubuntu is fully translated into over 50 languages, promoting inclusivity and global reach. It includes essential assistive technologies to ensure accessibility for individuals with disabilities, enabling users to work and collaborate in their preferred language.
Highly Customizable Interface: Ubuntu offers a visually appealing interface that can be tailored to individual preferences. Users can choose from various themes, wallpapers, and desktop environments, and it supports high-definition displays, touchscreen capabilities, and touchpad gestures.
Wide Hardware Compatibility: Canonical collaborates with major hardware manufacturers to ensure compatibility with a wide range of laptops, workstations, and servers. Ubuntu is certified to work out-of-the-box with various hardware configurations, providing a reliable and hassle-free experience.
Cloud and Server Capabilities: Ubuntu is widely used in data centers and cloud environments, powering servers and virtual machines. It is claimed to be the most popular operating system in the cloud, offering scalability and flexibility for cloud-native applications and large-scale server deployments.
Internet of Things (IoT) Support: Ubuntu provides Ubuntu Core, an optimized version for IoT devices. It is fully containerized, has a low footprint, and supports advanced security features. Ubuntu Core is widely used in various IoT applications, including robotics, smart homes, and gateways.
Livepatch Service: Ubuntu Pro includes the Livepatch service, which eliminates the need for unplanned maintenance windows by patching the Linux kernel while the system runs. It reduces downtime and ensures continuous service with automatic kernel security hotfixes without rebooting.
Expanded Security Maintenance (ESM): Ubuntu offers security maintenance for the entire collection of software packages shipped with Ubuntu, providing continuous vulnerability management for critical, high, and medium CVEs. It includes security updates and kernel livepatching for high and critical CVEs, offering 10 years of security coverage for Ubuntu LTS releases.
Ubuntu Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Ubuntu Linux is a Linux-based operating system for personal computers, tablets and smartphones. There is also a Server version which is used on physical or virtual servers in the data center.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.6.
The most common users of Ubuntu are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(294)
Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
Ubuntu Linux is a versatile operating system that has found its place in a wide range of industries and applications. Organizations across various sectors rely on Ubuntu for their internal applications, hosting servers, local development workstations, and virtual machines. The platform provides a consistent and efficient platform for development and IT departments, ensuring seamless deployment and maintenance of workstations and servers. Additionally, Ubuntu's popularity extends to data science projects, where it serves as an ideal choice for web app deployment.
Many users appreciate Ubuntu's maturity and robust community support, making it their preferred operating system for Machine Learning Engineering needs. Ubuntu's extensive support for Machine Learning packages further solidifies its position as the go-to solution for organizations requiring such capabilities. Moreover, Ubuntu finds application in specific system requirements in clouds and proof-of-concept projects, where it is used in virtual machines and servers.
Ubuntu's appeal transcends organizational needs as well. Many professionals and employees prefer Ubuntu over other operating systems for work purposes, allowing them to have a diverse fleet of devices for testing and bug isolation. Engineers benefit from Ubuntu's streamlined automated deployment capabilities for applications and client apps. Furthermore, Ubuntu shines when it comes to serving as web servers, database servers, and various other servers within organizations.
Ubuntu Linux stands out as a stable platform with strong community support, making it the main driver for desktops in many scenarios. Its popularity is rooted in providing a reliable base with long-term support releases, accessibility for new users, easy package management, and a dedicated user base. The advantages of Ubuntu extend beyond desktop use; it is commonly chosen as an operating system for web servers in the Amazon cloud and virtualized instances in corporate networks.
The versatility of Ubuntu Linux becomes evident when considering its varied applications across multiple industries. It is leveraged as the primary operating system for multimedia rooms to manage AV materials and handle streaming video or television recording. Additionally, Ubuntu finds purpose in open-source solutions, security purposes, and other appropriate Linux situations. Telephony platforms also benefit from Ubuntu's dependable platform, which facilitates the rapid deployment of telephony integrations and web apps while ensuring granular security access to telephony components.
Educational and research institutions embrace Ubuntu Linux for its compatibility with artificial intelligence, programming, robotics, and embedded systems. Furthermore, it is utilized effectively in high-stakes testing, finance, and software development sectors due to its intuitive interface and ease of learning. Ubuntu's lightweight nature, wide software and hardware support, and a large user base make it a preferred choice in various sectors, including high-stakes testing, finance, and software development.
In addition to its wide range of applications, Ubuntu Linux has proven to be a cost-effective solution for both desktop and laptop usage. It offers superior performance and compatibility with Windows and Mac OS, making it an attractive option for individuals seeking an alternative operating system. Ubuntu's lightweight nature allows it to breathe new life into older hardware by providing a modern interface, improved responsiveness, and access to open-source applications.
Notably, Ubuntu Linux serves as a reliable and affordable server platform for businesses. It is commonly used for running important software packages, such as web servers, VPN servers, file servers, and other server appliances. Its stability and modern software versions make it an ideal choice for organizations in need of dependable setup and maintenance.
Ubuntu Linux also thrives in the field of software development. It is widely utilized by developers for various tasks ranging from individual application development to test and production servers. With its developer-friendly features and intuitive interface, Ubuntu simplifies the development process and meets the requirements of software developers effectively.
Moreover, Ubuntu Linux finds application in specific use cases such as multi-tier backup implementations, web server testing, network monitoring, wikis, hosting websites, VPN servers, and more. Its robust capabilities make it an indispensable tool for researchers engaged in computationally intensive work.
Overall, Ubuntu Linux continues to gain popularity due to its versatility across multiple industries and its ability to solve various computing needs. With its stable platform, strong community support, wide range of applications, and cost-effectiveness, Ubuntu offers users a reliable operating system that enhances productivity and extends the lifespan of devices.
Efficient and Resourceful: Users have consistently praised Ubuntu Linux for its efficiency and resourcefulness, allowing them to extend the life of aging hardware and meet smaller demands such as word processing and web browsing. Several users have stated that Ubuntu has helped them save money by eliminating the need for expensive hardware upgrades.
Large Support Community: The vast user base of Ubuntu has resulted in a large support community that is easily accessible. Many users appreciate the convenience of being able to gather information and find solutions to their requirements through web searches. This active support community has been a valuable resource for troubleshooting issues and finding answers quickly.
Stability and Reliability: Ubuntu Linux is highly regarded for its stability and reliability, with many users noting that they rarely encounter bugs or issues. This consistent performance has provided peace of mind to users, particularly those working on professional projects that require a stable environment.
Confusing User Interface: Many users have expressed frustration with the confusing user interface of Ubuntu Linux, stating that it makes tasks cumbersome and difficult to navigate. The lack of intuitive design and inconsistent placement of settings and options have been major pain points for users.
Challenging App Store Search Function: Numerous users have mentioned that the app store search function in Ubuntu barely works, making it extremely challenging to find and install desired software. Users often struggle with inaccurate search results or an inability to locate specific applications, resulting in a frustrating experience.
Lack of Support for Popular Middleware like cPanel: Some users consider the absence of support for popular middleware like cPanel as a drawback. This limitation restricts their ability to easily manage websites or servers using familiar tools, forcing them to explore alternative solutions or adapt to different interfaces.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-5 of 5)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
April 22, 2020
Good all-around server OS with a solid feature set.
We used Ubuntu as the primary operating system for all our servers. We deployed approximately 50 Virtual Machines across our virtualization strategy and used about 95% Ubuntu virtual machines. It was fairly light weight but also very well supported across the server community. Furthermore, all those in charge with administering the servers were fairly well versed in Ubuntu or Ubuntu-similar distributions.
- Lightweight for server contexts
- Frequent updates
- Long Term Support reduces administrative overhead
- Image files can be a bit large
- Desktop UI is quite ugly
- Has a bit of bloat, not a minimal distribution
- Reduced administrative costs
- Fairly reliable so reduced downtime
We use Ubuntu Linux in our organization for webservers, database servers, and various other servers.
It is our Linux distribution of choice. It helps us provide unix-like services with business support available. We are able to be confident that any packages we need will be available in repositories, and installing software is truly simple using the apt system. Online help is easy to find as it is such a popular distribution as well.
- Updating is really easy and straightforward, especially for LTS releases.
- Package availability is second to none.
- Unified patch management still is a challenge. Landscape is just not as polished as we would like.
- Not every appliance is built upon Ubuntu, so we have some variance in our OS environment.
- We find that we spend much less time custom compiling software compared to our old distribution, which was Red Hat.
- Installing and updating software from packages saves a significant amount of time.
We mainly chose Ubuntu Linux for its broad compatibility and package availability. Where we have a choice we prefer to deploy software on a Linux platform rather than Windows. Ubuntu is supported by our backup software and we find that updates typically complete without errors. Support has been good when we have needed them, although I can say the same for Red Hat as well, our previous distribution. We do use Suse and CentOS for some appliances where we do not have the choice of distribution. I have found those to be serviceable as well, although we don't have the latitude for package install or patching as much with them as with Ubuntu Linux.
January 16, 2020
An operating system that fulfills all of your needs
All of the thousands of systems (that include dockers, virtual machines and bare-metal servers) that we have in the company currently are powered by Ubuntu OS. This is just our department. If you scale the same to our organization that includes easily a couple of thousands of server machines. A million Ubuntu dockers are spawned every single day. So the business problem that is addressed is that Ubuntu is in the casual market, unlike other Linux distributions. You can easily customize it to meet your needs. It is extremely lightweight and super fast.
- Super fast!
- Open-source.
- It is heavily funded by Amazon, hence Amazon tends to have all user information.
- Desktop optimizations are required.
- It is nice to know there will be long term support.
SUSE is a European-based Linux system company, I have used it extensively over a couple of months and it's stable. I have always loved CentOS and for the past 4 years, I have used this OS as my primary workstation OS. You just don't need to reboot the system ever, it just is so so stable. I would definitely recommend this over Ubuntu, however, it is a bit heavier on memory than Ubuntu. So even if you compare all of these guys, I would say Ubuntu is just smoother than all of the above OS, however, stability wise, CentOS wins.
December 23, 2019
Ubuntu the first step to an Open Source work space
We are using Ubuntu Linux as our main driver for our desktops. We moved away from Windows machines and generally moved to the Open Source space. It is a stable platform with a strong community supporting it. We managed to keep laptops in use that otherwise would have been deemed not fit for purpose.
- The Community support is great, we rarely get into a problem we can't resolve with a quick internet search.
- Ubuntu has great driver support helping with the performance of the devices used.
- If you are still using Microsoft product you can struggle as they do not run natively, there are plenty of alternatives.
- Adobe doesn't provide native support for Linux either, alternatives are a must.
- We transitioned to Ubuntu to combat the Microsoft TCO, this had great reductions on cost spread over the entire business.
- A side effect was that people started to lean more to open-source software solutions reducing the total license cost overhead even more.
We compared against Windows 10, Manjaro, and Fedora. Windows 10 lost on cost, and even usability versus Ubuntu. Manjaro and Fedora are both bleeding edge, providing great features but lacking the stability offered by Ubuntu. Ubuntu is the best of both worlds for us, providing us a clean modern interface and still being stable and well tested enough to use as the main driver for the majority of our employees.
October 23, 2019
Your Developers Will Love Ubuntu
As we seek to shift our development environment from Windows to Linux, we sought to find a Linux distribution that offered a strong user base, accessibility for new users to Linux, easy package management, and long term support releases. We found all of the above in Ubuntu, and we were able to move to our .net Core development to Linux.
- Ubuntu has an active user base around its distribution, making it easy to find support for issues without ever needed to contact formal support.
- Ubuntu package management makes it easy to keep packages up to date even across a large number of dependencies. Rarely do I encounter issues in updating packages.
- Ubuntu offers an accessible user interface that provides some interface familiarity for users coming from other operating systems. Users feel comfortable navigating the interface with similar experiences to what they are familiar with.
- Ubuntu offers several flavors of desktop management - Gnome, XFCE, and KDE. While this offering of choice is probably a benefit, it makes it difficult to standardize amongst developers who all have strong opinions as to which deployment is "the best."
- Like other Linux distributions, graphics support for bleeding-edge graphics cards can be a challenge, with support not always offered for the latest and greatest cards. Often this support is rectified over time, but that can be a challenge in rolling out to machines with varying hardware configurations.
- Earlier, I talked about how Ubuntu offers many analog operations to other operating systems to promote ease of learning for those migrating. However, as of 19.04, Ubuntu didn't offer native drag and drop operations on the Gnome desktop. This was frustrating for some users trying to learn the new interface. I'm hoping the recently released 19.10 release will address this.
- The massive user community made it easy for my team to resolve our migration issues without needing to engage in professional support, saving us money.
- Our Ubuntu migration has enabled us to move off of Microsoft platforms to better align with our customers' desires to move toward open-source platforms in support of their cost-saving efforts.
- Some users had difficulty making the transition to Ubuntu Linux, requiring us to ensure we had appropriate training in place. This primarily the form of mentoring from other, more experienced users, but we opted for a few licenses to Linuxacademy.com to help with the migration.
Prior to selecting Ubuntu Linux, we looked at CentOS Linux. Obviously, both are distributions of Linux, with Ubuntu hailing from the Debian lineage, where CentOS is derived from RHEL. Ultimately, we decided on Ubuntu because it's a bit more user-friendly. However, we could have just as easily gone with CentOS due to its ability to leverage RHEL packages as necessary.