Ubuntu - a new friend
As a Debian user I heard about Ubuntu in the early days, and wasn’t sure I completely understood the point. Why would you want another Debian ‘desktop’ OS? Anyone can get hold of a copy of Debian, install it, and configure it as a desktop. Surely this is what you would need to do with Ubuntu?
I therefore didn’t try Ubuntu, until last week, when I needed to quickly test an Acer Laptop, typically populated with hardware that had poor Linux support. I dropped the Ubuntu 6.06 CD in the drive, and turned the computer on. That was it, I had a fully supported Linux desktop, with Office suite, Network tools, and tonnes of other apps. That was it. Audio was working, the video worked at very high resolution, with dedicated drivers for this family of video cards, and even the wireless card (which needed ndiswrapper to work) jumped to life. Can I stress this further, I turned the computer on, and it just worked.
I could then run without the needing the CD by running a very simple installation app, which asked me which hard drive to install to, what user I wanted to log in as, and what I wanted to call the laptop.
Before returning the laptop to the owner, I then needed to reinstall Windows XP, and was reminded how terribly slow the installation was. I couldn’t see the computer running this OS before the install was complete, and when it was complete, the sound did not work. The video would only do 800×600, and the Wireless NIC did not work. There also wasn’t a complete office suite at the ready for immediate use. Then the parody that is ‘activation’; the online activation service wasn’t working, and the telephone activation proffered advice at regular intervals that ‘there is an error’, requiring me to speak to someone and allow them to read back a series of digits that needed to be precisely repeated into the Activation app.
As for corporate readiness, Ubuntu have announced six monthly cycles of release. This is very fast, many companies are still using Windows 2000 for their desktop operating system platform for example. If a company cannot upgrade their desktop operating systems after six years, the concept of a continual process of version-bumping must be terrifying. However, there is no need to force IT teams to upgrade every six months, as Ubuntu 6.06 has been released under an ‘LTS’ (Long Term Support) agreement, promising software support for at least five years. Ubuntu also release a special OEM version of the installation disk, allowing system builders and corporate IT departments to build custom releases for their organisation or customers.
Looking ahead, I strongly predict more movement from ubuntu in the corporate desktop arena. A cross-platform replacement for Active Directory, that also supported centralised software and patch rollouts is long overdue, and a barrier for most firms looking to advocate Linux on the desktop.
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