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 Channel Futures

Open Source


Ubuntu Powers Small-Business Desktops in Marseille

  • Written by Christopher Tozzi
  • April 17, 2012

Marseille, France is known for a lot of things, among them bouillabaisse stew, hostility toward centralized government and a flourishing drug trade. Yet on a recent trip there I discovered something unexpected: Ubuntu Linux running in a commercial environment. Here’s what I found, with some thoughts on where desktop Ubuntu might be headed among small businesses more generally.

Admittedly, my Ubuntu sighting was a modest one: it involved just one kiosk in my hotel, the Newhotel Select, which was offered to guests for general-purpose computing. But there was no doubt that it was Ubuntu.  Here’s photographic evidence:

Ubuntu kioskUnfortunately, since I didn’t notice the machine until I was already late to catch my train out of the city, I didn’t get a chance to figure out which version of Ubuntu it was running. But it was most likely earlier than 11.10, since that release uses LightDM rather than gdm, shown in the picture.  Maybe this means whoever set up the computer wanted to stick with a pre-Unity version of Ubuntu, or maybe the workstation had just not been updated in a while.

Ubuntu and Small Business

Either way, this Ubuntu sighting — which was quite similar to another one I experienced in northern Scotland just about a year ago — presents anecdotal proof that Ubuntu remains a viable choice for small businesses. And that’s worth keeping in mind at a time when most of Ubuntu’s momentum in the commercial world, at least as far as the media and Canonical’s own activities suggest, focuses on servers and the workstations of large businesses, rather than small organizations such as independent hotels.

Indeed, although there was a lot of hype in earlier years about the promise Ubuntu offered to small businesses, extending even to the development of specifications for a dedicated Ubuntu Small Business Server, these days Canonical seems to have put that market on the back-burner. It is currently focused instead on promoting desktop Ubuntu as a solution for corporate workstations, while pushing Ubuntu Server in the world of the cloud.

Undoubtedly, those pursuits make sense. After all, profit margins are almost certainly higher when selling Ubuntu support services to large organizations compared to the cash at play among smaller businesses that might consider Ubuntu. And it’s often easier to convince large organizations to make the switch to Linux in the first place, since their IT resources are more likely to be managed by professionals already familiar with open source technology, while smaller organizations may not have dedicated IT staff.

Nonetheless, it’s important — for both Canonical and channel partners — to keep in mind that corporate workstations comprise only one piece of the pie when it comes to desktop Ubuntu in the business world. As kiosks from Provence to Inverness make clear, Ubuntu can and does provide a solid desktop solution in smaller commercial environments as well, and as long as the new Unity interface doesn’t stray too far from the tracks, it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Tags: Cloud Service Providers Digital Service Providers MSPs VARs/SIs Networking Open Source

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5 comments

  1. Avatar Inoe April 18, 2012 @ 2:08 am
    Reply

    Judging by the login screen background which seems to be Lucid Lynx’s default wallpaper, I guess it is Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 😀

  2. Avatar Christopher Tozzi April 18, 2012 @ 3:47 pm
    Reply

    Inoe: good point. It’s been so long since I’ve run 10.04 that I had forgotten what the default wallpaper looked like.

  3. Avatar Steven Pemberton April 18, 2012 @ 7:16 pm
    Reply

    The hotel I stayed at in Prague recently was also running Ubuntu on its computers.

  4. Avatar Charles Norrie April 19, 2012 @ 3:07 am
    Reply

    Not viable choice for small businesses, Var Guy. Only choice for any business, charity or indeed anyone. Who needs Windoze?

  5. Avatar Cas Tuyn April 20, 2012 @ 12:20 pm
    Reply

    A camping in Embrun, France also has a Ubuntu PC at the reception for general use. The owner said it was running forever without any maintenance or problems. Main reason was he wanted something isolated from his own PC with his administration on it.
    When I explained him it was a little bit behind in updates and that I ran the same at home, he gave me the password and I updated it to current, and showed him how to do it next time.

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