It is a good idea to contribute to ubuntu development teams for the benefit of FOSS and your own learning. Althogh, they provide a very good documentation on the websites, at first we get lost in the series of links they provide. So, i decided to write all the major steps to follow on this blog for others to benefit...First up is some basic teminology you must be aware of already, but it is good to review them again at one place:
GNU : stands for "GNU is Not Unix" . GNU project started by Richard Stallman in 1983 for "free software" development. GNU is unix-like operating system which uses GNU-Hurd Kernel, but no stable release of this kernel yet exists. The Hurd is a collection of servers that run on top of a microkernel (such as Mach) to implement different features. The Hurd is free software produced by the GNU Project.
Linux: This is the OS Kernel developed by Linus Torvalds in 1991.
GNU/Linux: The GNU free software combined with the Linux Kernel form the GNU/Linux based operating system.
Distros: Add apps to the GNU/Linux system and you get a distribution like ubuntu.
Dedian: Debian is a free operating system developed under the Debian project. It comes with about 29000 packages. (http://www.debian.org/intro/about)
Ubuntu: a popular GNU/Linux distro. Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning 'humanity to others'. It also means 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. The Ubuntu operating system brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the world of computers.
Ubuntu is based on Debian? : Ubuntu is built upon debian`s architecture. Debian is an open source project that builds the free operating system. Ubuntu has a different community with more consistent user interfaces and frequent releases.
More on this here: http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/ubuntu-and-debian.
Canonical: It is a trade mark company which provides premium support to ubuntu services.
Ubuntu releases: Stable versions released every 6 months.
LTS release: (Long term support) Every 4th release issued on a 2 year basis is a long term release.
GNOME: It is the desktop environment and the GUI. It has many free softwares including everything from playing media and editing photos to system administration like banshee media player, shotwell, browser etc. The user interface for the GNOME 3 is called the GNOME Shell and it is really cool, try it!
Ubuntu is GNOME based. (released forst in 1997)
KDE: Another desktop environment. (plasma desktop). This is based on the Qt framework. (1996)
Kubuntu: ubuntu based on the KDE desktop environment.
{ To be updated as and when needed}
