If you’ve used Chrome OS, you know there’s a beauty in the simplicity. Over the years, there have been a few attempts at recreating that same simplicity for Linux, but many of those distributions have vanished. From the creator of Ubuntu Unity[1], comes yet another attempt to create that user-friendly magic. The new distribution, called Ubuntu Web, is based on Ubuntu 20.04, and offers an open source take on Chrome OS.
The developer, Rudy Saraswat, has employed the GNOME desktop[2] (version 3.36) to pull this off and includes plenty of pre-installed apps to make Ubuntu Web a distribution anyone can use. Included in the app listing you'll find web apps for Mastodon, Twitter, SoundCloud, and a number of others from the /e/ Foundation.
In order to really get the most out of Ubuntu Web, you’ll need to have an /e/ account (apply for an invitation here[3]). With a free account (which is supported via donations), you gain access to what looks very much like a hosted instance of Nextcloud (which includes an entire suite of tools, similar to that of Google).
Of course, with Ubuntu Web, you can also install any software from the standard repositories, so the distribution isn’t limited to web-only.
For more information about Ubuntu Web, check out the channel on the official Ubuntu Community Discourse page[4].
