Comments on: Ubuntu – making Linux a reality for small business, but who cares?

By: Windows 7 - small business perspectives on Microsoft’s new OS | Windows 7 review for SMBs

Tue, 12 May 2009 13:11:26 +0000

[...] As many of you know, Vista hell became too much for me and I spent most of 2008 using Ubuntu. [...]

By: Rajesh

Rajesh — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:36:56 +0000

"Serious accounting/financial apps on Linux are non-existent." There are few serious accounting apps gaining popularity on Linux Here is one called P2PAccounts and there is an installer for Ubuntu also at this site Rajesh

By: David Goodwin

David Goodwin — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:34:22 +0000

Nik – I’m not sure; I think the percentage of non-windows desktops is increasing – and many people seem eager to shun Vista for whatever reason.

Yes – my company develop web applications which are cross platform – and in Open Source languages – which aid longer term maintenance and development. But there are huge numbers of businesses out there relying on e.g. Visual Basic or a text based application running on DOS. We offer a number of advantages over such applications – but it’s normally difficult to change once a system is embedded. The same seems to be true for the desktop!

The obvious problem is that a lot of software written for Windows doesn’t run on Linux – some might via WINE – but it’s normally not that easy to setup/do – and Linux “wizards” are probably relatively difficult to find.

Ubuntu (or RedHat, CentOS or SuSE etc) are all great on the server. There is still a lot of work to be done to make them no-brainer options – management tools often don’t exist, or some functionality just isn’t there (e.g. Active Directory) – but for a small business, it really is something people should investigate (if only for simple file and print sharing!)

Nik – I was looking for you at LugRadioLive – I gather you didn’t go? (At least on Saturday).

thanks
David.

By: Nik Butler

Nik Butler — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:52:17 +0000

David, its worth mentioning though that your company is part of the cycle of products which I highlighted to Alex. Your offering Software as a Service. Ive not seen any Desktop core application development in your line up.

Thanks to the browser and the internet the relevancy of winning the desktop war has become pointless. Hence Ubuntu as a regenerator of older architecture and a simple mechanism with which to distribute a basic desktop install is a winner. Though as Alex points out without sufficient marketing and product tie in, no one will care.

Its great to hear about SMes making use of Ubuntu and other linux desktops but I feel that its past its time to make that land grab worthwhile.

Ubuntu on the server however is a stunning proposition that has consistently beat down windows for scalability and administration.

By: Mrtyn

Mrtyn — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:42:39 +0000

Who cares?

Microsoft! For sure.

Oh and ….
Dell
Acer
Asus
Sony
IBM
all for different reasons.

FWIW – I run a small (ish) business and we use Linux on servers plus some Ubuntu desktops. The rest of the desktops are XP and as they are replaced they will end up either as thin clients or Linux machines.

By: Alex Bellinger

Alex Bellinger — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 23:35:06 +0000

Hi David, good to see a real small business case study for Linux. I’m doing exactly the same as you. Virtual Box set up to allow me to use the Windows version of my accounting software.

By: David Goodwin

David Goodwin — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:58:06 +0000

Hi Alex,

Nice (and fair) review; FWIW there are open source accounting packages, but they tend to be web based (e.g. sql ledger etc) and don’t readily lend themselves to e.g. UK taxation etc… so aren’t of much use if you want them to do your own Payroll.

In my company (palepurple.co.uk) we’ve been using Linux on the desktop exclusively for the last 3 years – but we still have a vmware server hidden in the corner, running a Windows virtual machine for Quickbooks.

By: Alex Bellinger

Alex Bellinger — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:59:38 +0000

Hi Leigh, if you use lots of sophisticated desktop apps, then Linux is probably going to feel a little clunky in places.
However, in general I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at how sophisticated and often more intuitive the user interface is than Windows.
And as I say, if you’re using web-based apps, then speed, efficiency, security as well as an attractive UI and zero license fees are going to become increasingly attractive.
Why else is Microsoft concentrating on Mesh and Silverlight?
Linux is never going to be a Windows killer (not enough marketing budget and commercial tie ups!), but like Firefox it might begin to grab a larger slice of the action.

By: Leigh Caldwell

Leigh Caldwell — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:14:51 +0000

Interesting – and after 11 years or more of having my geek friends insist that Linux on the desktop was going to kill Microsoft “within the next 12 months”, it’s good to see that it is at least usable now. I guess the speed is a big selling point and goes some way to combat the sometimes clunky UI of many Linux apps. The things that I tend to notice are very subtle but cumulatively make quite a difference to the usage experience – little details of how keyboard shortcuts work, the visual feedback mechanisms as you click or mouseover on different widgets, etc. These all contribute to make the OS just “feel” right – it’s quite subconscious but improves the user experience a lot.

Microsoft is actually really good at this stuff (Apple is even better) and with so many millions of hours of testing and usability lab work having gone into the Microsoft infrastructure, these details are going to be hard to replicate for an open source platform. I am sure they will get there one day, and the current generation of Linux desktops is definitely miles ahead of the old one. And if Ubuntu is faster and more responsive than Vista, that would provide a big improvement to that subconscious experience of usability – enough to beat all those subtle little touches of Microsoft’s? I don’t know, though I suspect not – but I will keep an open mind.

Incidentally there are quite a few Web-based accounting packages emerging – my company (Inon) makes one and there are a number of alternatives. Dennis Howlett’s Accman blog might be a place to start if you’re interested, and Accountingweb has reviews from time to time. Most of these are entirely usable from a Linux desktop, and many have other big advantages over traditional Sage-like packages.