Textbook of Linux

b. 1973, Welkom, South Africa — Founder of Canonical; "Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator For Life" of Ubuntu

Also known as: Shuttleworth, SABDFL

Mark Shuttleworth sold his company Thawte (which sold SSL certificates) to VeriSign in 1999 for a reported $575 million and used part of the proceeds to fund Ubuntu — a desktop-focused Debian derivative launched in October 2004. Ubuntu's contribution was as much social as technical: a six-month release cadence, a friendly installer, and a promise to ship every user a free CD, which in the mid-2000s introduced millions of people to Linux on the desktop.

The company behind Ubuntu, Canonical, is the commercial operator. It funds kernel work, maintains Ubuntu's long-term-support releases used across enterprise and cloud, develops the Snap packaging system, and — after several unsuccessful attempts at a mobile Linux OS and its own desktop shell (Unity) — now focuses on servers, IoT, and cloud.

In 2002 Shuttleworth paid $20 million to become the first African-born person in space, spending eight days on the International Space Station. He remains CEO of Canonical and the final arbiter of Ubuntu direction.