Your Developers Will Love Ubuntu
October 23, 2019
Your Developers Will Love Ubuntu
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Ubuntu Linux
As we seek to shift our development environment from Windows to Linux, we sought to find a Linux distribution that offered a strong user base, accessibility for new users to Linux, easy package management, and long term support releases. We found all of the above in Ubuntu, and we were able to move to our .net Core development to Linux.
- Ubuntu has an active user base around its distribution, making it easy to find support for issues without ever needed to contact formal support.
- Ubuntu package management makes it easy to keep packages up to date even across a large number of dependencies. Rarely do I encounter issues in updating packages.
- Ubuntu offers an accessible user interface that provides some interface familiarity for users coming from other operating systems. Users feel comfortable navigating the interface with similar experiences to what they are familiar with.
- Ubuntu offers several flavors of desktop management - Gnome, XFCE, and KDE. While this offering of choice is probably a benefit, it makes it difficult to standardize amongst developers who all have strong opinions as to which deployment is "the best."
- Like other Linux distributions, graphics support for bleeding-edge graphics cards can be a challenge, with support not always offered for the latest and greatest cards. Often this support is rectified over time, but that can be a challenge in rolling out to machines with varying hardware configurations.
- Earlier, I talked about how Ubuntu offers many analog operations to other operating systems to promote ease of learning for those migrating. However, as of 19.04, Ubuntu didn't offer native drag and drop operations on the Gnome desktop. This was frustrating for some users trying to learn the new interface. I'm hoping the recently released 19.10 release will address this.
- The massive user community made it easy for my team to resolve our migration issues without needing to engage in professional support, saving us money.
- Our Ubuntu migration has enabled us to move off of Microsoft platforms to better align with our customers' desires to move toward open-source platforms in support of their cost-saving efforts.
- Some users had difficulty making the transition to Ubuntu Linux, requiring us to ensure we had appropriate training in place. This primarily the form of mentoring from other, more experienced users, but we opted for a few licenses to Linuxacademy.com to help with the migration.
Prior to selecting Ubuntu Linux, we looked at CentOS Linux. Obviously, both are distributions of Linux, with Ubuntu hailing from the Debian lineage, where CentOS is derived from RHEL. Ultimately, we decided on Ubuntu because it's a bit more user-friendly. However, we could have just as easily gone with CentOS due to its ability to leverage RHEL packages as necessary.
Do you think Ubuntu delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Ubuntu's feature set?
Yes
Did Ubuntu live up to sales and marketing promises?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of Ubuntu go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Ubuntu again?
Yes