Ubuntu Wiki

Glossary

When moving to a new distribution it can sometimes be quite confusing to get your head around the jargon and terms that are part of that project. Here is a quick glossary of many of the terms that are being used this week:

• IRC - Internet Relay Chat. A means of talking to others online, and the medium used for the sessions this week.

• Canonical - The primary sponsor of the Ubuntu project, funding over 70 employees to work on the project and related technologies.

• Ubuntu - A freely available, easy to use Linux desktop and server.

• Kubuntu - A derivative of Ubuntu with the KDE desktop instead of Unity.

• Xubuntu - A derivative of Ubuntu with the Xfce4 desktop instead of Unity.

• Edubuntu - An education targeted derivative of Ubuntu.

• Launchpad - A central website for managing bugs, translations, new features, packages and much more. Pretty much all parts of the Ubuntu project use Launchpad.

• Malone - The bug tracking component inside Launchpad.

• Rosetta - An online tool that is part of Launchpad that allows anyone to help translate software into different languages.

• MOTU - In addition to the main Ubuntu package archive, we support the Universe package archive. This archive contains thousands of additional packages that can be installed on an Ubuntu system. The MOTU team (Masters Of The Universe) look after this archive and ensure that as many packages as possible are ready for use for our users.

• Ports - In the same way that the archive is split into main/universe to mean Canonical-supported versus Community-supported, some architectures are supported by community members. These are referred to as 'ports'.

• LoCo Teams - Geographically located teams that work to grow the Ubuntu community and advocate, translate and otherwise help Ubuntu.