Hi Everyone, anyone got any views on which flavour of linux would be best suited to a corporate environment(Windows based) in a desktop role...light excel, word, powerpoint type jobs.

Thanks

E349CDP

Hi Everyone. Just started using linux to cut on costs. What in peoples opinion is the best flavour linux for corporate desktop type environment?

E349Cdp

If you have the budget, it is hard to beat Red Hat due to their level of support:

http://redhat.com

That being said, all distributions have the capability to create office documents with OpenOffice or LibreOffice. IMHO, the deciding factor should be the experience/familiarity of your IT staff. If they are trained in Red Hat, then Red Hat may be the best choice; if they are trained in Debian, then Debian may be the best choice; if they are trained in Slackware then... What are your human resources for this project?

I seriously doubt Linux will cut your costs, at least for the first year or two. A Windows license costs about the same as 1 hour's pay (give or take); do you think you can install Linux on a computer and train your staff to use it effectively in less than 1 hour per user?

Linux has many benefits including stability, reliability, security... but it will require a significant initial investment of time, manpower, training, downtime for your business, subscription fees (if you go with an Enterprise solution such as Red Hat), possibly new hardware if your old hardware is not Linux-compatible, etc.

Thanks for the reply. Well I'm in the unique position of being able to recruit about 30 people who already have some experience of using Ubuntu. It's for a call centre/contact centre and we've taken over the company. I really want the best solution for intergration of data to SQL servers and a solution that may, hopefully, intergrate with Lync servers for the call centre. If it goes well I can replicate the model elsewhere in the company. The existing solution they have is very clunky and requires a lot of maintenance.

I used to work at sun a few years ago and am familiar with Solaris up to about release 8, but I sold my soul and my digmity to microsoft a few years ago, but red hat was emerging strongly then and we did test some of there products...they seem quite solid.

E349cdp

Ubuntu 12.04 is coming in April (currently in beta-testing). It will be "long term support" through April 2017. That would be my recommendation if your users are already experienced with Ubuntu (assuming your project is not too urgent and you understand it may take a couple of months for the developers to iron out the bugs). Ubuntu's user interface ("Unity") is unique, therefore no other distro can provide the exact same look-and-feel as Ubuntu.

A good first step is to download several different distributions, set aside a spare computer for the task, and do some test-driving.

I'm sure another more technical linuxquestions member can answer your data integration questions. I am more of an end-user myself, good luck!

Thanks for that. Yes we've got time, we're keeping the existing system in place and developing a test bed for around ten users ata time. We're going to try and keep the same look but with some ideas and suggestions from the users. Thought it would be useful to improve the useability and general contentment if they had imput/influence. I'm going to mske a start Friday...

The best linus distro huh, It depends on what you want to do with the OS and what kind of work will you be using it for.. RedHat is a great distro and their support is amazing, but they are not the best for everyone if you know where I am coming from.

Try different live CDs and select the one you like the most.
Try Fedora, OpenSuSE, Ubuntu. They all come with lots of pre installed office type applications and tools, and they have great community and documentation all over the web.
Good luck to you.

I'm sorry I also forgot to mention you can try multiple different Distros by using a USB stick and installing the OS on it using this web site, http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ .
, Hope you enjoy!

I would highly recommend Redhat for the stability and support. Cent OS is a GNU clone of Redhat and will give you Many of the same features, but without the support.

If paying for a system isn't an option than that I would consider Debian or Debian derivatives, such as Ubuntu. In general, most of them are known to be more stable than other distros. I would stick with gnome 2 or KDE for a desktop environment for ease of use. If the machines are older, XFCE would be the third choice. It's much faster than the other two and isn't much more difficult to use.

If there is one thing Ubuntu is known for it is definitely not its stability.

As the others have stated, use that that your IT staff can handle the best. This is the best choice for business use.

Well I am a student and I am using ubuntu for last one and half year and really I am a bad user and I mess up a lot with my OS but ubuntu I think is rigid and solid specially ubuntu 10.04 I can't say any thing about other versions regarding their stability.I think ubuntu 10.04 is superb as it is Long term support version also and I am waiting for next LTS(long term support).I have also installed it in my company machines where I am intern and everything is going smooth.

@ e349cdp- this post has been palced in the 'LinuxQuestions.org Member Intro' section, but its the same basic post as you had in your other thread-

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-linux-928172/

This areas of the forum is for 'introductions', not so you can make 2 threads on the same issue.

Reported for moving/merging.

I can see your point, and for some things its totally true.

But for office use, and only looking at end-users (not support, either from the IT people where you work or from the distro) its not that bad.

Firefox, IE, they both work pretty much the same way. Shouldnt be any training costs. Lopts of windows users have used firefox with windows anyway. Moving from Office pre-2007 versions to Open/Libre Office would actually have _less_ training than moving to Office 2007/2010. BTW, the next Office version will probably be using the 'metro' interface so even if you do have people who are familiar with Office2007/2010, there will be probably be training needed at some point for the new interface.

Windows, and windows pograms, are static.

IMO unity is going to be a bigger problem than the actual applications/programs.

+1. Make sure you try debian. IMO its one of the 3 best distros for using in a work enviroment (the others are red hat and centOS). If you've got users with some ubuntu experience, debian is an easy transition. It uses less resources than *buntu, doesnt have the amazingly stupid (IMO anyway) 'unity' interface, and its not a pet project for a space-tourist who runs his linux business from a tax haven.

No, I dont like *buntus at all. Biased, I know.

I know a lot of business have taken to Ubuntu, but you really need a longer-lived distro and one that subjects software to a longer testing period before including it.

Red Hat and CentOS are great, and OpenOffice will be installed that does exactly what you're looking for: word processor, presentations, spreadsheet, project planning. They really need about 700MB of memory as a minimum, so if you want to utilise some older computers, the way to go would be Debian; SalineOS will install Debian in a rather more friendly fashion than Debian's own disk and give you LibreOffice.