Copyright © 2008 Canonical Ltd. and members of the Ubuntu Documentation Project
Table of Contents
You are using Ubuntu 9.10 - the Karmic Koala - released in October 2009 and supported until April 2011.
This section is an introduction to Ubuntu. It explains the Ubuntu philosophy and roots, gives information about how to contribute to Ubuntu, and shows how to get help with Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is an entirely open source operating system built around the Linux kernel. The Ubuntu community is built around the ideals enshrined in the Ubuntu Philosophy: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customize and alter their software in whatever way they see fit. For those reasons:
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Ubuntu will always be free of charge, and there is no extra fee for the "enterprise edition"; we make our very best work available to everyone on the same Free terms.
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Ubuntu includes the very best in translations and accessibility infrastructure that the free software community has to offer, to make Ubuntu usable for as many people as possible.
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Ubuntu is released regularly and predictably; a new release is made every six months. You can use the current stable release or the current development release. Each release is supported for at least 18 months.
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Ubuntu is entirely committed to the principles of open source software development; we encourage people to use open source software, improve it and pass it on.
Find out more at the Ubuntu website.
