Slashdot Mirror
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."
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/
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
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
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.
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.
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
The Ubuntu live CD won't run on my computer: it fails when it tries to load the CD driver. Looking through the boot log I think it's having trouble with the Intel SATA controller. Anyway, my point is that no OS will install flawlessly on all hardware. You were lucky with Ubuntu and unlucky with Windows. It doesn't mean anything.
I hate playing devil's advocate for Microsoft, but when dealing with a laptop that came out in 2004, an OS released in 2005 (Ubuntu 5.10) should have better hardware support out of the box than an OS released in 2001 (Windows XP), when you don't have the CD that the manufacturer conveniently loaded all the drivers on to prevent this problem.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Nothing is flawless in all cases, but Ubuntu does have a deserved reputation for bundling an appreciably wide and helpfully array of device drivers to help reduce the time taken to successfully install the system. It's got its drawbacks, but far more it has got its strengths.
It's not luck if Ubuntu has been developed with - relatively speaking - quite extensive driver support. It's far closer the norm. Although the lack of a CD driver in your case does sound unfortunate.
They didn't test Fedora and decided best distro for small bussinesses? Are they on crack?
So why doesn't Microsoft provide updated copies of its OS with new computers that come out, instead of shipping the exact same disk they've been shipping for the last 5 years? Why don't they go around collecting all the new popular drivers, and have a database of them so it can download them right off the internet, automatically, without having to search around for them?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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!!!
A versioning scheme that is IN NO WAY confusing!
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