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Ubuntu: Best Linux Desktop for Business?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the they're-all-better-than-the-alternative dept.

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."

13 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Xandros by Tiberius_Fel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm surprised they didn't test Xandros - I interviewed with them a couple of months ago, and they specialize in business-oriented Linux...

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    1. Re:Xandros by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, I second that. Xandros Business Desktop 3 (as the name suggests) should have been included in the comparison. Otherwise it is downright unfair. And believe me, since I am also their beta tester for sometime, it would have beaten everyone hands down in ease of installation to integration into existing Windows networks -- and the last point is *damn important* no matter what you may think!

  2. ZDNET is a bit confused by kernelpanicked · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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."

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    Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
  3. "only one crash"... by Yath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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:

    ...an accidental combination of keystrokes -- experimenting around Ctrl-Alt-E to try and get a euro symbol -- crashed the system and dumped us at a $-prompt command line, with no obvious route back to our unsaved work.

    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.

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    I always mod up spelling trolls.
    1. Re:"only one crash"... by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A Linux user might regard this as a minor problem, forgetting that to most people, this is indeed a show-stopper.

      You're absolutely right. This is the problem with the Linux developers, they got so accustomed to it that they forget about their first problems and how they solved them. It's like learning a language and forgetting about your native language.

      We'd need an army of Windows Joe users trying to test Linux and reporting all the things they don't feel comfortable with. And we need to keep them fresh so they don't "lose their linux virginity", so to speak.

      About those commandline shortcuts, I'd say that these should be disabled by default.

    2. Re:"only one crash"... by strider44 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree that it's a great feature, but they should have a message on the command line saying "Use this key combination to get back to the GUI: " for the inexperienced who accidentely stumbled across the key combinations.

  4. Ubuntu's best "business friendly" feature: by pschmied · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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

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    . Penguins Surely Ca
  5. Re:One little additional remark by VGPowerlord · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

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  6. Where is Fedora by camcorder · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They didn't test Fedora and decided best distro for small bussinesses? Are they on crack?

    1. Re:Where is Fedora by unixfan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah, that's pretty poor. I understand they did not try KDE either (according to a poster above). I'm not even going to bother reading the review at this point as it's too incomplete and inapplicable to me.
      I've been using many diff distro's for my desktop (since -95) and I always come back to Fedora for various reasons.

  7. Re:One little additional remark by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

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  8. Re:Ubuntu Year.Month by rtechie · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A versioning scheme that is IN NO WAY confusing!

  9. Hmm... by ovit · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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...

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    hard core geek-ware