This is exciting page for me. I use Vista and actually use all opensource applications on it as I dont like MS products. I use Thunderbird, firefox, google tools, skype, LAMP development tools, GIMP and OpenOffice. I am seriously thinking about installing Ubuntu on my desktop.

Still I have 1 fear … will it be difficult to recover data from corrupt Ubuntu installation if there is any problem with it in future? As I will carry business data on my laptop which is in GBs.

Thanks,
Hrishi

We do have one MS XP system we use to network connect to our other store, but as far as anything else its all managed by Ubuntu.

We do support other distros, but our customers rarely request them. Most of them are using Ubuntu.

Those who uses non-Ubuntu distros are using it for various reasons : support (example: Oracle will not support your installation if you’re not using RedHat), dependency issues (example: zenworks won’t work on non-Suse distro), etc.

From my experience in the trenches :
Technical problems are NO problem. Most of the time, the solutions already exist, or you can create it yourselves.

The biggest problems with migration projects are (in no particular order) : political problems, resistance to change, user perception, etc.

Therefore, for a migration project to be successful, you’ll need a team composed of people with SOFT skills as well as hard/technical skills. Otherwise, it’ll be a very tough or even an impossible mission.

Unfortunately, people like this (balanced soft/technical skills) is VERY hard to find. I’m having problems increasing my capacity, and have had to (sadly) refuse projects.

Anyway, Ubuntu is on the right track there with their focus to desktop / end-users, along with LinuxMint & PC linux os. Keep it up !

We also have 2 machines used in the Refreshment area as Internet access terminals and these machines are dedicated to Ubuntu and Firefox.

Additionally we have 3 Machines used by the staff group all of which are now Ubuntu only.

All of the above are networked.

We are finding widespread acceptance of Ubuntu anongst the users of the Centre and are contunually asked to help with setting up of new systems in peoples homes.

The machines in the Cafe are very heavily used and used to be problematic in the Widows configuation. Now apart from a weekl;y upgrade check they never require attention and remain virus/worm/spyware free

Ubuntu is now the system of choice for both the Centre staff and users. In management terms upgrade costs, maintanence time and reliability have improved greatly.

Over the last 12 months we have seen a remarkable transition from Ubuntu being a curiosity to it becoming our system of choice.

Bring on 7.10!!!

So, ill-chosen words. For consumer read individual. I would appeal to readers who are using Ubuntu to tell us and let us use them as case studies to encourage others and to give to people like Tim as examples of businesses running Ubuntu. Consider buying support to resolve any issues – Landscape is designed to manage multiple deployments and is free with support contracts. Contribute, in short, and help us as we continue to invest to resolve the remaining issues on the way to widespread adoption in businesses.

Gerry Carr
Marketing Manager, Canonical

Actually we use Kubuntu on all our machines at My Game Company. We do e-mail, software development, web site development and publishing, artwork, order fulfillment, finances, and all of our backend work on Kubuntu. We use Firefox for internet access, Thunderbird for our e-mail client, SpamAssassin for our spam filtering, GIMP for most of our game art, SoniK for audio editing, gftp for FTP, and CrossOver Linux for all the Windows applications we need (including Office 2000, Frontpage 2000, Quicken, Corel Photopaint 8, and FeedForAll). For development, we use makefiles to build, nedit for our code editor, ddd for our debugger, and Bitrock for our installers. We have also been helping beta test the upcoming Linux version of gDEBugger for OpenGL profiling.

We only use Windows and Mac when we have to port and test our games.

We’ve been very happy with Kubuntu since we switched a year and a half ago. The file system is so much faster than Windows, and the machines are much more responsive. It is also very stable. The Windows apps run very well under CrossOver Linux, and in fact some of them start up faster on Kubuntu than they do on the same machine running Windows XP (my machine has swappable hard drives with different operating systems on various drives). We’ve had no problems with viruses, spyware, or adware. It has been a very satisfying experience, and we have no intention of ever going back to Windows.

You can get the OpenOffice translator for Microsoft’s XML documents at”

http://www.getdeb.net/

Just a one-click install in Ubuntu 7.04.