The story of Ubuntu
Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others’. It is often described as reminding us that ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. We bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers and software. The Ubuntu distribution represents the best of what the world’s software community has shared with the world.
Where did it all begin?
Linux was already established in 2004, but it was fragmented into proprietary and unsupported community editions, and free software was not a part of everyday life for most computer users. That’s when Mark Shuttleworth gathered a small team of Debian developers who together founded Canonical and set out to create an easy-to-use Linux desktop called Ubuntu. The mission for Ubuntu is both social and economic. First, we deliver the world’s free software, freely, to everybody on the same terms. Whether you are a student in India or a global bank, you can download and use Ubuntu free of charge. Second, we aim to cut the cost of professional services — support, management, maintenance, operations — for people who use Ubuntu at scale, through a portfolio of services provided by Canonical which ultimately fund the improvement of the platform.
Ubuntu today
The first official Ubuntu release — Version 4.10, codenamed the ‘Warty Warthog’ — was launched in October 2004, and sparked dramatic global interest as thousands of free software enthusiasts and experts joined the Ubuntu community.
Ubuntu today has many flavours and dozens of specialised derivatives. There are also special editions for servers, OpenStack clouds, and connected devices. All editions share common infrastructure and software, making Ubuntu a unique single platform that scales from consumer electronics to the desktop and up into the cloud for enterprise computing.
The Ubuntu desktop is by far the world’s most widely used Linux workstation platform, powering the work of engineers across the globe. Ubuntu Core sets the standard for tiny, transactional operating systems for highly secure connected devices. Ubuntu Server is the reference operating system for the OpenStack project, and a hugely popular guest OS on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Ubuntu is pre-installed on computers from Dell, HP, Asus, Lenovo and other global vendors.
We hope Ubuntu will bring something wonderful to your computing — and we hope that you’ll join us in helping to shape and build the future of free software together.
1. Display the current Ubuntu hostname
Simply type the following command:$ hostname
2. Ubuntu change hostname command
- Type the following command to edit /etc/hostname using nano or vi text editor:
$ sudo nano /etc/hostname
- Reboot the system to changes take effect:
$ sudo reboot
3. How to change the Ubuntu server hostname without a system restart?
- Type the following commands:
$ sudo hostname new-server-name-here - Next edit the /etc/hostname file and update hostname:
$ sudo nano /etc/hostname - Finally, edit the /etc/hosts file and update the lines that reads your old-host-name:
$ sudo nano /etc/hosts - From:
127.0.1.1 old-host-name - To:
127.0.1.1 new-server-name-here - Save and close the file.
4. Ubuntu Linux Change Hostname Using hostnamectl
Systemd based Linux distro such as Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS and above can simply use the hostnamectl command to change hostname. To see current setting just type the following command:$ hostnamectl
Sample outputs:
Static hostname: nixcraft
Icon name: computer-laptop
Chassis: laptop
Machine ID: 291893e6499e4d99891c3cf4b70a138b
Boot ID: 9fda2365b77841649e40a141fde46537
Operating System: Ubuntu 17.10
Kernel: Linux 4.13.0-21-generic
Architecture: x86-64
