UbuntuIt has been a year since I made the switch to Ubuntu on my primary desktop and I can happily say that I have no regrets. Ubuntu has proven to be a stable, secure and usable operating system that can play reasonably well in a Windows environment. On the school side, we have already migrated from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org and are in the process of moving from Exchange to Google Apps. Ubuntu is becoming a serious option for us when Microsoft drops support for XP in April 2009.

My last major concern is systems management and it looks like Ubuntu may be addressing that now with their new Landscape tool, which is included with their paid support contracts. I emailed Canonical (Ubuntu’s owner) about non-profit/educational pricing for support and found that they do offer a 30% discount for educational institutions (no word on non-profits) and an additional 10% discount for large quantities for a total of 40% off. At $250 retail, the discounted price per desktop would be $150/year for 9×5 desktop support. Having a support contract may also help alleviate concerns that my current staff/volunteer team isn’t as savvy with Linux as they are with Windows, although they are eager to learn.