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Ubuntu Server
Canonical's server edition of Ubuntu -- the same package base and LTS cadence as Ubuntu Desktop, minus the desktop environment, and the most common Linux base image in public cloud deployments.
Based on
Debian
First released
2004
Package manager
APT (.deb)
Desktop environments
None (CLI-only by default)
Ubuntu Server shares its .deb package base and LTS support model with Ubuntu Desktop, but installs as a minimal, CLI-only system by default, meant to run headless as a VM, cloud instance, or bare-metal server. It's the default or most-used base image on most major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud), which has made it the most common Linux environment developers encounter when deploying to the cloud, regardless of what they run on their own laptop. Canonical also offers Ubuntu Pro, a paid subscription layering extended security maintenance (10 years) and compliance tooling on top of the free LTS base, aimed at the same enterprise budget RHEL and SLES compete for.
MirrorNest doesn't mirror distro ISOs — installation media should always come straight from the project's own official download page (linked above), so you get the correct checksum/signature to verify against.