Thank you Canonical

Precise Pangolin (version 12.04) has been a great Ubuntu release. It was the successor to another great release, one that will probably go down in history as the best release ever, 10.04 Lucid Lynx. Until 14.04, that is.

14.04 Trusty Tahr is better than any previous Ubuntu release, no question about it. It’s modern, faster, better looking, stable and reliable. An OS to be proud of, definitely improved under every aspect.  It’s a don’t look back kind of release, and after a few hours spent using it you can tell that this will be one release we will remember for years to come, even more than 10.04 I assure you.

In the coming years, we’ll be going through so much novelty, so much change… even thinking about it makes us dizzy! Let’s try and limit our future-predicting super powers and let’s stick to what we know. We know that Ubuntu will go mobile with its own devices (well, made for Ubuntu anyway) either during 2014 or (more likely) during 2015. Canonical has chosen (wisely) to achieve convergence between desktop and mobile environments and in order to do this, they will improve the Unity graphical environment by pushing forward with Unity 8 and with the new Mir display server.

This is a very ambitious journey, which will undoubtedly present us users and early adopters with bugs, discrepancies, flaws and what not. In the years ahead of us, our patience and our love for Canonical will probably be pushed to the limit. If you are an Ubuntero (or, an Ubunteer) you know it’s true. We’ll be called to test, report, translate, help new users, spread the word, work with buggy software, erase, reinstall, erase and reinstall again. All this, while keeping the love alive.

[tweet]Ubuntu 14.04 is better than any previous Ubuntu release, no question about it.[/tweet]

Thankfully Canonical has decided to spare us pro users with the pain of being forced to adopt these new technologies right now, in April 2014, with this LTS release. They could have done it. They could have gained a few months’ (maybe even more? an year?) worth of beta testing by imposing an experimental Mir server, or an half baked Unity 8 interface. But they didn’t. They chose to create the best Ubuntu ever instead. That’s what makes Canonical, well, Canonical.

So, we should all be very thankful for Trusty Tahr. It will be a release we’ll go back to more often than not, it will be a release that will hardly leave our production machine, and when it does, it will be only for a short period of time. It will be an island of sanity in a sea of unbelievable technological advancement and change.

Thank you Canonical, thank you community, I can feel the love bleeding though this screen I’m looking at!

All, Let’s go celebrate by buying a Trusty t-shirt and merchandise.