Ubuntu 25.04 is almost upon us, which makes this a good time to look back at just how much Canonical’s popular Linux desktop has changed over the past ten years. The answer? Both more and less than you might expect.
10
The ISO Was Almost 5 Times Smaller
Back much further than ten years ago, Ubuntu was the first Linux distro I ever installed. In those days, Ubuntu had to be small enough to fit onto a CD. I remember when Ubuntu 15.04’s 1.2GB ISO felt positively massive. Now, it seems almost quaint.
Today, Ubuntu is almost a 6GB download. Thankfully, most of us are no longer trying to download this over dial-up. If we were, the download might finish just in time for another retrospective ten years from now!
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9
An OS Installer That Helped Make Ubuntu Great
The installer isn’t the most exciting part of an operating system, but it’s one that Linux fans pay a lot of attention to because it’s your gateway into the Linux world. Ubuntu’s easy installer was once part of its claim to fame.
The current Ubuntu installer was written in flutter and only debuted relatively recently. Going back to 15.04 takes us back to Ubuntu’s time-tested and battle-hardened Ubiquity installer.
8
The Unity Interface That Inspired Ubuntu’s Current Look
Modern Ubuntu uses the GNOME desktop environment, but it looks different from what you see over at GNOME.org. That’s because Ubuntu adds its own extensions to make GNOME look more like Unity. What’s Unity? That’s the interface Canonical developed in-house back in 2010.
By 15.04, Unity was already stagnant and in what felt like an unannounced maintenance mode while Canonical instead worked on projects like bringing Ubuntu to phones and putting Ubuntu in TVs. Still, Unity was mature and reliable for its legion of fans.
7
The Dash and HUD That Made Unity Special
While modern Ubuntu replicates the look of Unity, in some ways the imitation is only skin-deep. That’s in large part because GNOME lacks two prominent components from Unity: the Dash and the HUD.
The Dash was Ubuntu’s application launcher, which also searched files, accessed the web, and more.
The HUD was a way to interact with an application’s menubar using keyboard searches. It did for app menus what tapping the Windows key and typing does for app launchers.
6
A Logo That Has Changed With Time
Ubuntu’s logo retains its essential shape, so it’s easy to forget just how much the logo has changed with time. Here’s how it looks in the bottom-left corner of an Ubuntu 24.10 desktop.
15.04 takes us back to how the Ubuntu logo looked ten years ago. While it still represents three people holding hands in a circle, the older logo has the heads leaning further back.
5
An Older App Store, and a Time Before Snaps
Ubuntu recently got a brand new built-in app store known as the AppCenter, which places snap packages front and center.
Ten years ago, we still had the old, aging, and slow Ubuntu Software Center. This was also one of the last releases before Ubuntu introduced snap packages, which back then may not have been old and aging, but they were in some cases even slower.
4
Window Buttons Used to Be on the Left
Ten years ago, Ubuntu had window management buttons in the top left of each app, just like on a Mac. Ubuntu had made the change half a decade prior, back with the launch of 10.04 Lucid Lynx. Before that, the buttons were on the right, just like they are today.
3
Remember the Free Culture Showcase?
Ubuntu used to feel less corporate and was a champion of open culture. The project wanted to show off what could be done when people collaborate freely and openly, sharing the results of their work for others to build on.
To that end, Ubuntu came with a folder that contained a few files in open formats. 15.04 came with the song Swansong by Josh Woodward, a musician whose work I discovered through Ubuntu and loved for quite a few years of my life.
2
A Forgettable Wallpaper and an Aging Theme
Ubuntu’s wild hippy days were way behind it by the time Ubuntu 15.04 came around. While it may still have had a few files in a free culture showcase folder, the rest of the desktop was decidedly bland. 15.04 may have had the codename “Vivid Vervet,” but you wouldn’t know it from the wallpaper, which had been an abstract blend of purple and orange since 10.04 (with 14.10 being the one exception to show a Utopic Unicorn in the background). Mascots wouldn’t return again until the switch back to GNOME with Ubuntu 17.10.
To be fair, I happened to discover Ubuntu in the age of Hardy Heron and Intrepid Ibex, the only two releases in the first decade of Ubuntu to prominently feature the mascot on the wallpaper. This created a false expectation for me.
The desktop and icon themes were similarly neutral and stale, having evolved little since Ubuntu’s transition from an orange and brown window frame to a black one in 2010.
1
There Was No Pesky Snap Folder in Home
This is a pet peeve of mine that still blows my mind how it has managed to ship on Ubuntu desktops for this long. I’m talking about the lower-case “snap” folder that occupies a space in your Home folder. Unlike other home folders, it also lacks an icon. It looks completely out of place.
Ubuntu 15.04 was pre-snaps, so it was also pre-snap-folder. Feels refreshing to see.
If you would also like to step back in time, you can still download the Ubuntu 15.04 ISO. Since it no longer gets updates, you shouldn’t install it on bare metal, but you can take it for a spin in a virtual machine or on a live USB stick. See what other differences you can find. The Amazon icon on the dock might jump out right away. Others, like the scrollbars, might take some looking around. Have fun.
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