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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."
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
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/
So, for all intents and purposes, does Ubuntu = Debian or Ubuntu == Debian or Ubuntu != Debian?
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...
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.
I'm not sure it's so much about it installing OK on the laptops and coming up with an X screen, as things like automatic setup of sleep and hibernation states, good automatic (and out-of-the-box, no setup necessary) detection and mounting of flash drives and external hard drives and hotplug detection and setup of PCMCIA devices.
Lots of distros still make you choose between doing some or all of those things manually, or setting up the automation of the tasks on your own. That's fine for power users, but it's nice to be able to pop in an Ubuntu CD, run the simple installation (no harder than the one for WinXP, and certainly faster), and boot into a system that does everything that a desktop user expects out of a modern OS without having to do any fiddling.
Hell, I *am* a power user and I prefer the way Ubuntu sets up stuff like that for my laptop. This 5.10 version kicks some serious ass. I never liked Red Hat or SuSE, but something about the way Ubuntu sets up the desktop by default just feels... right. It's pretty much the exact distro that I'd been wishing someone would make.
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
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
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.
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.
They also only review Mandriva in terms of GNOME and well...being a KDE centric distro, my experiances with mandriva gnome have shown that it always requires extra setup and tweaking.
Bottles.
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/forum/showthread.p hp?p=310
Probably OT but wtf, rock climbing, a pleasure of mine(yea, big blue room and everything) 50# ago, rated roped climbs with intermediate protection at 5.0 to... Was susposed to stop at 5.9 but we kept climbing harder stuff. Couldn't transition to 6.0 because that was used for aided (as opposes to free) climbs. So everyoone just kept going. Last I checked 5.15 was as hard as had been free climbed. Next would be 5.16 of course.
Anyway; I liked Ubuntu, but the latest FreeBSD mounts and reads the NTFS partition. The utility is obvious.
The reason we subjugate ourselves to law is to better procure justice. If law does not accomplish this purpose then it m
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