IT seemed like a perfectly geeky thing to do, so I braved rain and the Saturday night traffic to get to the Ubuntu Release Party at the Ortigas Center.
It’s been almost three years since I began using Ubuntu, a user-friendly Linux-based operating system, to replace Windows on my home PC, and I’ve been enjoying the benefits ever since: absolutely free, high-quality software; the absence of viruses and other malicious programs; and no intrusive anti-piracy measures that assumed I was a thief. In this time, I had gone through three operating system upgrades, yet I had never been to a release party.
Since Ubuntu was introduced in 2004, its commercial sponsor, Canonical, has pushed a new release out the door twice a year. This may seem strange in the world of commercial software, where new versions of Windows or Mac OS X are launched every few years, but it’s consistent with the underlying philosophy of Linux to release early and release often as a way of improving product quality.
Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distributions, takes its release number from the year and month of its release. Thus,the first version, 4.10, was released in October 2004. The newest version, 9.10, was released last week.
Like Mac OS X, Ubuntu also uses animal code names for its releases, though these tend to be funkier and alliterative to boot. So while the Mac has had Panther, Tiger and Leopard, Ubuntu has had Warty Warthog (4.10), Hoary Hedgehog (5.04), Breeze Badger (5.10), Dapper Drake (6.06), Edgy Eft (6.10), Feisty Fawn (7.04), Gutsy Gibbon (7.10), Hardy Heron (8.04), Intrepid Ibex (8.10) and Jaunty Jackalope (9.04). The next release, 9.10, will be called Karmic Koala.
When Microsoft and Apple launch new versions of their operating systems, they do so with much hype and fanfare—and a lot of marketing dollars. No wonder then, that these events are covered extensively by the wire services and mainstream press—which habitually ignore Ubuntu releases.
Instead of huge launch events, the Ubuntu community celebrates every new version with modest release parties all over the world, organized by ordinary folk who contribute in some way to the product—programming, designing or simply reporting bugs—or those who simply love to use it.
“At these parties everyone is welcome and we get together to celebrate, meet new friends and often introduce people new to Ubuntu to our community and our operating system,” the Ubuntu wiki reads. Another common feature of release parties are “burn fests” where copies of the new operating system are given away free—an idea that would no doubt appall Microsoft and Apple.
There were only about a dozen of us at the Philippine release party for Jaunty Jackalope, but it was a welcome opportunity to meet and exchange notes with fellow enthusiasts, who came from a wide variety of fields. Most of the group was young. Except for me and Dr. Pablo Manalastas, everyone else seemed to be in their 20s or 30s.
The host this year was Johann Tagle, who offered the use of his office at the Strata 2000 Building and provided the pizza (naturally). His company, Sagada Solutions Corp., develops Ruby on Rails applications on Ubuntu machines.
This year’s party was organized by Allan Caeg, a third year Psychology student from the De La Salle University, who is active in the local forum and contributes to Ubuntu by reporting bugs and handling some user support. He discovered Ubuntu quite by accident while using the StumbleUpon toolbar in Firefox.
A highlight for me was the opportunity to meet Manalastas, an icon at the Department of Information Systems and Computer Science at the Ateneo de Manila University for 30 years before his retirement in 2007. Doc Mana, as his students and colleagues call him, gladly showed me his MSI Wind notebook, which triple boots to Windows XP, Ubuntu or Mac OS X.
I also met Dax Solomon Umaming, who is the liaison between the Philippine Ubuntu community and Canonical. Dax, who works for a power company in Baguio City, came all the way to Manila for the release party.
“I got into Linux because of porn,” he said. “I got viruses from porn sites, and the last time, they sent out my personal notes to everyone in my address book, so I decided to stop using Windows.” A C++, Java and PHP-MySQL programmer, he finds Linux more suitable for developers because there are tons of tools available, and they’re all free.
Not everyone at the release party was a programmer, though.
Gener Luis Morada, country representative for G.ho.st, an Israeli company with Palestinian programmers, began using Ubuntu at home after his friend Troy Frederick Lim, a board member of the Internet Cafe Association of Imus in Cavite, showed him what he could do. Troy acknowledges that he still can’t use Ubuntu in his own cafe because customers still look for Windows.
John Sese Cuneta, a freelance Web designer after working for several large online gaming companies, also acknowledges that it is more difficult—often impossible—to play popular online games on Linux.
“That’s good, it cures your addiction!” blurted Juan Carlo Torres, who contributes to the KDE desktop environment.
Orlando Pasion, who works at the technical service department of Bayan Telecommunications, says he learned Ubuntu after his company began to get support calls from people who were using Linux to connect to the Internet. “Then I got addicted to Ubuntu,” he said.
Rochelle Derilo, a student at the UP Open University and a Windows user since 1995, began using Ubuntu after her friend, Frederick Bamm Gabriena, an instructor of astronomy at the Rizal Technological University, showed her that Linux was no longer limited to the command line interface.
Ubuntu is often described as Linux for human beings because it is easy to use. This weekend, it was great to meet and swap stories with some of these human beings.
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