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Ubuntu: Best Linux Desktop for Business?
sebFlyte writes "ZDNet has been testing Linux for business, trying to work out what the best distro is for small businesses. After testing Mandriva Linux 2006, Novell Linux Desktop 9, Red Hat Desktop 4, SUSE Linux 10 and Ubuntu Linux 5.1. After installing them all from scratch to simulate a new business set up, and extensive testing involving Gaim, Evolution, OpenOffice.org -- as well as actually writing each review on each distro -- Ubuntu came out as the winner. They summed it up saying 'Ubuntu is a well integrated, practical and absolutely free' and dismissed worries about support. SuSE came a close second."
Ubuntu 5.1 != Ubuntu 5.10. The first one doesn't even exist...
Actually its Ubuntu 5.10, not 5.1
Ubuntu X.Y corresponds to the release year (200X) and the release month(Y).
In this case it was October 2005 -> (10/05)
The next release will be Ubuntu 6.4 (April 2006))
I am using SuSE 10 with KDE. Hardware support is great compared to v9, configuration works great, and downloaded it all for free from the SuSE ftp website. So where does the non-free part come in? Support? Also for SuSE there are user forums, not much different than Ubuntu, or about any other linux distro for that matter.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
I'm surprised they didn't test Xandros - I interviewed with them a couple of months ago, and they specialize in business-oriented Linux...
Join the Empire! http://www.empirereborn.net/
I use it at home and I love it but it looks like the developer's claims of Ubuntu being suitable for server and workstation are true.
As a long time Debian user and contributor, it's good to see a system that has all the advantages of Debian, plus the financial backing and willpower to take off some of the rough edges that a volunteer-only structure isn't really suited to deal with. I installed Ubuntu on my new computer at work the other day. My boss was so impressed that he installed it himself on another computer, and he's not really a technical guy.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
They really explained all good and bad points of the distros they tested.
After reading the article I think my intelligence actually dropped.
I'm glad to finally be able to say that there is a GNU/Linux distribution out there that "Just Works!" (tm).
Blog -
Some, notably SUSE and Ubuntu, also worked well on our test notebook -- which might surprise those who think of Linux as purely a desktop or server OS.
I have used several laptops with several linux distros (Slackware,Debian,SuSE), and they all worked OK. Definition of OK is: You are able to tweak your kernel and your X server, and you are totally OK. New versions of the distros pretty much install without a glitch on any of the systems I have standing around here (dual PII, PIII, PIV, laptop). So that remark about the laptop is pretty redundant in my opinion.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
While we're on the subject: today (the 24th) is ubuntu bug day! Join #ubuntu-bugs on freenode and report all your bugs!
Best thing ever?
Not that I would ever allow ZDNet to choose my OS for me but I think they may be a bit confused. The first three distros were basically tossed aside because of "lacks Exchange support", however, the final page has this to say.
"All five distributions come with a good -- and very similar -- selection of core applications, including OpenOffice for office productivity, Gaim for instant messaging and Evolution for email, contact management and calendar functionality."
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
And studies have found "best distro" studies to be the leading cause of flame wars on slashdot. Let the flames fly!
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
In my office I dont care if I run RedHat / SuSE or any crap. All trained admins will be capable to install any and all distros without any problem. What matters in business is that of
1. KDE or GNOME Gui filemanager explanation
2. OpenOffice help
3. Transition to Kmail/Evolution from Outlook
4. automount of discs for the M$ trained users
5. Having xmms/mplayer installed for people to listen to music
No admin does 4, 5 in my view
Ubuntu 5.10 was the first debian distro I was able to get a GUI working for on my finiky AMD with ATI video card at home. I had to type a special boot parameter in, I think it disabled auto detection and installed with a more plain vanila video driver so it wouldn't hang before the install screens came up as it would do with any [Debian] Linux system I tried installing.
I wouldn't consider it ready to plunk down on a desk at my workplace until I know a lot more about it, but it certainly shows promise. One thing I can't figure out though is why there's no utility available to configure GRUB from within Ubuntu, so that someone who wants to boot to Windows by default can set that from within the Linux OS.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
So, for all intents and purposes, does Ubuntu = Debian or Ubuntu == Debian or Ubuntu != Debian?
The box is earmarked for Scientific Linux (which doesn't seem to get any play time on /.), but, again, ubuntu installed flawlessly and boots much faster than my multimedia/web WinXP intel box, which takes a loooooooong time.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Here at Roaring Penguin, we've pretty much standardized on Debian for the technical staff and Ubuntu for the non-technical staff. It works very well for us.
We do have one holdout on Slackware, but that's fine with me as long as he administers his own box...
I read the review of Mandriva 2006.0, and I have to conclude the review is of a really very low quality. Firstly, they are complaining about the lack of a tool to configure network printers. Was it that difficult to find the add printer item in the Mandriva Control Center, and check the two checkboxes for auto-detection of networked and Windows printers?
They say that partitioning was difficult. Actually, first you have the choice to do everything automatically, choosing "use entire hard disk" or "use free space on Windows partition". Instead, they chose Custom partitioning, where again there is a button "Auto Allocate", which do everythinhg automatically once you resized the windows partitions. Now if they call this difficult, they should not have chosen the customized partitioning scheme in the first place. Actually I have heard of users having a lot more difficulties with the SuSE or Ubuntu partitioners.
They say the Exchange connector for Evolution was not there. Did they actually bothered looking for it during half a minute? Then at least they would have found the package evolution-exchange!
The real weak points of Mandriva 2006.0 are not talked about on the other hand. Not a word about the instabilities caused by the buggy beta X.org 6.9 included, by kat which makes kded eat all CPU time sometimes, and nothing about the old version of OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 which is included, and which is buggy (it crashes on SXI files it has created itself).
Really, nothing to see here, move on people!
It's funny how different perspectives can make communication difficult. For example, take this casual comment from the article:
During the whole exercise, we only experienced one system crash...
To a Linux user, the idea of "only one crash" is bemusing. A modern Linux system, going down so easily? That's very serious. Surely the author isn't familiar with the territory.
Later, it becomes clearer, when the Mandriva review states:
Obviously, this is not what a Linux user would call a "system crash". I suppose it's just as well that Windows users would be asked to review Linux distros for the desktop, though. A Linux user might regard this as a minor problem, forgetting that to most people, this is indeed a show-stopper.
I always mod up spelling trolls.
That and version numbering schemes...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
For those of us still needing windows functionality with the hardware but wanting to run linux in Virtual PC, Suse will still install, by default, without screen resolution problems where Ubuntu won't.
One thing that has driven me from one distro to another is software installation. I purchased Mandrake Power Pack (10.0?) Attempting to install software drove me nuts. Unless I do some digging and change the basic setup, it made me insert a CD every time I wanted to install new software. Then it wouldn't recognize the CD as being what it was.
I like Debian based distros because of apt-get. Even so, trying to install Inkscape was a real pain. I finally gave up and installed Suse 10.0 because it comes with Inkscape as standard. I agree with tfa about Suse's install. If you try to do anything out of the ordinary, you may have problems. At one point, it refused to install a boot loader because it didn't like the way my disks were partitioned. When I tried to select the software to install rather than taking the default, the whole thing fell to pieces.
That agrees with my experience: for general purpose desktop use, I find Ubuntu and SuSE to be the best distros. Both of them are easier to install and set up than either Windows or Macintosh. And both of them work great out of the box on a wide range of hardware.
A long time fan of Mandriva I decided to give the latest Ubuntu a try. I soon found out there is a problem with the 9.0 Citrix Linux client. True, you may be able to use an RDP connection to the server, but shadowing doesn't always work in this mode. I really should have given it more effort, but instead I moved on to try Mandriva 2006. The same thing existed there! In Mandriva I was eventually able to get it to work by installing the latest openmotif and using the 7.0 Citrix client. I'm sure the same solution probably works in Ubuntu...
Sure, Citrix may hardly be a requirment in most businesses. However, for those of us that do use it we're usually pretty dependent on it. Although this was a pretty serious problem I had with Ubuntu, it's still a great distro IMHO.
They should have also tested PC-BSD.
Linux isn't the only open souce desktop option, and I've been more impressed with PC-BSD than any Linux distro for desktop use.
It's almost at a 1.0 version, is already extremely stable. You can install packages by downloading them and double-clicking, or you can use the FreeBSD ports system. It also has an extremely simple graphical installer.
I suppose the only disadvantage of going with a BSD desktop rather than Linux would be that Linux has more drivers... but all of my hardware works so far.
They didn't take into account having to administer a couple hundred or thousand of those desktops, which is a whole different ball game. Ubuntu is great for one personal desktop, but from a corporate point of view its not on par with Red Hat or Novell.
Regards,
Steve
As far as I know, installation time is also important when choosing the best software, so why Gentoo isn't first?
Here at Three Rings, we're migrating all developer desktops to Ubuntu. It works, it's free, and users can maintain it themselves.
Ubuntu has mixed Debian's solid packaging tools with a healthy dose of pragmatism and arrived at a distribution that Just Works. As a desktop operating system, I couldn't be happier with how Ubuntu is working out.
http://plausible.coop
SuSE Professional comes with the best dead tree documentation available for a distro and has payed support. For any real business enviroment that is the selling point.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Or they could just have used a completely free version of redhat enterprise by Centos and several others..
Works nicely on my desktop.
<smart4$$>
/boot/grub/menu.lst"
Hit Alt+F2
then type
"gksudo gedit
type in your sudoer password and configure away!
</smart4$$>
Sorry, I couldn't help myself. Lord I apologize for telling the CLI impaired person to type something in a faux command line, and be with the starving Pygmies down in New Guinea.
This is not an illusion, a rip-off, or a ninja technique!
Actually you have somewhat a point. I would really not advice to use any of the current GUI grub editors, since they are not compatible with the "update-grub" system which gets run after each kernel update and will overwrite the old grub unless it's proper formatted.
Evolution in 5.04 could connect to our Exchange server, though it was quite flaky. Evolution in 5.10 does not work at all.
Samba printing is totally jacked because the GUI config tool puts the fields in the wrong order in the config file. I got that working by editing the config file manually after two hours of pulling my hair out.
Samba in 5.10 also insists on using the MSHOME domain, repeatedly forgetting my user name and password, and not working even when I type them in. Probably not putting the values in the config file right again, but I haven't had time to look yet. This has disrupted our communications because I cannot see, much less read and write the shares on the network. At least 5.04 let me see them, though we never did figure out how to get it to recognize my write permissions.
I could go on, but I need to go eat more turkey.
Ubuntu is very nice - no doubt about it. I've got it on my main desktop at home, and have been very happy with it since the first release.
I've also had a lot of joy with Mepis; a particularly nice feature is that you can boot off the CD, then install off the same CD. Ubuntu has separate discs for "live CD" and "install". I know it's a minor point to experienced Linux people, but having a single CD to boot and/or install from is pretty mindblowing for someone who's had to install Windows...
That said, being able to install a complete desktop with a full set of desktop apps from a single CD is pretty wonderful, compared to Windows. I know my parents were pretty impressed with that when I moved them off Windows; from past experience reinstalling Windows, I think they thought it'd take several hours rather than about 30 minutes.
...Was I the only one who read "Best Linux Desktop" and thought that a review of desktop environments (KDE, GNOME, Xfce, etc.) was to follow?
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
Really, who cares which distro is the best out of the box?
I've always felt that one of Linux's strengths the fact that it's super easy to customize and deploy in that very sort of homogenous environment.
Ubuntu is a cool distro, as long as you don't try to build/compile something in it, which makes it of hardly any use, at least for me. I like the nude wallpapers concept too, although I don't like the ratio 2 men - 1 woman too much.
You just got troll'd!
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Let's play video games with mailmanZERO
Ubuntu has started by locking the root account and making proper use of sudo (and it's various graphical equivalents).
This is increadibly handy. Not that you couldn't do this on other distributions, but it's nice to see this feature in Ubuntu by default. I'm partial to OpenSUSE myself, but their (and many others') handling of sudo is misinformed.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
What flavor you choose is less important. At this point in time most unix flavor can be made into what your company needs.
If they cant do that, then your IT department has no business making a change yet.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
shut up
I have a copy of knoppix installed to hard drive and configured to my liking.
At this point does ubuntu have anything to offer me worth the trouble of switching distros? Am I better off sticking with what I have and simply apt-get updating?
Is the appeal of ubuntu an easily install with a lot of end user oriented precofigurations ( as opposed to customization crazy geek hobbyist )?
Are you wearing a sleeveless flannel shirt and beat-up ball cap? If not, it's not quite authentic.
"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." - A. S. LaVey
The next release will be Ubuntu 6.4 (April 2006)
6.04, see 5.04.
You mis-typed your user name, queer_latrina !
I'm curious why they didn't try Fedora. I use FC4 at work and it's been fine. I tried Ubuntu and wasn't too impressed with it. It had problems with the video card, network card and USB, whereas Fedora detected all those and set them up properly. :shrug:
You are a submarine troll. Know what that means? You post to Slashdot for a week looking for karma and then burn it all off on blatantly offensive comments. Remember that whole flaming tree you posted about a gay governor a few months ago? How about that whole unfounded Griffin critcism?
That's *MR.* Self-Righteous Asshat.
Mods, don't feed this guy. Maybe without a karma stash he won't go on these trolling runs.
--
Trolling all trolls since 2001.
5.1 and 5.10 have both the same number of significative digits: 2.
0 in 5.10 is of no significance whatsoever, that is why we normally write 5.1 not 5.10 (unless you are dealing with an anal retentive context, like currency, or Ubuntu's version numbering).
They could try 5.01 and 5.10, that should be clear enough, but frankly other versioning systems are simpler and clearer.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"My distribution of choice is superior in every way to your pathetic distribution of choice. You are the lowest form of loser to think that your worthless distribution could hold a candle to the God-like superiority of my distribution.
"My distribution's superiority is clearly demonstrated by it's magnificent out-of-the box handling of my obscure feature of choice. Your pathetic distribution doesn't even support my obscure feature of choice without a course of action so complex that it's madness to even contemplate it.
"Clearly, my distribution of choice will utterly destroy your distribution of choice. This is so certain it is pointless for you to resist it."
Let's be honest. They didn't review much. They could have installed these Os's and then read the package list to get this review. If I'm running a business, yes, whether this is a pain in the ass to install is a major concern. However, the quality of the tech support is just as big of a concern.
It seems like they based their support rating somehow on what support was said to be offered. No mention was given on wait times, knowledge of the support staff, dependability, etc. I don't just want to know what is offered and how it installs. I want to know how easy it is to maintain, how well it integrates with my pre-existing network, etc. Think you can do that in a one page review? Obviously not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_digit
Oops, my anal retentiveness is showing.
Been trying to get 3D to work all day on my sons computer. Ubuntu 5.10 fails at it. Prior to Ubuntu I had SuSE 9.1 installed on the box and the card (PCI TNT) worked with no problems.
Food for thought,
Enjoy.
It's just the normal noises in here.
I love(d) Ubuntu, and was all set up with Breezy when I got a new AMD Sempron-based laptop that Ubuntu would not co-operate with at all (I literally had to hack the kernel source itself to keep my processor from going 50% system idle :( ).
So I switched to SUSE 10.0, and needless to say, SUSE worked where Ubuntu "Just Didn't". I run GNOME, but all the KDE apps are available to me (at the expense of some extra RAM for artsd and whatnot, I'm afraid), plus acroread, win32codecs, realplayer, sun's java and eclipse "out of the box"....plus it defaults to slightly more cutting-edge stuff, like the _actual_ OpenOffice 2.0 (not 1.999), and Beagle (GNOME's answer to Apple's Spotlight). Of course, I still had to do some work with ndiswrapper and fglrxconfig and cisco's vpnclient (which nobody should have to do in this day and age), but it's all been set up relatively quickly and I would have had to do that anyway (unfortunately).
I still support Ubuntu in theory, but appreciate Novell's influence...that's just the way it is...
Knoppix 4.0 is a fantastic distro for people who don't want to spend time configuring stuff. I'd hand off a knoppix cd or dvd to a non-tech business person over suggesting a regular distribution any day. With a decent sized USB thumbdrive, anybody can be functional in under a minute.
The last time I installed Ubuntu, it came with no support for WPA encryption, and the guides to set it up didn't work. That's a showstopping flaw for anyone who uses a wireless network, IMO.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
They didn't test Fedora and decided best distro for small bussinesses? Are they on crack?
It's nice to know which is best for the desktop but I'm not wanting to switch away from XP with outlook and office yet. I'm still at the stage of wanting to switch away from small business server 2000 which we use for SQL server, exchange, domain controller and file serving.
Now I know that all of the features can be replaced for the file serving via samba, and I'm sure that we can set up a domain controller somehow, but will postgres or mysql directly replace sql server and allow my apps to work without changes? That's the easy part in my mind. What replaces exchange in such a way the outlook never notices? I get the feeling I'm locked into this crap for awhile longer yet.
Best. Thing. Ever. Actually, the best thing ever, is, by definition, sliced bread.
I have freaks! I did something right...
From my personal experience, it doesn't actually matter what distro you choose for a project roll out. What matters is:
;)
1. Application/OS requirements (which might well stop the OS transition).
2. Knowledge of the hardware on the floor.
3. Understanding of the level of end-user experience (and amount of necessary hand holding that will be necessary).
Once those three items are in place, it comes down to the IT cat.
For a mixed floor, Ubuntu works great as it has absolutely beautiful hardware detection. Is that a solid? Not always. But, in my experience, majority rules and Ubuntu continues to prove reliable on varied hardware.
For a cloned floor (and/or older hardware), I really like Gentoo. Basic paired down install w/ my necessary builds on disc. Pull my entire necessary build list from the file server and you can be up and running pretty quickly (well... "quick" is obviously conditional... I mean let's face it, emerging X, KDE and OOo isn't a five minute process -- especially on a roomful of refurb 1GHz PIII Deskpro's). Of course, if it's a true cloned floor and you're starting from scratch, the time can be greatly cut down with a good imaged install.
On a serious budget, Puppy or DamnSmall works great. (Point of fact, I recently set up a local NPO w/ 8 old(er) 733 PIII Netvista's. After demo'ing three distro's they liked the light weight of Puppy. So, Puppy they got -- small, light and speedy).
My point here is that crowning a particular distro "king" of the office heap is sketchy at best. The high point of Linux is (in many cases) also it's low point: a staggering choice of distros. While it may be a hindrance in crowning a "Windows Killer", it's the same flaw that makes it very possible to eliminate Windows -- if you know your client requirements, hardware and end user base... you can pretty much facilitate a solid transition. Nothing's going to make that any easier...
Let's face it; when it comes down to installing and supporting a desktop change, it doesn't matter how nice the Ubuntu install process is for the guys over at ZDNet. It's we that get the desperate IM, call, smoke signal concerning the user's internet being broken, the fact that when they "click the blue thing, it pops an error saying "No" or whatever else the end-user doesn't understand.
All of that being said, Ubuntu is the distro that I include with all the end user systems I sell out of the shop -- new and refurb. Lets face it, most people still want Windows, but I'm finding more and more homes for Linux based PC's w/ my average family customer. And Ubuntu does make a pretty, full featured, one disc distro.
Of course, real geeks roll their own.
#SickNotWeak
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/forum/showthread.p hp?p=310
$sudo bash
#
see
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Are there Ubuntu users that can verify above claim?
...
If so, it's bad news for the reputation of 'Linux being secure'.
I know, one distro is not Linux, but the public
"Ubuntu: Best Linux Desktop for Business?"
<JEST>Seems Ubuntu is outgrowing even Linux itself!</JEST>
So if someone posts something informative / funny it should be modded troll because of another post that was made?
Mod troll posts as troll, informative posts as informative, funny posts as funny.
Your talents are wasted here. Make haste, I am sure there are M$ shills / GPL violations / some cool porn that needs viewing somewhere that requires your superhero attention! Up up and away!!!
that which allows you to perform your job at the lowest cost.
stupid. for some it's winxp, others macosx, others ubuntu. Me fc 8.
That is one thing that has amazed me about Ubuntu, actually. I have run *MANY* distros over the last 10+ years, and have not run Windows since version 3.1 in 1995. I am used to having to do some work to get my X configuration correct, to get sound working at all, etc. I am now running Ubuntu, and have not had to touch a single configuration file. This is on a laptop, an eMachines M6805. The wide screen display (1280x800) was correctly configured - I had naturally expected it to choose 1024x768 and have to edit the xorg.conf to fix it. Sound works. It detected the wireless and built in ethernet, allowed me to select the wireless and enter my WEP key during installation, even the media keys (volume, mail, etc.) were properly configured.
Later, I had to install Windows XP in order to load maps onto my GPS - since this machine is designed to run Windows, I didn't expect to have any compatibility issues, but *surprise*! The screen resolution was wrong, the wireless card was not detected at all, sound does not work. I don't know if it configured the media keys correctly or not as I have only had to run Windows twice, once to load maps and later to setup my DSL which unfortunately could only be done by running the Windows coaster which SBC sent me.
I assume that all that doesn't work under Windows could be fixed by hunting around for drivers, but the simple fact that no such work was needed under Ubuntu whereas Windows is unable to make use of all of this Windows hardware was quite a surprise.
You needed paragraph tags. Badly. You had some great stuff to say, though.
What are the Znet's evaluation criteria?
. htm, "We then attempted to implement some basic business tools for each distro":
:)
According to http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/0,39023100,39237495,00
1.connect an email client to Microsoft's Exchange server
2.print on a networked printer
3.set up instant messaging
Is this the requirements of small business?
At my place of work I migrated all of our servers to Ubuntu months ago. As of Wednesday they are all running Breezy Badger, the newest. Best decision I ever made. If someone tells you Ubuntu is a "workstation OS", not a "server OS", don't believe it. It has all the chewy server goodness, and it supports all the neat server hardware we had in our fancy rackmounts. And it contains recent software.
:-)
Tell your technical staff to get with the times
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I recently switched my desktop to Ubuntu... It's nice... But I have to say, as a developer, it was not set up with me in mind... It is a fine Desktop distro, but I had apt-get about a million things before I had a decent dev box...
hard core geek-ware
I had exactly the same experience with Ubuntu once I got it working. And I never got it working super-well on one desktop. Unlike others I had laptop issues too.
I agree they've added some polish. I really hope can get the changes back into Debian.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I've also just upgraded my in-law's aging P2 300 win98 machine with ubuntu. They're very happy with it. Their needs are limited admittedly - web,mail,digital camera,chess,patience. Ubuntu passes with flying colours. I showed them round gnome in a matter of minutes and they were up to speed in no time. Now they keep saying things like - it's _so_ much faster. it looks _so_ much better. No surprise really since win98 is now 7 years old and ubuntu 5.10 is 1 month old. The point is that they would not have had the same experience had I tried a WinXP upgrade on that old hardware.
For a home desktop, I can recommend Automatix - that installs all that "other" stuff for a desktop system.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=66563
apt-get update whatever ..... all other pkg managers just give me the creeps, especially on a remote server ...
... and yes before that I used slackware .... ooohh... like in 95'
oh it is all GNU too, and yes it counts for me.
many say it is only for techs or geeks or whatever, I think whatever else I tried I just went back to it, I don't want crippled packages and messed up (e.g. RH) kernels (well I compile mine so it does not matter anyway)
now mod me whatever, but for me it is #1 for the last good few years
I'm a long time Debian user and just tried Ubuntu 5.10 a couple days ago and one thing that ticked me about Firefox on Linux was that middle-clicking on a tab would paste instead of close the tab.
Debian, Fedora and anyone else, please do what Ubuntu did to Firefox!
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
I may be wrong about which Linux distribution is best for business, but I consider distributing Linux the best business ;-)
I've used ubuntu for a few months and decided it isn't worth the hassle and i'm back to using fedora core. There are a number of issues that it does not address sufficiently. I was recently at a canonical event where they were promoting ubuntu and when asking questions, the speaker was largely unable to provide satisfactory answers, he didn't really know his linux and canonical seriously need to improve some aspects of the desktop. One of the key problems for businesses is that there will undoubtably be custom software they need to install, software unavailable through an apt repository. If you've ever tried compiling software on ubuntu you may well recognise that things begin to break when you start compiling or installing custom deb files. A further problem will manifest when it comes time to apt-get dist-upgrade and a few of those files you've updated could end up rendering your system unusable (hey, it happened to me). Bizarrely enough, these problems tend not to happen with debian, partially perhaps due to the reduced need to install software manually because of the increased amount of software available in repositories. Ubuntu has a long way to go for business, and as of yet i'm unwilling to put it on a server due to issues i've had previously. Perhaps when these issues get ironed out i may consider it, but some of the new features coming should improve usability, key if you're rolling it out across a business network. What is nice is that it retains emphasis on GPLed software, but some of the software in the repos is not GPL, not that most users will be bothered. I don't believe it quite fits the needs of business just yet, but who knows what's to come?
~HTP~ Hug that tux
A base Ubuntu-install is based entirely on Free Software (http://www.gnu.org./ As with Debian, you can add non-free sources yourself, for gettings codecs for Windows Media Player etc.
Suse has some parts Free and other parts proprietary, so it is not entirely Free Software. But you can download Suse free of charge (a more concise phrase).
I believe this is the main difference. Whenever you see the word "Free" or "free", you should always have the broader definition of Free in mind to see what fits.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I really don't understand why ubuntu is so popular ? What have ubuntu that other distro haven't ? I hope it's not that ugly Brown wallpaper ....
To be honest, I don't believe there is an opensource drop in replacement for Exchange yet.
Have you taken a look at Scalix yet? The server only runs on Linux and their community version is free (though I don't know if its open source per-se). It has native support for MS Outlook, and it has a very impressive AJAX enabled web interface. Their product demo shows it off pretty well.
They don't list Ubuntu as one of their supported platforms. Perhaps because they only package in rpm, dunno.
"I'm not really just sitting in a chatroom trolling for pickups, I'm testing distros for a ZDNet article!" You know, I never understood "office work" (oops, I mean """work""") that much. Apparently you need to throw around stacks of quarterly reports, pie charts, Powerpoint-Prestations with stupid animations and teeth-grindingly-irritating-sounds, appointment books, calendars, et cetera ad infinitum, just to keep appearing to look busy. Meanwhile, engineers (the actual productive portion of the workforce) look busy by sitting quietly in their office with the door closed.
But, anyway, if it makes you happy, Ubuntu is your office distro! I've tried Ubuntu, and I think it should certainly keep any office worker satisfied. Engineers still await *their* distro.
Select a security level other than "Standard", which is aimed at home users, and a lot of security considerations (besides password strength) will be enforced.
KDE is actually the default desktop, it may be better to review the default desktop on each distro rather than your preferred one.
When I run MCC->Hardware->Printers without any local printers attached, it prompts me with "Do you want to enable printing on printers on the local network", then gives options for a local CUPS server or an existing CUPS server on the network (choose local), it will install some more packages and then search for network printers. If it doesn't find any printers, use Actions->Add printer, if it still doesn't, enable the expert mode which will let you choose between JetDirect, CUPS, SMB etc etc.
$ urpmq --sources ximian-connector
/mnt/cdrom/media/main/ximian-connector-2.2.3-2mdk. i586.rpm
Maybe it should be installed by default, but it *is* on the CDs.
So, that deals with all the cons listed in the conclusion.
I would also point out that most real businesses won't be doing manual installations, and with Mandriva (as with SuSE and RedHat), all of this additional configuration can be avoided by doing automated installs. Ubuntu's support for automated installs still lacks (maybe this is why it wasn't mentioned at all)?
I recently installed ubuntu on my Zepto 4200, it went swift and after one short hour my ubuntu had been running its auto-udate. It even found my ati 9700 although i had to make an easy download for drivers serving my pro version(?).
:/
:D)
First thing that strikes me is the somewhat old-style user interface that the gnome (right, eh?) presents me with, i dont know if its just me, but it seems that everything is prettier and somehow fits more stuff onto my windows desktop? - checked screen res, no probs, though it reminded me of using an older laptop?
Secondly it recognized my nfts external hd just fine, but then i found out i could not write to it. Searching the web only presented me with commercial sollutions, and as i am a poor student i decided to switch back to my win)#%/home mylimitedass-edition that i intended only for the windows games i do not wish do abandon
Now givin me a sollution to those problems would convert me! (including a windows-game-emulator, bye bye solitare
The original poster seems to have been mentioning client-side aspects of samba use, where IMHO GNOME is quite a bit behind. Saying something "works great" when you set it up by hand, in a thread about desktop usability is a bit weird ...
...
Samba and LVM with GUIs etc etc have worked great in Mandriva since it was Mandrake 8.0
That should be:
/boot/grub/menu.lst
sudo nano -w
Sorry for any confusion.
almost any of these Linux flavors
is a good match for their modest
computer work. i think the stability
of the Linux product promotes
a lot more confidence.
Linspire is by far the easiest to use and most feature rich Linux desktop. To claim Ubuntu is the best just shows the bias of the reviewer. Here's a list of the things that Linspire DOES that Ubuntu does NOT:
- Flash
- Java
- Quicktime
- Windows Media
- MP3 support
- Advanced Nvidia drivers
- Working modem drivers for widest list of modems
- AOL dialer
- Full list of printer drivers (Epson, HP, etc)
- Complete audio and visual tutorials for new users
- One click software install
- Logically organized menus and applications
- One click software updating for all software and OS
- File sharing with Microsoft networks
And much more. Anyone who says that they can recommend Ubuntu for business use is delusional. It would take days and massive knowledge to put Ubuntu on par with Linspire. It's a shame that Linux reviewers are so out of touch with the needs of the average computer user.
Yeah right. You didn't remember his name, but you remembered his comment word for word. And even if you forgot, google /might/ be there to help giving credit where credit is due.
d =11533388
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=137851&ci
Mod down this idiot.
[i'm not a slashdot user, so AC]
Just a note about your sacred NASA suit Griffin: not only is he running NASA's budget into the ground, but he's lying to Congress about how badly he's ruining their budget.
'"The budget associated with the Vision's announcement in 2004 [anticipated] that the shuttle's demands would significantly decrease in 2008 and 2009," said one longtime NASA watcher. "That was a myth."
Griffin acknowledged as much at a Nov. 3 House Science Committee hearing, saying the plan to finish the space station and retire the shuttle in 2010 faces a "$3 billion to $5 billion" funding shortfall.'
That's despite Congress overfunding NASA, against Bush's moronic complaints. Is it a surprise that Griffin is screwing the Shuttle and farming deficits while overseeing a military base on the Moon? As I said, he's a complicit bureaucrat with a Star Wars hidden agenda. And you are a gutless, sleazy TrollBot.
--
make install -not war
I have just started with linux ... read that Ubuntu is great ... tried their live CD ... worked wonderfully ... so downloaded the set up CD ... no go ... on an empty drive ... downloaded again ... tried set up ... no go again ... says no OS ... insert boot up disk ... does not recognize the Ubuntu set up disk ... then downloaded Suse 10 ... installed without problem ... trying to run linux I realized what is so great about windows ... windows is simple ... installing a program or updating is easy ... not so with linux. Example firefox has released version 1.50 ... downloaded it ... can not install it ... till the powers that be make it installable through yast ... did I have that problem with windows ... NO. Whole lot of things do not work in linux ... for example my MP3's ... I will figure that out someday. The thing though I love about linux is the desktop ... I can read stuff on the monitor without my eye balls trying to get close to the monitor ... windows jumps from 800 which is too grainy to 1024 which is too small to read. Linux has a longway to go to be acceptable by non-geeks like me ... and all those distros ... scare umble orinary folks.