Last week, Canonical — the open-source development firm — released a new version of its
Ubuntu Linux operating system, seemingly aimed at offering casual Windows and Mac users a feature-rich alternative.
Although it is certainly a bit of hyperbole to say that Ubuntu 11.04 will send Apple and Microsoft packing, ecommerce merchants may find that this new desktop operating system — which is free — is a viable alternative that may save money, improve security, and even provide a better environment for some kinds of web development and maintenance.
Ease of Use and Availability
In the past, Linux operating systems have generally been the realm of techies and developers, in part because installing them often required partitioning a hard drive or entering command-line code. But Linux is not actually as foreign as it might at first seem. In fact, many — if not most — online stores run on Linux-based web servers. Put another way, if a business is using Magento, WordPress, or any number of other PHP, Ruby, Java, or similarly based platforms, that business is probably using a Linux server.
As a desktop solution, Linux is far more rare, to be sure, but it is by no means hard to use. In fact, Ubuntu 11.04 seems to have been designed to make it easy for non-technical users.
Ubuntu 11.04, according to several published reports, is also expected to be available on some new computers, perhaps from makers like Dell, Lenovo, and Acer.
