I recently read an online news article in the New York Times regarding Ubuntu and Mark Shuttleworth, the billionaire founder of Canonical, the company behind the open-source Linux distribution called Ubuntu.

The article gives Ubuntu some much needed exposure especially from a non-technical publication or news organization. The article focuses on the rise of Ubuntu and Mark Shuttleworth and its battle against Microsoft.

It’s worth a read. Let me highlight the more notables quips in this article.

Created just over four years ago, Ubuntu (pronounced oo-BOON-too) has emerged as the fastest-growing and most celebrated version of the Linux operating system, which competes with Windows primarily through its low, low price: $0.

But Canonical, Mr. Shuttleworth’s company that makes Ubuntu, has decided to focus its near-term aspirations on the PCs used by workers and people at home.

Close to half of Google’s 20,000 employees use a slightly modified version of Ubuntu, playfully called Goobuntu.

The Macedonian education department relies on Ubuntu, providing 180,000 copies of the operating system to children, while the Spanish school system has 195,000 Ubuntu desktops. In France, the National Assembly and the Gendarmerie Nationale, the military police force, rely on Ubuntu for a combined 80,000 PCs.

Microsoft had an estimated 10,000 people working on Vista, its newest desktop operating system, for five years. The result of this multibillion-dollar investment has been a product late to market and widely panned.

Canonical, meanwhile, releases a fresh version of Ubuntu every six months, adding features that capitalize on the latest advances from developers and component makers like Intel. The company’s model centers on outpacing Microsoft on both price and features aimed at new markets.

The latter part of the article covers Mark Shuttleworth which is always an interesting read. Nonetheless, it’s great to see Ubuntu making it to the New York Times. Here’s the full article.