Introduction

A little caution. Technical arguments (e.g. more translations/user base doubling every X months) could outdate. An argument without evidence, is just a claim.

RHEL4 is a far superior server product to Windows and a leading server product amongst UNIX distributions for good reason. So lets have some respect for what Red Hat has achieved in this industry.

No subscription

1. Not required to pay for security updates
2. There is no required license fee
3. There are no non-required license fees either
4. No charge in perpetuity - that is a fundamental business principle of Canonical. Ubuntu is not charged through a subscription as many other Linux distributions are.
5. Because Ubuntu has no restrictive software licenses associated with it, anyone can copy and redistribute.

Support

1. There is more than one company that provides commercial support. See http://www.ubuntu.com/support/marketplace

2. Industry support from IBM for DB2 http://www.ubuntu.com/news/db2cert

3. some questions for which we have no answers yet - such as official support from HP and IBM on their hardware : and be sure that this something that all of the competitors will ask our customers / users.
4. Canonical depends on its channel partners to deliver service and support to end users and businesses running Ubuntu. It does not have to manage channel contention.

5. Certification http://www.ubuntu.com/partners/certification/pro

Feature match

1. Mass deployment options; Preseeding vs Kickstart
2. Does Ubuntu have a web-based management system comparable to Webmin?

   • Plesk supports Ubuntu 5.04

More choice

1. The leading package management system, APT.
2. More developer friendly. Ubuntu has rails.
3. Ubuntu has three official flavors ( soon to be 4 ) and offers real choice to users. e.g. Edubuntu
   • Edubuntu is uniquely targeted at junior schools and is creating interest around the world.
   • Edubuntu has LTSP at its core, and is tightly integrated to make thin clients easy to manage for schools in particular
4. Flexibility - no worries about changing Ubuntu for personal or company needs to make a derivative distro for specific requirements.
5. Ubuntu users have access to the largest variety of FOSS through worldwide mirrors carrying Ubuntu and 17,000 plus application packages

Larger community

1. Larger community. More users. More checks. Better quality.
   • Debian based, though with driven manual checks instead of time based QA

2. Netcraft Survey http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/12/05/strong_growth_for_debian.html Though that's for Debian stable. Not Ubuntu. And Red Hat still maintains leadership.

3. A larger pool of active developers producing up to date code quicker through the Debian community
4. Better translations to help developing countries and markets provide a truly localised and usable Linux
5. Ubuntu has a user base in 215 countries worldwide : supported through a very efficient distribution system, enabling OSS benefits to be had by everyone.
6. Ubuntu's user base is doubling approximately every 9 months
7. Ubuntu has access to many hundreds of testers around the world and this feedback is incorporated into the releases

Canonical commitment

1. Available to anyone for free through Shipit, a free CD distribution service
2. Some statement by Mark?

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