Free of charge, free of viruses and designed to outpace its rivals on low-end systems - Ubuntu has some obvious advantages. The operating system claims 20 million people use it a day. Not an insignificant number, but still a drop in the ocean compared to Microsoft's Windows or Apple's OS X. Even so, lead designer and one-time astronaut Mark Shuttleworth hopes that last week's major upgrade to the Linux-based project will produce an outsized splash and increase the size of its somewhat divergent customer-base. "In terms of our user, they would split into two sorts of camps," he says. "One, not very tech savvy, that has an old PC lying around and Windows is getting difficult because of the computer's age or viruses, and Ubuntu gives them a nice basic all-purpose PC with a great web experience. "The other group tends to be the next generation of tech entrepreneurs - people who are passionate about technology and want to do amazing things with it."
Mr Shuttleworth counts Wikipedia and Facebook's Instagram photo app among his clients. A third class of users is also attracted to the system - public bodies looking to cut their IT bills. The Dutch ministry of defence, part of France's police force and schools across the south of Spain have all opted to switch thousands of their PCs to the software.
Type to control
Ubuntu is able to offer itself as a free download thanks to coders across the world volunteering to develop the open-source project. Mr Shuttleworth's London-based company, Canonical, manages and funds the endeavour and makes money back by offering support, training and online storage. The system may remain niche so long as it lacks native versions of big name software like Photoshop, iTunes and Microsoft Office - despite alternative products - but it may still shake up the wider industry thanks to efforts to incorporate innovative technologies. The adoption of a head-up display (HUD) in the upgrade is a case in point.
It aims to replace increasingly overloaded point-and-click menu systems with a panel into which users type what they want the computer to do. The computer then tries to offer up a list of functions that match their request. "The core idea is that instead of hunting for some functionality in a menu you can simply express what you want," Mr Shuttleworth says. "You can say I want to send that to grandma, or I want to back this up. "It's driven by the idea that search or expressing your intent has become really powerful. If Google can turn the whole internet into one page of likely results just based on the one sentence you give it, why can't we do that with your email or graphics application?"
Natural interfaces
