Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, just announced an online course intended for “corporate and home desktop users to get started with Ubuntu.” The course is available for $100 and covers the following topics, according to the announcement:

• Understand the concepts of open source and how they tie in with Ubuntu
• Customize the look and feel of the Ubuntu desktop
• Navigate through the file system and search for files
• Connect to and use the Internet
• Perform basic word-processing and spreadsheet functions using OpenOffice.org
• Install and play games
• Add, remove and update applications
• View, draw, manipulate and scan images
• Play, edit and organize music and video files
• Seek help on Ubuntu from free and commercial sources
• Create partitions and dual-boot options

To be honest, I can’t imagine any home user wanting to take a course in using Ubuntu, but I do think that offering this to businesses is a great idea. Here is why:

For a company planning on switching to Ubuntu, their IT people, who would probably not be familiar with Linux, would want to get some training in Linux, before deploying it to all the employees. With this course, they can not only learn how to use Ubuntu, but also how to teach other people at the company how to use it, all while only paying $100.

This is an advantage Ubuntu really needs to compete in the enterprise space. Right now, many people are probably tempted to go with Red Hat or Novell’s comercial Linux offerings, because of the support that comes with it.  By providing even this modest kind of support for commercial users, Canonical may be able to develop a bigger presence in that market to complement its leading position among non-commercial users.

One of the things that annoys me the most about Microsoft is their love of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt.) I have no problem with companies marketing their products to customers, but I do object to false conclusions that cannot be backed by real, relevant facts. One argument that bothers me in particular goes like this: our product has fewer security vulnerabilities than yours so it is better. This argument works great for headlines, but when you really look at it, it falls apart. Below are two examples of these claims:

• Jeff Jones, a security expert for Microsoft, claims Vista is more secure than Ubuntu 6.06 LTS
• Windows Server is more secure than Red Hat Enterprise Linux, according to a Microsoft FUD site

As I said, these claims are full of issues. Here are the problems with the arguments: (not every such argument suffers from all these flaws, but all of them suffer from one or more of them)

• The severity of the vulnerabilities is not included. Security vulnerabilities are ranked by what kind of a threat they pose. If this data is not included, a product with 100 minor glitches of almost no consequence would be considered less secure than a product with 75 major glitches. (The kind of thing where a hacker can take control of your computer.)
• There is no consideration of the status of a vulnerability. If a vulnerability is quickely fixed it is counted the same as if it has been weeks or months and is still unfixed.
• Not all companies admit to all the bugs that exist. In an open-source project like Ubuntu, if a bug is found and can be duplicated, it is known and reported, but not all companies act this way.

When you fill in the missing data, you get a very different conclusion from what Microsoft would like you to believe. I will only go through the data pertaining to Microsoft’s FUD site claim, but you can do the same thing for Jeff Jones’s claim.

(All of the below data is from Secunia, solving the problem of companies not reporting all the bugs that exist.)

Starting with the severity of the vulnerabilities, here is the data:

As you can see, Ubuntu has less critical vulnerabilities. The data is even more impressive for fixed and unfixed vulnerabilities:

Here Ubuntu has a perfect record, having fixed all of the flaws.

In conclusion, Microsoft’s argument is flawed and their conclusion is incorrect. This will not be news to many of you, but hopefully you will appreciate seeing real numbers behind it.

I am sure that by now everyone is aware of the problems people have been having with Vista and the reluctance of businesses and home users alike to move from XP to Vista. Microsoft has already given XP another 6 months to live before it will no longer be avaliable for purchase and people will be forced to move to Vista, but people still want more. With the end of life for XP coming up soon, even with the delay, InfoWorld has started a petition to “Save XP.” Who knows how much success this petition will have, but I will be very surprised if Microsoft agrees to continue to sell XP forever, essentially admitting Vista was a flop. The effort that goes into this petition and other requests to “Save XP” might get the death of XP delayed for another few months, but not another five years, or however long it takes Microsoft to come out with the next version of Windows. It looks like everyone is stuck moving to Vista - or open-source software, where this problem could not possibly exist.

Take Ubuntu or any other open-source project, you can still get every version they ever released. For that matter, you can probably get every single beta they ever released. No one had to petition them to do that, that’s just how open-source software works. Better yet, if you do, for some strange reason, decide you want to use the very first version they ever made (or any version,) you are free to do anything to the code you want, so you can keep issuing security updates if you need to support a big business. If you wanted to use an old version of Windows, you would basically be stuck using an un-patched operating system. I am sure someone is saying right now, “but there aren’t any viruses for old versions of Windows anymore.” Actually, stories of old viruses popping up again are quite common. I remember recently a virus that was designed to spread on floppy disks got put on a bunch of computers and infected them.

When there is just one dominant closed-source vendor, users are at the mercy of a single corporate entity. If you don’t like what that entity is doing, tough luck. With open-source, you can modify and use the code however you want, whenever you want, no matter what.

If you missed the first part, here is a quick summary. Otherwise, just skip this part.

In this series of articles, I discuss broad groups of computer users, the ties they have to existing platforms, and the potential attractions of Linux to them. In the previous part, I covered two types of home users (see the first part) and argued that neither type cares much about the advantages and disadvantages of operating systems and, therefore, these users are not a promising market for Linux.

In this part I will cover small and large businesses as well as creative professionals.

Large Businesses

Example: Big corporations with thousands of employees and a large Windows-tied technology system.

Although getting large businesses to use Linux would make thousands and thousands of people familiar with Linux, most large businesses already have a huge investment in the Windows world in terms of both hardware and software, so it may be almost impossible to convince big businesses to switch to Linux, except for a few specialized applications such as servers.

Small Businesses

Example: Startup/less than 100 employee companies that have a lot less investment in technology and care about saving money on technology

Small businesses may be one of the best markets to push Linux to. Smaller businesses are often very cost sensitive and don’t necessarily have a large existing investment in the Windows world, so they may be easy to convince that Linux is the best choice for them. In addition, if small businesses adopt Linux, more and more home users will start to become familiar with Linux.

Creative Professional

Example: People who work with audio, video, and graphics in smaller businesses

Many creative professionals are currently tied to the Mac and Adobe applications, but very few are tied to a large business system. In addition, they often use expensive hardware and expensive hardware means big profits for the sellers. Previously, this money has been going to Apple, but if creative professionals began to move to Linux, many hardware vendors would be more interested in selling Linux on their machines. All Linux would need to pull creative professionals to Linux is to create some good applications, either open-source or closed-source, to compete with the Adobe applications. This may be another group that Linux should focus on.

Recently, the New York Times reported that the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) was switching many of their servers to Linux. The news was instantly picked up and carried all over the web along with quotes from the CIO of the NYSE, such as “it’s polished enough for us.” To me, it seems that the big news here is not that the NYSE is switching their servers to Linux. Linux has already proven itself to be a major competitor in th server market. Even Google runs Linux. It seems to me that, in this case, what the NYSE said is more important than what they did. Many, many people will read the NY Times and other articles. These people, most of whom know very little about Linux, will see prominent people saying that Linux is the best option for their needs. They say actions speak louder than words, but, in this case, words speak louder than actions.

SearchEnterpriseLinux.com posted a look at where Red Hat, Novell, and Canonical are and where they should go in 2008. For the most part, I agree with everything they said, but I do not agree with where they say Canonical should go. To summarize, the article says that Canonical should push their server product. It seems to me that Ubuntu has a unique advantage over Red Hat and Novell on the desktop. More Linux enthusiasts use Ubuntu than use Red Hat or Novell software. On the other hand, Canonical has very little advantage on the server side.

While Canonical, the sponsor company to Ubuntu, could attempt to lure enterprise customers, I think the most likely scenario, in this case, is that another distro comes along and takes Ubuntu’s place on the enthusiast’s desktop. Instead, I believe that Ubuntu should continue to pursue the consumer desktop and, for now, leave the enterprise customers to big companies like Red Hat and Novell.

Red Hat has delayed the upcoming release of their new desktop oriented Linux until January due to problems licensing codecs, according to Yahoo News. For some time, getting free and legitimate codecs for Linux has been a problem. While most distros make it very easy to download the codecs required to play proprietary media formats, these codecs are basically illegal in the US. It is possible to purchase legal codecs and most commercial Linux distros do include legal codecs, but there are still many users out there who will not bother to get legal codecs until they are free.

Due to Red Hat citing codec licensing difficulties as the reason for the delay, it appears that they plan to include legal codecs in their upcoming release, which will, apparently, be freely available. If Red Hat does plan to release a free Linux with legal codecs, it could cause a lot of people to consider Red Hat as an alternative. If, however, the release is not truly free (you must pay for support or something like that) then there is not much new here.

(If someone can say for sure if the release will indeed be fully free, please post a comment. I cannot find anything that specifically says you will not have to pay for support or something like that.)

I have contacted Red Hat and asked them to clarify. I will update this as soon as I get a response.

A few weeks ago, Redhat announced that they were partnering with Amazon to provide RedHat-based servers in “the cloud” (fancy term for not locally, but through the internet instead) using Amazon’s web services. On Monday, RedHat opened this service up to the first clients as a public beta, according to CNET. This solution makes it possible for business to manage servers on a pay-as-you-go basis, instead of investing up front in the hardware and other costs.

Further Reading: RedHat Press Release, previous CNET coverage