Arguably, Ubuntu is the best Linux distribution available. Ubuntu has an extensive world-wide army of volunteers and is backed by a funded, yet separate, organization – Canonical. They commit to a set of predictable and scheduled six-month release cycles, which makes the distributions current and allow it to maintain software at the cutting edge.

They also commit to a long term support of each release. And in the best example of the spirit of open source, the name Ubuntu is an African word that means ‘humanity to others.’ The Ubuntu operating system aims to bring the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers. Still, there are several derivatives of Ubuntu, and one has to become familiar with the different choices in order to make an educated decision about which Ubuntu version to use.

How many types of Ubuntu distributions are there?

Ubuntu has several derivatives. There are both recognized derivatives and localized derivatives. The recognized derivatives focus on differences in the software included and the hardware targeted. Localized derivatives are versions of Ubuntu for different languages around the world. There are also non recognized derivatives. This article concentrates on recognized derivatives. Something the reader needs to remember is that all of these derivatives share a common foundation with the default Ubuntu distribution.