Ubuntu 14.04 Desktop - OS for Consumers and Business

Canonical has announced the latest Ubuntu release, 14.04 LTS desktop will be available for download from the 17th April 2014. The Long Term Support (LTS) release is supported and maintained by Canonical for five years, making it the most stable, reliable, secure and cost-effective desktop for long-term, large scale deployments within enterprise and public sector organizations today.

 “The 14.04 LTS release offers a solid, intuitive experience which is easy to manage,” Jane Silber, CEO at Canonical comments. “It is a viable and affordable alternative for those organizations considering a switch from Microsoft, and specifically those replacing XP or Windows 7 as they come to the end of life.”

 Today, Ubuntu desktop is being used extensively in enterprise, government, education and other organizations such as French Gendarmerie, Penn Manor School District, Uttar Pradesh Government, University of Delhi, and the Government of India. Many of these organizations have replaced Windows and are realizing significant benefits and cost savings. For example, the French Gendarmerie has reduced costs by a ratio of 40%, while Penn Manor School District in the US saved over $360,000 in the first year.

 "Ubuntu has offered us immense possibilities to perform tasks that were unimaginable before. The boundless freedom of Ubuntu has offered personalisation, repository building, and importantly, for seamless sharing, opened new opportunities for Kerala schools to emerge as IT enabled education centres. Ubuntu was the main instrument for us in enabling FOSS based applications to reach much wider groups including general public,” comments K Anvar Sadath, Member of the National Resource Group of RMSA (Rashtriya Madhyamik Siksha Abhiyan) by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt of India.


Ubuntu provides a strong, secure baseline and this release will receive five years of free security updates. The UK’s CESG, the security arm of the UK government that assesses operating systems and software, recently found Ubuntu to be the most secure desktop or mobile operating system among the eleven it tested. The test criteria were similar to a standard set of enterprise security best practices. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS includes more security features and timely security updates for five years, with the option of installing updates automatically. It includes full-disk encryption, added AppArmor profiles and policy, as well as AppArmor improvements for interprocess communications between confined applications.