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Open Source


Ubuntu’s Business Desktop Remix: Taking a Closer Look

  • Written by Christopher Tozzi
  • February 21, 2012

In case there was any doubt that the long-term success of Canonical is tied in large part to Ubuntu’s viability as a desktop solution for businesses, Canonical CEO Jane Silber recently announced a new official spin of Ubuntu tailored at just that market. Will Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix soon find its way to an office near you? That may be too early to say, but here’s a look at what the latest Ubuntu flavor is all about.

It’s no secret Canonical has been pushing Ubuntu for corporate workstations strongly. As early as 2008, the company partnered with IBM on a virtualized desktop solution for businesses. More recently, it’s been pushing Ubuntu as a desktop operating system for enterprises in literature, and has also expanded the life cycle of LTS releases to help appeal to corporate customers.

The announcement last week of Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix is thus only Canonical’s latest move in a longer campaign. And for now, this special enterprise-oriented flavor of Ubuntu remains in the testing phase, currently available only in 32-bit form and intended for evaluation purposes.

Previewing the Ubuntu Business Desktop

So what exactly is there to evaluate? In Canonical’s words, “The remix retains all the goodness of Ubuntu and is compatible with all Ubuntu-certified hardware, apps and tools, adding business-focused tools from the standard Ubuntu and partner archives and removing home user-oriented apps.”

That’s a pretty good summary, at least depending on what one considers “home user-oriented apps.” For geekier readers interested in an exhaustive list of the software differences between the remix and generic Ubuntu, I did a diff of their filesystem manifests, which you can grab here. But to sum it up: the Business Remix lacks games, multimedia applications, some non-English language packs, the NotifyOSD daemon, social media apps (though Empathy instant messenger is included) and the Ubuntu One client.

Some other, smaller pieces of software are strangely absent in the Business Remix as well, including telnet and the bash-completion package. I was surprised to see these missing, because although they’re not vital to most business users, they’re such tiny utilities that I’d have expected them to be left in, if only to make life easier for system administrators.

On the other hand, the major offerings in Business Remix that normal Ubuntu lacks include packages for Adobe Flash, Java and the VMware View client. Right now, these hefty additions to the default software stack bring the size of the remix ISO image to about 712MB, just too large to fit on a CD, which is a bit inconvenient.

Aesthetics

In the looks department, there’s not much at all separating the remix from purply, generic Ubuntu. Besides a back-to-basics boot menu, the remix, which runs Unity by default, is pretty identical to stock Ubuntu 11.10:

sUbuntu Business Remix boot menu

sUbuntu Business Remix desktop

The Last Word

As most geeks know, building custom remixes of Ubuntu is pretty easy, and any large business interested in running Ubuntu on its workstations almost certainly would have the technical expertise to put together a custom spin of the operating system on its own. Because of that, I wonder how many organizations will end up using the Business Remix in production environments.

Nonetheless, Canonical’s offering of an official Ubuntu flavor tailored specifically at the enterprise serves as a reminder of the company’s commitment to that market, a fact which may on its own help encourage confidence in Ubuntu as a corporate-desktop solution. Even if this spin doesn’t see much use, it might help inspire more businesses to give Ubuntu a try.

And last but not least, the package called “ubuntu-business-defaults,” which is present in the remix, appears poised to make installing an enterprise-oriented suite in Ubuntu as easy as one click — just like the other *ubuntu-* meta packages. That certainly won’t hurt when it comes to bringing Ubuntu to business desktops.

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

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8 comments

  1. Avatar Steve George February 21, 2012 @ 1:34 pm
    Reply

    Hi Chris,

    As you note it’s very true that most business users will customise an image (or another deployment medium) to suit their needs. So we expect the Remix to be used as a starting point for that effort. There’s nothing an administrator couldn’t do with standard Ubuntu, but hopefully the Remix gets them up and running a bit faster and more easily.

    Steve

  2. Avatar Christopher Tozzi February 22, 2012 @ 10:31 pm
    Reply

    Steve: of course — the Remix is certainly a great starting point for a customized image. I look forward to seeing what different organizations do with it (and it would be great to get some periodic updates from Canonical on this point!).

  3. Avatar Kurt February 23, 2012 @ 1:59 pm
    Reply

    Ubuntu business desktop is a complete non-starter for my firm because of Unity. We are an architecture firm, every computer has two large screens we use multiple apps at once, and screen real estate is valuable to us. Unity is not helpful.

    I expect there are a lot of other organizations that will have the same opinion.

    Kurt

  4. Avatar Pete February 23, 2012 @ 3:00 pm
    Reply

    As a telecommunications firm, we also use multiple monitors on all our desktops and most users have 20+ applications running at one time. I have to agree with Kurt – Unity and Gnome3 are both non-starters for us. Which is unfortunate – because I almost had the company looking at migrating the desktop to Ubuntu until Unity happened.

  5. Avatar Nihilus February 23, 2012 @ 3:38 pm
    Reply

    I am struggling with my dual monitor setup to. A business edition with unity is not appealing. They want the business desktop and the mobile in one and that is in my opinion not possible. Gnome3 and Unity are targeting touchscreens and like most people I stare at screens for more than 8 hours a day. I have to restrain myself from going ballistic if someone just points at something a little to close to my screen. I really hate fingers and smears on my screen. My humble opinion is that Gnome3 and Unity are not in the best interest of the Linux desktop user. I can not advise a Linux desktop to anyone anymore until I have a stable and lasting replacement for Unity and Gnome3.

  6. Avatar Johnathan February 23, 2012 @ 11:50 pm
    Reply

    sudo apt-get install gnome-fallback-session

  7. Avatar peterE February 26, 2012 @ 10:00 pm
    Reply

    Business and Unity? What a joke!
    Unity is a cell phone gadget of some sort, it clearly does not work on a computer that can be used for business. Gnome3 is also a Beta gizmo of some sort.

    We have gone back to Ubuntu 10.04 on some machines… but most users prefer LMDE. This is not a “hobby business”, we have real work to do.

    wait a minute, where is the hidden camera?

  8. Avatar frustratedphotographer March 12, 2012 @ 1:15 am
    Reply

    Unity as one and only default Desktop Environment was the worst decision Canonical ever made – this is a rant from the perspective of someone that uses version 10.04.x for professional usage and earns actual his money with it ( photographer, use it for RAW development ,archiving,editing with gimp, darktable,f-spot ) :

    Ubuntu 10.0.4 is rockstable, user-friendly and highly customizable , users can have a Windows like taskbar on the bottom – ( there is even the Gnome-Main-Menu available in the repo that adds a real startmenu and app-browser ) a Mac like experience with Panel on top or go with the default gnome setting and have both top an bottom panels.

    Unity is a no-go for multiple window apps, not even really suitable for menu-loaded apps like the Gimp and is absolutely unusable for example if Gnustep-apps ( mac os x / Nextstep ported apps ) come into play, because the do not use the standard toolbars and menus and thus will not fit nowhere ( in Gnome2 desktops they work perfect ); And all the success that Ubuntu has had will vanish instantly en masse . It is a tragedy and it will ruin all your fame and fortune, canonical.

    Also you can’t change the desktop environment that dramatically in a Business Version ( LTS ) if you are serious. Look at Novell/Suse : SLED11 still has the exact same default desktop,apps, icons,branding and settings like SLED10 from 2006. just only the colour scheme is a bit different and the apps are up-to-date. RHEL 4.x and 6.x are visually one and the same setup.

    What does Canonical ? They change default mediaplayers and photo-apps randomly, they change the desktop, the settings, the window manager = everything and in the case of unity even locked in to no alternatives…

    You can’t tell a User that you have migrated over to Linux and have teached him/her how this or that app is called,by which icon it is identified and how the desktop is to be used now all in a sudden : Look, it is all different.

    This does NOT WORK ( pun intended ).

    Microsoft’s windows 8 will fail for the very same reason, btw.

    90% of ALL computer ( Desktop/Laptop ) Users DO NOT ACCEPT DRAMATIC Changes. Not at home and surely not for work or productivity where time is money. There are users that scream if only a icon changes.

    Canonical, what were you thinking ?! RECONSIDER THIS STUPID MOVE. AT LEAST INCLUDE A GNOME2 session as a last resort , let’s call it “10.0.4 Classic Desktop ” and all photographers, videomakers, medical staff, CAD – Users and Office workers will praise you again ! ( LibreOffice does not even fit into unity’s globalmenu .. and looks like it does not belong in to the OS )..

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