Benjamin Hill - The Official Ubuntu Book (6th Edition)

The Official Ubuntu Book is a great way to get you started with Ubuntu, giving you enough information to be productive without overloading you.

John Stevenson, DZone Book Reviewer

OUB is one of the best books Ive seen for beginners.

Bill Blinn, TechByter Worldwide

This book is the perfect companion for users new to Linux and Ubuntu. It covers the basics in a concise and well-organized manner. General use is covered separately from troubleshooting and error-handling, making the book well-suited both for the beginner as well as the user that needs extended help.

Thomas Petrucha, Austria Ubuntu User Group

I have recommended this book to several users who I instruct regularly on the use of Ubuntu. All of them have been satisfied with their purchase and have even been able to use it to help them in their journey along the way.

Chris Crisafulli, Ubuntu LoCo Council, Florida Local Community Team

This text demystifies a very powerful Linux operating system... in just a few weeks of having it, Ive used it as a quick reference a half dozen times, which saved me the time I would have spent scouring the Ubuntu forums online.

Darren Frey, Member, Houston Local User Group

Benjamin Mako Hill
Matthew Helmke
Amber Graner
Corey Burger
With Jonathan Jesse,
Kyle Rankin, and Jono Bacon

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Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and the publisher was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters or in all capitals.

The authors and publisher have taken care in the preparation of this book, but make no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of the use of the information or programs contained herein.

The publisher offers excellent discounts on this book when ordered in quantity for bulk purchases or special sales, which may include electronic versions and/or custom covers and content particular to your business, training goals, marketing focus, and branding interests. For more information, please contact:

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2011927965

Copyright 2011 Canonical, Ltd.

This book is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.

Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission must be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise unless permitted under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license 3.0. For information regarding permissions, write to:

Pearson Education, Inc.
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Fax: (617) 671-3447

ISBN-13: 978-0-13-274850-6
ISBN-10: 0-13-274850-9
Text printed in the United States on recycled paper at RR Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
First printing, June 2011

This book is dedicated to the Ubuntu community. Without your tireless hard work and commitment, none of this would be possible.

The official ubuntu book captures both the spirit and the precision with which Ubuntu itself is crafted. Like Ubuntu, it has evolved in a steady cadence of regular releases, and this sixth edition reflects the cumulative insight gained from prior editions, as well as some of the latest innovations driving Ubuntu forward.

2011 is a critical year of change for Ubuntu, as we move towards the new, unified interface called Unity. Our goal is to deliver what people have long wished for: the worlds cleanest, most elegant desktop experience, as free software. 11.04 is the first major step in that process as we introduce Unity by default on the desktop, retaining the Classic GNOME desktop for those who cannot yet make the leap to Unity.

Our broader goal is to challenge the free software ecosystem to invest as much creativity and energy in design as it does in engineering. We know that free software can be the best in the world for performance, reliability, and security; now its time to bring ease-of-use and stylishness into the mix too.

I hope you enjoy 11.04, and love this book. My thanks to the many folks who have made both Ubuntu and The Official Ubuntu Book possible. Its a great privilege to be part of this community.

Mark Shuttleworth

Ubuntu Founder

April 2011

Its a small celebration for me to write this forewordalmost exactly two years after the first meeting of a small group of free software professionals that turned into the Ubuntu project. A celebration because two years ago none of us would have predicted that our dream would spawn several million CDs, three or four million enthusiastic users, hundreds of commitments of support from companies large and small, a minor prime time television reference, and now The Official Ubuntu Book.

The dream that brought us together can be simply expressed:

To build a world-class operating system for ordinary desktop computer users, that is genuinely free and freely available, that is immediately useful, and that represents the very best that the free software world can achieve today.

In setting out to build a platform for ordinary desktop computer users, I had no idea that I would have the privilege of meeting and working with so many extraordinary desktop computer users. Some of those extraordinary individuals are the authors of this book, people who both understand the importance of the free software movement and have the talent to have been real contributors to its success. Others make up the backbone of the Ubuntu communitythe small but dedicated army of a few hundred people that works to produce a new release of Ubuntu every six months. They are at the heart of a network that reaches out through the global free software communitythrough the world of Debian, an extraordinary project in its own right and without which Ubuntu could not exist, and on out to the thousands of projects, large and small, that produce the code and documentation that we pull together and call Ubuntu.

While this huge extended community can often appear to be fractured and divided along infinitesimal ideological lines, we are all broadly in agreement about four key ideas, and it is those ideas that are central to the Ubuntu promise:

That our software should not come with a license fee. That we should be able to share our software, modify it, and then share our modifications, too.

That this free software should be the best version available, including regular security updates, and not a tease for a better, commercial product.

That full-scale, high-quality commercial support from local and global companies should be available for this free platform.