Ubuntu Linux Reviews

We started with Ubuntu Linux as our initial path to start developing our own software. If a customer wants us to manage a different technology for them, we can do that. For now, for new projects that are made from scratch, we use our own technologies, and those are built over Linux.

Here's what I like most about Ubuntu Linux: the support we get from the factory, from the vendor.

I also find value in being able to test things with the community and learning more about the solutions that have been proven, so we can start to elaborate more and be able to pass to production more reliable information.

In the last five years, open source was not known, or it wasn't trusted much, but the industry knows that open source is the way to go as long as you work with the right vendor. Open source is here to stay, but it would always be dependent on the right partner, because there is a lot of open source software, but if they are not maintained, secured, or controlled, they are just like a train without a driver.

Based on all these, we love Linux, especially because of what we have learned in the last two months: We started to migrate customers from Microsoft SQL from Windows to Linux because the performance you can get from Linux with SQL from Microsoft, it's unparalleled.

You have more advantage from the power of Linux and you can cut off the cost of an operating system by using Linux with Microsoft SQL. We are starting to do that in the enterprise market because we believe that is a great step for them to reduce costs and to start making more powerful ETLs and queries, and faster processes, at a better price, because Linux is much more affordable.

Even in the Cloud, you'll find that a Windows instance is $400, while a Linux instance running SQL is $100 a month. It's a good thing here in Latin America, where we are going to start doing this. We are also seeing that there is a great opportunity in other countries in Europe.

We provide support for Red Hat, CentOS, and other distributions, but we have a solid relationship with Ubuntu Linux, with Canonical. We are a partner. With this solution, we are able to do more. We are able to explore a lot.

With Linux from Red Hat, we have been asked to manage, because in Peru, there were not many companies that had the knowledge to manage the workloads, but we prefer to use Canonical.

If a customer comes and asks us to manage their Red Hat Linux servers, we can definitely think about it because we have the skill. In our team, we have LPIC-1 engineers specialized in Linux so we can run any workloads over Linux.

Ubuntu Linux is very good.

There is a big advantage in security when using Ubuntu Linux that you will not have in the Windows environments short-term. When you have this relationship with Linux and you start working with very secure environments, there's less possibility of being directly attacked by a group of hackers. You will lose less data and you will have a more reliable ecosystem.

What I'd like to see included in the next release of Ubuntu Linux is for the interfaces to become richer, so they'll have the capability to absorb traditional and normal technologies.

For example, Canonical makes such high-end technologies to run and manage several servers at the same time, but they couldn't succeed because they were focusing all their efforts on just Linux-based systems.

If someone starts by providing things to assess and migrate the workloads you have in a data center where you have 200 to 300 Windows instances, you can provide some studies to these executive directors and say: "Today you're spending this money on licensing and operations, and you're getting 40% of your operational performance. If you start running Linux and you move your workloads into Linux, you'll be able to cut costs, and you'll get more out of your operational performance which you can present and provide data to your end customers more quickly and safely."

What we need to have is more tools to access the Windows environment of Ubuntu Linux, so we'll be able to say: "These are opportunities for your operational expenditure and cost cutting. These can help make your company better and allow you to provide more data to your customers more quickly." 

Having more tools in the next release that can help provide information to executives: letting them know that there's money waiting in those opportunities for migration and change, is what I'd like to see.

We've been using Linux for more than 10 years.

Support for Ubuntu Linux is the reason I rated this solution a perfect score, because if you open a ticket, they will get to you quickly with the answers and information you need. For any subscription, it's good if you have a great SLA.

If you need a subscription and you need answers, go with Ubuntu Linux. If you have the right partner and you need an answer, your partner will always have it as well.

The support team always replies with the answers to your questions.

As an MSP, I reply within 10 minutes to my customers. I'm also basing this on other companies who are able to respond very fast to their customers' needs, so it depends on the kind of subscription and the SLA.

The price of Ubuntu Linux is more affordable.

We evaluated CentOS and Red Hat.

I have more than 20 years experience in providing MSP services for enterprises and the government.

We've been exploring the market. We are located in Peru, so we designed our own technology and we've been exploring a number of technologies from several providers. What we did was to create technology locally and based that technology on the best practices of several brands.

For example, we talked with Silver Peak, we talked with Fortinet and Juniper and other providers, because the major problem in the industry was the pricing and the licensing models. What we did was to create our own technology in Peru, then we provide this technology as a service, as a managed service provider. That's what we've been doing.

We provide the consultancy, then we provide the hardware, then we manage, but they don't need to buy it. They just need to rent it for the period of time stated on their contract, then we provide the full managed services for that.

We started as a hardware appliance on-premises, but the time and the conditions of the market forced us to start preparing a virtual cloud appliance because as Amazon, IBM, and other companies were using the Cloud, we started to make these laboratories to enable our device to pass through traffic over the Cloud, on any cloud. We started to use a virtual appliance. We started to use the Cloud.

Now, we have a hybrid model where some of our main devices are located in the Cloud, but we have a satellite and it's called a hub. This hub is installed on the local data center and its availability is found on several other providers. In this way, we can start and we can continue to monitor everything without experiencing loss, because sometimes data centers have this downtime.

We can keep working with other devices that are connected. We made a load balancing with DNS. We have a DNS solution that provides this, so it also responds to unavailability. If we have a problem, what we do is we keep tracking, monitoring, and providing KPIs for customers, and if something happens, we can respond within 10 to 15 minutes.

Many companies have a monitoring system. They can use PRTG. They can use free open source devices, but they don't have awareness. They have the monitoring systems, but they don't have time to remain seated to watch all those KPIs and sensors. What we did was to create an escalating model where the most valuable information our customer needs is the availability of their core systems.

We always take great care and we provide notifications not only about the downtime. It's not about the values because there is a big difference between a DDoS attack and just another load of our applications. We know those patterns. We're usually notified about anomalous patterns, security, etc. Today, in both the government and private sectors, attackers are scanning all the time. As we have an IDS solution, we are able to detect some anomalous patterns on the main sites and on the application.

In applications, we have developed IM (identity management) solutions. This software also tracks all the users getting into an application. When we notice that there is anomalous pattern, we're notified, so we block because we are using the zero-trust concept.

The zero-trust concept is a concept that makes us more reliable, because if you are a collaborator, or an employee, and you have a computer, a tablet, and a mobile phone, and you have access to our applications, we will know that you are not connected to your device trying to get into an application. We will ask you if you are the person trying to get in and we will authorize and permit you to get into an application through this identity access management solution that provides you access to the applications, but at the same time, we are providing you access to parts of the application you have permission to access.

This is a great accomplishment in Peru because we created something very competitive, in terms of Okta or AWS Cognito: it's their standard solution. We created that here in Peru, so we are trying to push this technology outside to make the people know about it. It's a mix of things because if you try to make just a firewall and start checking just the IDS and IPS, and you don't start checking the application itself, plus you don't start checking other patterns, you will have less information. What we are trying to do is to be more holistic on how a person works in the company to protect both their information and their access to the applications.

It's very holistic. We are mixing bare metal security. We are using a WAF (web application firewall) that we made here. It's a universal thing. At the same time, we are using the identity management platform. We made it for protection at that level. We are making several layers for the security, and also to provide the whole holistic pattern to our customers.

This is why our customers stay longer with us. Each customer we have today has been with us for more than five years, and they renew their contracts with us because they feel so comfortable with us, and we are well-trusted.

Customers just need to ask us if they can do something specific, if they can explore, because what we usually do and build for them are laboratories. We are making proof of concepts of new products because customers want to move forward and try new products. This is what enables us to keep the customers and have them renew their contracts, so they can move forward with new products. This is a good thing for us, and we are able to retain customers who have been with us in the last 10 years, for example.

We didn't experience many issues with Linux because we started using it early. The first solution I provided was 15 years ago, when we worked with a telco and this telco wanted to go to the enterprise market to sell IT services. What I proposed was to build a Platform as a Service to protect their information real-time. It's called continuous data protection. We installed all those in Linux.

We have extensive experience doing that and we started with data continuity for data centers. We started to replicate data a lot, even for a core bank located here in Peru. They were one of our first big customers and we had a five-year contract with them.

We didn't find many challenges at the beginning with Linux, because we started to build software over there, but then when we started to manage very big logs, we decided to build another software, in another instance, to start distributing the data and have more information and visibility for our customers.

We also developed a software over Linux to compress the traffic in transit. We made a lot of those. We didn't face any challenges because we have been working a lot with Linux.

We learned a lot. We learned how to build software over Linux and in several languages because we needed to build interfaces for end users. We also needed to build the backend. Our backend technology today has not yet been used a lot. We are using HTML technologies for the frontend. We have a team to do that. We also managed several, general things for any of our distributions. It depends on the function we would like to add to these appliances.

For example, for a network appliance, we are making our own distribution with Ubuntu Linux, but with some customizations to make it work lighter and easier on our dashboards. It's networking.

When we want to use Ubuntu Linux to develop software, we prepare those devices to run those workloads and make good backend servers and frontend servers. For example, for the IM (identity management) solution we made, we built it over Ubuntu Linux, but we are not yet using it at the backend. We are using the standard Open IDZ, but we made our own version for it to run effectively and be able to integrate this granular part of the permissions, because that is a simple way to make an identity management solution.

When you need to connect applications and provide granular permissions to the applications based on profiles and start from the FAP: If you have a new employee and this employee needs to have a lifecycle, plus permissions to applications, there is another integration we make with our software. We've been working a lot on that part to create this fully integrated software for identity management and application permission management. It's very nice.

The advice I would give to others who are looking into implementing Ubuntu Linux is that they need to start working with a partner. They need to start working with laboratories and start assessing. They need to start assessing what the company pain is because a few years ago we had been invited to talk for a country who was submerged in several taxes by paying Microsoft and some other companies with proprietary software. We saw that the companies in this country were spending a lot of money on Active Directory, SQL servers, and other technologies that the customers have been using for so many years. When we showed them how they can transform this into an open source technology package of assorted tools, and that they were easy to manage and to learn, they started to study it.

If a company wants to move forward with the world of Linux for improvements, savings, and start operating differently, they need to start working with a peer who has then done this for years, to make it aspirational, who would be able to tell them that they were using this technology, that they migrated their infrastructure and their solutions to open source, to Linux, because they needed to do that, and they succeed. They should start from there. They would want to start from laboratories and start passing to production the things that they can manage. First, with a partner, then they can run a team made up of people who can manage this new technology.

It's the right path. It's what they need to look at. If Microsoft didn't want to put SQL or Linux, they would be closing too many doors that they have today. Microsoft has grown bigger because they are open to the world of Linux. Microsoft has been saying that they are using Linux on the network and on other parts. It's the future. For example, we are using MongoDB. It's a great document database and doesn't have anything to do with SQL servers. They have no relation.

Companies need to explore. They need to start exploring new things and make these laboratories. If they start making these laboratories, they'll have opportunities to save money and make their operational performance better. They'll have a great migration to a new set of technologies.

Ratings for Ubuntu Linux will depend on the country and the culture. There are some companies who want to invest on the subscriptions. At the beginning, it would be best to invest on a partner instead of the subscription, because you'll really be able to take advantage of a subscription when you have an understanding of Linux. If you don't understand Linux yet, you should invest more in a partner who really knows about it, who can start traveling with you in this journey of migration.

Once you have everything up and running, that's the time you can select which subscriptions you need, but if you have a good partner, your partner will be able to give support about the subscription. Ubuntu Linux is the only one that doesn't need a subscription to work in an LTS version, unlike Red Hat and other distributions that where a subscription is mandatory. For Ubuntu Linux, you just need to buy a subscription on an LTS version in Canonical when you really need it.

I prioritized having a good partner first, then we went for a subscription to provide compliance to my operating systems that needed that compliance grade. You don't need to waste time and money in a subscription if you have the right partner on your side. There are two ways to look at this: the subscription cost and your partner who can manage everything properly.

Ubuntu Linux is a great solution, so if I'll rate it from one to ten, with one being the worst and ten being the best, it's a ten for me.

It is mainly a LAMP server with Apache, MySQL, PHP, and other things for the students to do their web development stuff. It's all done up with LDAP capabilities of getting into it. The web server side is open to the internet, so they can sit at home, VPN in, and do all their work. They can actually see what the public-facing side ends up looking like. Then we've got our main learning management system because we do our own self-hosted Moodle instance kind of thing. It's all running on a Linux server and doing well. Our DNS servers and things like that are all separate. Two of them are internet-facing, and one of them is internal.

I am very close to its latest version. I try and stick to using the long-term release versions, like every second year when they release the new long-term release one. So, I have some servers that are actually on 20.04, but I've got a web server at home that's on 16.04. I've got Nextcloud and things like that on that server, so I'm afraid to do a full load upgrade on it because I don't want to break anything. That's why I wish I had it set up as a virtual machine that I could take a snapshot of and blow it up and go, "Oh, okay. I'll revert." We can't do that with the hardware box.

In terms of its deployment, at work, I do everything on-premises in VMware vSphere itself. I work with the IT program at the university. It is an Applied Systems one, so it is a two-year diploma program. I've got a whole bunch of different servers set up for them, and it is a mix. Our domain itself is with Active Directory, and everything is Windows, and then just about everything else is running on Linux servers. Our VPN is also Windows because it makes it simpler for users to connect easily. You don't have to download keys and install them and then be able to talk to OpenVPN properly.

I like the fact that I can make it very secure with my own knowledge, which makes it different from Windows that does things in the background by magic, and you hope that it's secure. I like the availability of starting with Linux with totally minimal permissions for anybody and then increasing it on an as-needed basis. This is probably the most important to me. That's where I also love CentOS for Linux because you do a minimal install, and then there is a whole bunch of stuff you can't do without installing packages, which is quite nice in some ways and painful in other ways.

I like the versatility of it. When I first started here, which was like eight years ago, we were running some stuff as virtual machines inside a Linux host instead of doing it with VMware. Then we finally got VMware licensing, but before that, we were doing some virtual machines within Linux itself, and it was working quite well.

The biggest improvement, which is also applicable to Linux in general, with Ubuntu Linux is getting things standardized as to where you're going to put your configuration files and how they're going to work. Package names also need to be improved so that the package name doesn't have any match with configuration file systems and things like that. Ubuntu is still better than some of the others, such as Red Hat Linux or CentOS. For example, in your named server, the package itself will be BIND 9, but then the configuration files are in etc/named, and the service is called named. Why isn't the package name matching up? Little things like that prevent it from getting more mainstream use from everyday users. They should standardize things between different distributions and even inside the single distributions. You can't expect people to adopt it as your desktop system if you do weird things. It is great for us Linux nerds, and we can deal with it, but you can't expect your general public to just be able to jump in and say, "Oh, it's like this here, but it's not like it there."

I've been using it for probably 10 years.

Its stability is great. You turn it on, and it runs. I do have a couple of these that do automatic updates for the important stuff. I just get an email telling me that this is being updated so that I can check and make sure everything is okay, which is always the case, but it is worth checking anyway. You can back out of the updates fairly easily, unlike Windows that magically does things. I don't mind that in general, but you never really know what it is doing. It just says, "Oh, here are your updates. You've got these six things." You can't pick just one to update. You've just got to say, "Yeah, go ahead and update," and then hope it doesn't blow up in the meantime.

I've never really scaled things up much. Usually, I pick a system and make it a certain size and availability. I've done it with virtual machines where I've increased drive space and things, but I've never really done the scalability side to where it can boost up another server to take a load off. I'd love to try it, but I've never had a situation where I really needed it.

In general, we have probably about 50 users at a time. It is not a huge number, but in terms of usage, it is extensively used. Ubuntu is just about everything other than the basic Windows domain stuff. Domain controllers and VPN are all we've got on Windows currently. 

Our situation right now is just right. I've got Jitsi Meet, which is a video conferencing type server, and I might increase capabilities there. In general, I don't think we're really going to expand much, but you never know in this day and age how much things change in IT. At one time, we were doing OpenStack ourselves, and I told people, "Yeah, we're competing with Amazon Web Services, but only at this little level." Finally, it got changed out anyway because they kept changing it so much.

I've never dealt with their tech support.

I personally used CentOS Linux quite a bit during most of our learning years in the IT program. Red Hat was kind of your big standard out there at the time. When I came into this job, because there were only a few things, what we had was really just Ubuntu Server. As we did bigger upgrades, I eventually started changing them and replaced the CentOS ones with Ubuntu ones just to standardize. They were kind of bouncing around at the time, and I don't like bouncing around too much.

I'm just about to do a project and try and switch that over to Windows. There is some stuff that I like with the Linux one, but I'd much rather manage it in Windows because it is much easier where you just say, "Add this host," and it's done. It is magic. It happens and updates everything and stuff. I don't have to go and remember to change the serial number. My biggest problem is that I'll make changes and save them, but nothing happens, and I go, "Why?"

The installation is very straightforward for the desktop and the server. It comes up with that nice setup. I love the fact that you can take it off a USB stick as a live distribution, and then do your install and actually click the stuff that you would like it to install automatically, or you can wait until it's done as long as you know what you want to install. I do find it quite good.

For its maintenance, one person is required. I do it all. It's funny when we get our IT section to come down and give a briefing on how our whole IT department for the university works, and they talk about server group, networking group, project management group, etc. When they're finished, I go to the students, and I say, "So for the ITAS program itself, see all that on the board? That's me."

It is 100% free.

I love using it. I'm strictly on the server-side. I've got a laptop with Ubuntu Desktop on it because we teach it here, so I might as well make sure I'm still playing with that a little bit once in a while, but I'm mainly on the server-side.

It is the best-supported one by the community. I still recommend it to anybody who asks me, "What should I do here?" It's nothing about our current CentOS turning into rolling releases, which has 14 million people in an uproar because they think, "Well, it has always been so stable without rolling releases. Why would you change it?" That doesn't bother me at all. I just look at that community being out there, whether it's Stack Overflow, Ubuntu forums or web pages, etc. There is just 10 times more information available for Ubuntu, which sometimes is harder to filter through. You'll get somebody's answer, but it's from a five-year-old distribution that isn't supported anymore, and it doesn't work that way anymore, but I do think the community itself is great.

I'm going to give Ubuntu Server a 10 out of 10 because it is so stable. I never had any issues with it in terms of stability. Even when I've done big upgrades where you got lots of stuff on an individual server and lots of different things going on, and you say, "Okay, do this distribution upgrade because it should be stable," it always works out. I've got one at home that I'm kind of scared to upgrade. I don't think I'll have a problem with it, but I'm kind of scared to do it anyway, just in case.

I don't use Ubuntu very much, but I have been testing it for approximately ten years. 

There are some that are running their data centers off of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Linux can be used for anything. Anything that you can do on Windows, you can do in Ubuntu. For example Microsoft Office, Microsoft is really famous for, their Windows platforms, and Office suite. 

In the past, the open-source community had alternative software such as Open Office or even another project called Libre Office. These open-source solutions provided an office suite similar to Microsoft Office. However, with the new Office 365, you don't need Windows to work on Office these days. Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel are all web-based. You can run Ubuntu and open your Firefox browser and use it.

The best way and the easiest way to get into Linux is with Ubuntu because they provide lots of hardware support out of the box.

You don't have to go into the deep parts with Ubuntu to install and configure it. There are many, ready-made guides online for Ubuntu, which is good. 

The Linux distribution is the best for laptops. If you are using laptops, you don't want to be running Oracle Linux there or Red Hat. It's going to be Ubuntu.

I like the easiness of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a great product. It's awesome.

Canonical as a company, who is responsible for Ubuntu, is doing a great job at making Ubuntu very easy, plug and play, and they are good at porting applications to Ubuntu. If you're talking about Linux, the easiest Linux distribution you can encounter is Ubuntu.

The distribution with the most packages available to it is Ubuntu.

In terms of user-friendliness, Ubuntu is the best it can get in the Linux world. To say that it could be improved would be unfair. They are the ones bridging the user-friendliness gap in the Linux world.

The main distinguishing feature between Ubuntu and other Linux distribution is that Ubuntu has excelled at user-friendliness. It's very easy to use.

Ubuntu, as a distribution itself, is filled up with a lot of bloated software. That is the main reason why enterprise companies, mainly in the US, prefer to go with Red Hat, and SUSE is preferred mainly in Europe. 

Red Hat and SUSE provide less bloat on their OS.

Ubuntu is based on Debian, which is the first Linux distribution to ever come into existence, or the first mainstream Linux distribution. Debian also is bloated with a lot of software and sometimes some of the software is old. 

I would love to see Ubuntu strip down. They have a server edition that is stripped down.

Instead of having a billion different distributions, why can't there just be one? This would improve Linux and I would love to see this happen.

One of the reasons people don't use Ubuntu on servers is because they are not as secure as Red Hat. They could be more secure, but for them to be more secure, you need to strip the bloatware. Bloatware is when you have several applications that are not needed and already installed in the operating system. They have a server edition and that comes stripped of the bloatware.

I have been working with Ubuntu Linux for more than ten years.

I have used the latest edition of Ubuntu Linux. If I am not mistaken, the latest release is 20.04 LTS.

Stability is a broad topic. Ubuntu is stable. 

Scalability? It Depends. It's Linux, you can do anything with it. 

It depends on what you mean by scalability. You have to be very precise. If you're talking about data center and scalability, then, yes, it's scalable. 

There are open-source projects that are being used, whether it be with Ubuntu or with Red Hat or with SUSE, to scale data centers, or to establish a scale-out architecture. It is possible to achieve scalability with Ubuntu, depending on the scenario. 

With any other Linux distribution, you can achieve quite the same.

There is a large community online.

I'm using something called Debian. Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux.

I have used many operating systems. I have used Debian, CentOS, Fedora, Red Hat, and SUSE.

I have also used distributions that have very weird names as well.

Linux has always been a technology for technical people. Ubuntu bridges that gap. With Ubuntu, you don't need to know the technical parts of it very well to install it on a laptop and you can use Ubuntu without having any Linux knowledge.

It is very straightforward and can be installed anywhere. That's the convenience of it. 

For example, if tomorrow you face an issue and you Google it online, you will find many people who face the same issue and will provide workarounds or resolutions for the problem.

It is very easy to install.

The time it takes to deploy depends on the hardware you are installing it on, but normally it is 20 to 30 minutes to install onto a laptop or a server.

You can install it yourself. It is similar to installing Windows. There is no difference. You burn the ISO image to the USB, boot the server or the laptop and follow the instructions. You click the "next" button until it is complete and you are good to go. You give it your password, the settings that you would like, and that's it.

Ubuntu is a free product. 

If I am not mistaken, you can purchase support contracts that are available from Ubuntu.

You can always purchase Ubuntu, use it as often as you would like, and you can get enterprise support. 

Canonical has its licensing scheme, but I think the product is free to use. 

It has a GPL license, (General Public License). This license is always and will always be free to use. 

I am not familiar with the prices because I never had to contact Canonical for support and inquired about how much it would cost for their support. 

In general, you can always download their software and install it at any time for free and use it for free, according to the GPL license.

I am mainly a free VM Linux advocate. I love open-source products in general. 

At home, I have a server I'm running Linux on. I'm a Linux open-source enthusiast with more than 10 years of experience with multiple Linux distributions as a hobby. 

In my line of business, I interact with Linux environments a lot and Unix space environments in general.

I would recommend Ubuntu for anyone who's trying to learn Linux. 

For anyone who is not technical but wants a free operating system on their computer, I would definitely recommend Ubuntu.

I think there's something that needs to be clarified; Ubuntu shouldn't be compared to other distributions. These are just distributions. In the end, they share the same kernel. That is the thing with Linux. Linux is not a complete operating system. I will take the kernel, I will bundle it with a bunch of applications and then I will release it to the public and say that this is a distribution, which is not an operating system. 

I would recommend that it be compared based on the kernel, not on distribution to distribution. Ubuntu was made for something. It was made to be user-friendly, it was made for laptops. It is doing a great job on that. 

No other Linux distribution is doing as good of a job on that. For example, Red Hat or Oracle Linux, are not good on laptops, but they are good for servers. Red Hat is really good on enterprise servers.

If you are going to run any data centers that are all based on Linux, it should be based on Red Hat or SUSE. If you are running any Oracle databases or Oracle applications, it would be better to run them on Oracle Linux, even though Oracle Linux and Red Hat share the same binaries. 

There is no difference between the commands in Red Hat and Oracle Linux.

Linux is a messed up world. Everybody has their own agenda, their own thing and it's basically the same. If you go to Ubuntu with Oracle Linux in the back end, it's the exact same. 

This is the biggest nightmare with the Linux industry or the Linux world, that every day there is a new Linux distribution.

It's great. I would rate Ubuntu Linux and eight out of 10. 

It's a great product, very easy to install. It provides an alternative for Windows. 

Some people don't want to pay Microsoft or can't afford Microsoft, they want to have their own operating system solo on their hardware. Ubuntu provides that and gives you the option to give you support for it.

I currently have the Ubuntu server edition installed across 200 Dell Servers running various projects, applications, and virtualization technologies. I have 70 Ubuntu Desktop editions running throughout my office, we have made a switch from Windows and will not be going back as the stability is incredible on an Ubuntu setup.

The installation is quickly done, the software is easily installed, and deployment can be automated across the workstation and server estates.

My support team also feels far more in control of their destiny when it comes to developing minor tools on the fly for their needs. 

It has improved our ability to carry out maintenance without downtime as migrating services between server environments is largely seamless. Support for my users has become significantly easier as I can use Ubuntu tools to carry out the tasks on hand from a central location. 

Ubuntu and other Unix operating systems have been community-driven so it's got tools that are community inspired and developed, with it being open-source, the cost is no longer a factor either and we can focus on providing the best possible solution to our customers. 

There are far too many great features to mention, however, some are:

• Rsync for backups
• ZFS for snapshotting partitions
• LXD/LXC for containerization of services
• QEMU for Virtualisation of servers
• Seamless updating and upgrading
• Ansible for estate wide server administration
• Nagios for server monitoring 
• Grafana with Prometheus/InfluxDB to provide metrics on performance
• LDAP for user management 

These are only a few features that I make use of on a daily basis and from a sysadmin standpoint my life has become easier.

Ideally, I would like to have the following:

Server edition

• ZFS on the root (be able to natively install ZFS when carrying out the installation without hacking it together)
• Install grub at the start of the installation (it often can fail at the end of the installation causing some uphill but nothing major)

Desktop Edition

• More game support, specifically anti-cheat software is lacking support and hampering gaming on Linux
• More Nvidia GPU driver support
• Better WiFi driver releases from Intel 
• More Themes

I have been using Ubuntu server edition since 2010 and the desktop edition since 2011.

I have 200 real servers running Ubuntu with close to 1400 containers/VMs running the same operating system and it's supported all by two people since there are so many well-thought-out tools and bugs/issues that have been ironed out.

It can and has scaled almost endlessly in my environments. I have 200 servers running smoothly with long uptimes (the hardware has failed before the OS has). 

The Ubuntu and Linux community has been extremely helpful when it comes to issues we have experienced. Ubuntu logs data very well and it's often very self-explanatory how to resolve your issue if you do get stuck just pop onto the forums, post your issue and one of the gurus will have advice in no time.

Positive

We were making use of the Windows server edition for servers and Windows XP/7 for desktops throughout the organization.

We made the switch due to constant ransomware attacks, driver issues, and a lack of support from Microsoft in South Africa. 

The installation had a bit of a learning curve, however, thanks to their well-documented installation process on their website, once I got the hang of it we were off to the races.

Learning how to use the CLI was different, however, has become part of my daily driving of the OS. 

We implemented everything in-house and developed the tools required for our organization if there wasn't something available off the shelf.

It's a free solution; it's paid for itself in leaps and bounds. 

It's free and open source! Users should play and experiment to their heart's content and if they get stuck join the wonderful Ubuntu/Linux community to get the help you need.

We piloted with CentOS and RedHat, however, ultimately landed on Ubuntu as it was quickly rising in popularity and has become one of the most widely used in the world. 

The only way to get involved with Ubuntu is to dive in and embrace it; there is always a way to overcome your issue on a Ubuntu operating system. 

We mostly use the Ubuntu 14 version, although this varies from one customer to the next. We always utilize the latest stable version when embarking on a new project. 

We use the solution for application development and integration. We employ it as an e-commerce solution or when writing a connector between two systems, such as for website development. 

The trifecta comprising the solution's most valuable features consists of its stability, security and performance.

A problem we have encountered when installing the package is that certain packages are not available, which requires downloading of them on our part. As such, the solution should have a better repository of packages. Otherwise, one must download them from a third party slide. However, as I am not involved in the monitoring aspects, DevOps or Linux, I am probably not the best person to comment on this. 

From an end-user perspective it would also be nice to see better support and guidance when concerning the installation process, better training facilities when it comes to the solution's use. 

There is also a need to rely on third party websites for information which concerns the setup and it would be good if it were synthesized in such a way that the user could comfortably learn it autonomously. 

I have been using Linux for nearly 15 years, since around 2005. I am accustomed to its use, as would most people who have familiarity with Kibana Linux. At this level it is of no consequence. We get the installation package and this should be readily available. 

The solution is stable. Windows crashes all the time. Ubuntu Linux is definitely stable by comparison. 

While I cannot comment on the ability to scale the solution on-premises, I can say that this is very easy to accomplish on-cloud. It is now much easier than it used to be. 

I have not had much contact with technical support, not recently at any rate. I now work as an architect and don't come in contact with the support team. I work mostly with our team when it comes to assisting with the setup of Linux. 

The initial setup of the solution is a bit complex when compared with Windows, but there is a learning curve involved. Nobody can start using Linux straight off the bat, as a certain amount of expertise or skill is required. This said, if one has the right people for the job, ones who are acquainted with the solution, then this shouldn't pose a challenge. Docker now makes it easier than ever to deploy anything one wishes on Linux, particularly when it comes to Kubernetes. 

While I cannot state definitively how long the deployment takes, as I have not done it in a while, by and large I would say that this is not a time consuming process. Installation should range from a half-a-day to one day. If the main application on one's Docker is up and running, this process can be completed very quickly. So, the initial time-consuming step would involve creating the Docker file. 

Once installed, the product does need some monitoring and there are five CPUs involved in this process. In terms of Linux and cloud, there is also a need to keep track of the cost. These are the security and performance aspects which require monitoring. 

I am not in a position to comment on the licensing, as we mostly make use of the free version. 

Our company has over 14,000 employees and this makes it difficult for me to give a hard and fast number of how many use the solution, although I would estimate that 70 percent do so for development purposes. 90 percent of our employees use Windows 10 on their personal computers. 

I would recommend this solution for development and production purposes for the simple reasons that it is free, stable, secure and shows good performance. These are the four things that I am looking for. 

I rate Ubuntu Linux as a seven out of ten. 

We use Ubuntu Linux for deployments, infrastructure tasks, and for our developers. It is currently both on-prem and in the cloud. On-prem, there are a handful of machines and approximately 15 virtual machines in the cloud.

Most of the machines are somewhat tied to development purposes. We use it to host GitLab and an artifact repository. We also use it for mail relay to address some shortcomings in the exchange that we experience.

Ubuntu Linux is also used for Kubernetes and Docker development and production tasks. Most of the use cases of Ubuntu Linux are infrastructure related, with approximately 10 to 15 developers who also use it as a desktop.

For total number of users, there are 150 developers working with this solution and many more that use more specific services that are hosted on Ubuntu.

We plan to deploy a major application which will cater to all our testing and quality assurance people, which runs on Ubuntu on Linux.

The most valuable features of Ubuntu Linux is the reliability, the ease of package management, and the ease of upgrading from one version to the next. 

With Ubuntu Linux you can set it and forget it.  It requires low amount of administrative overhead.

I have certain misgivings about the policy of Ubuntu. They put business related packages into the universe branch of the distribution, which means that they will be upgraded without consideration for the package maintainer. Ubuntu Linux should put more of the applications and modules that are important for enterprise usage into the main branch, so updates could be more reliable.

Ubuntu is putting great efforts into making their platform a great hosting platform for Kubernetes and other related tools, but they are not addressing the challenges with what it takes to run Ubuntu in a large Windows-based environment. I recommend that Ubuntu Linux integrates more into active directory environments when it comes to authentication. There are solutions to make it run, but those are sometimes quite tedious, and it would be beneficial if Ubuntu Linux integrated more for large Windows-based environments.

I have been working with Ubuntu since the first version was released.

The product is stable.

With respect to scalability of Ubuntu Linux, you can use the same version on a machine with one CPU and one gig of RAM, and you could move this machine to a different VM with 64 CPUs and two terabyte of RAM and you just have to start it. Yes, it scales very well

If you scale up the machine, it will be faster almost by the amount that you scale up. It will not be 64 times faster with 64 CPUs, but it'll be like 55 times faster with 64 CPUs than with one.

My background includes working with a variety of Linux and Unix versions ranging from IBM AIX, Oracle Solaris, and RedHat-based Linux Distributions. The environment had all the services that were offered by those machines streamlined in order to run only one distribution. It was a good experience for me, however others in the organization had concerns with running Linux.

The initial setup of Ubuntu Linux is extremely easy. You cannot go wrong with the installation. Of course, you have to know a bit about Linux or Unix in order to know what you're doing.

We implement in-house. I can manage, configure, and upgrade them all together and maintain them with two to three hours per week. That is all that is required to keep them running smoothly.

We do not have any support agreements with Ubuntu, so we are using the free and open source version.

Ubuntu Linux is reliable, has easy package management and is easy to upgrade from one version to the next. Windows can not offer that. Ubuntu's deployments are easy with a very reliable machine, which Windows has shown that they can't do.

If you are considering Ubuntu Linux, don't do it if you don't have knowledge of Linux.

I would rate this solution a 9 out of 10.

We use the solution for our Linux servers. 

We use it for file transfer and remote desktop connections.

The solution is very simple.

I like that it doesn't get corrupted as easily as Windows. When it comes to viruses, it's more secure.

Especially on laptops, it doesn't drain much battery.

The solution is straightforward to set up.

It's faster than Windows.

When you talk of some of the flexibility, like you want to install from scratch, Windows is more user-friendly compared to Linux. Linux is more for the more techie people. You have to go through a terminal, a prompt to do some setup, and other things. Windows offers more help for you when you install it.

I've been using the solution for more than five years at this point. 

I haven't gone through scalability. It's more for an individual setup in my case. However, they're supposed to be much faster than Windows.

We only have a couple of people using it in our organization, as most actually use Windows. 

We don't use technical support. We have our own team and we learn as we go on our own.

I've also used Windows. I prefer Linux over Windows. We're doing some testing where we hope that we can put some applications in Linux eventually. We're testing Docker and similar solutions.

It's very similar to Windows 10 in terms of installation. If you're using a desktop, then more or less you can find those commands in Windows Servers as well. However, for Linux, it's a bit more in its own process. Linux is good on its own. The difference with Windows is Windows would require a lot of licensing, and their applications slow down.

When you install it, it's easy. However, there are some applications for which you have to look for help online. There are commands that you can use to be able to install them.

If you compare it to Windows, Windows is basically straightforward. It's easier to install Windows than Unbuntu Linux. When you talk servers, when you talk of workstations, Windows is a bit faster. The way I see it, we do have to do some settings, however, when you're able to run the installation properly, Linux ends up being much faster to run as the boot time is a few seconds faster, and shutdown time is much, much faster.  

Unlike Windows, which you have to pay for, this solution is free for the most part. We don't use it too much and therefore do not incur much of a cost.

Licensing is basically just for some applications. You get licenses if you want them to support you for Linux. For Ubuntu, you don't pay licenses. You pay for the support if you want them to support you.

We may have evaluated other options, however, it was a long time ago. 

For Linux, we're using Ubuntu. We have set up everything using Ubuntu. We do have some servers with Oracle Enterprise Linux. Those are running inside our HP DL380 servers. And then I do have Linux Mint and Elementary OS on my laptop and in my desktop at home.

I use multiple versions of the solution, including 20.04, 18.04, and 16.04.

We do have so many players in the Linux field. You do have Canonical, and they have their own Linux. Then, you have others that are based on Ubuntu. Ubuntu is based on the Debian model. You also have, on the other side, Red Hat and the SUSE Linux, which is IBM Linux. There are different providers, however, the core is almost the same. It's more of the setup that is available for you.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

It's very helpful for development. I'm a software developer. Linux is very easy to install a couple of things from the terminal. We can do most of the things from the terminal. It's very useful, in terms of their application in the cloud server. We can install it in the server, in our community server. If I do something in my local machine in the terminal, I can do the same thing in the cloud server. That's why I'm using Linux Ubuntu.

A few years ago, maybe two years ago, we were affected by some kind of encryption virus, a malware virus. It affected most of the Windows system due to the fact that our system was connected with some LAN connection. However, the Linux-based systems were not affected as it's a different OS. In our office, we just removed the Windows thing and put everything over on the Linux OS. 

It's stable.

The solution is free to use and open-source. There is no license needed, which is actually better, even though I like Windows. 

Our cloud server's a Linux-based operating system. I need to deploy my software on our cloud server. I just use Linux on my local server. Whatever I do for my software in my local server, the same needs to happen in the cloud server. That part is easy. I can replicate that software in my cloud server. If I do it in Microsoft Windows in that local development, that is totally different from our cloud server. It will cause issues in our cloud server. That's why I am using Linux in my system.

Linux is virus-free. 

The GUI in relation to the initial setup is very simple. 

If you are in the middle of an update, and things are disrupted, it can cause issues. You need to wait for the update to complete before doing anything. 

Windows we can handle by ourselves when it comes to troubleshooting, however, Ubuntu is a bit difficult. We need some other technical person to troubleshoot things for us. It's kind of difficult to maintain as compared to Windows.

In general, Windows is easier to use and friendlier to deal with than Ubuntu.

We've been using the solution for three years. 

The solution is stable and does not get infected with viruses. It's very resilient and the performance is good. I haven't dealt with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

We have about 150 people using the tool.

We do plan to increase usage in the future.

Ubuntu has some community over the internet. There is an Ask Ubuntu community online. Whenever I have some problems, I can check through the website and get some solutions. Sometimes it can take a little longer to resolve things if the question doesn't have an answer online.

I'm also familiar with Windows. In many ways it is easier to use, however, it is more prone to viruses and malware, which can be an issue.

This is an open tool. It's easy to install. From the GUI, we can just click next, next, next, and then install.

The process is very simple. It's not overly difficult.

In terms of maintenance and troubleshooting, we do require a more technical person.

I can handle the initial setup myself. I do not need the assistance of any integrators or consultants. 

The solution is open-source. It doesn't cost anything to actually use it. You just download it from their website and you can start using it. 

Currently, I'm using Ubuntu 20 LTS, 20.04 long-term support.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. I tend to prefer Windows and would recommend it over Unbuntu.