Ubuntu Server

- [Instructor] Ubuntu Server is a version of Ubuntu Linux that's intended for use on servers of various types. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, envisions Ubuntu Server scaling from a single server to 10s of thousands, and the current version of Ubuntu Server 18.04 are designed with this philosophy. The networking configuration system called Netplan can configure, and deploy the network settings with a script as is common in large datacenter build outs. The installer called Ubiquity uses the cloud init toolchain to set up the configuration of the system which is then used to install.

So even if you install on an old machine at home you're still using cloud scale tools to configure your server. Ubuntu Server installs without a GUI because, most of the time, servers don't have a display attached, and so we save the overhead of drawing a graphical environment that no-one is going to look at. Of course you can still install a desktop manager if you'd like, but out of the box, so to speak, Server doesn't come with one. So we need to interact with it through the console, or, more likely, through SSH. Ubuntu Server comes with OpenSSH Server configured, and ready to accept connections on a new install.

So we're able to connect as soon as the OS is installed. Ubuntu Server starts out in a pretty minimal state making it an efficient base for many uses. Because there's so many possibilities I'll introduce a few common topics, and I encourage you to further explore whatever you need your server to do. Be sure to search for courses in our library to support your learning.