Times are tough. You’re a computer geek and you need to feed your PC with the latest and greatest applications. What’s a frugal nerd to do? A group of industry peers was recently asked by a colleague the following question: “If an SMB wants to upgrade from XP, what Linux variants would you recommend?”

In this first of two parts, I’m going to discuss the major flavors of Linux that best suit the needs of end-users, have no acquisition cost, and also have the best chance of surviving through an extended recession that could last several years. In the second installment, I’m going to address the Enterprise/Server distributions that have the same characteristics.

Ubuntu Desktop Edition

Web Site: http://www.ubuntu.com

Let’s face it, Ubuntu has had a meteoric rise to popularity since the project had its first milestone release six years ago in October of 2004. It quickly displaced Redhat’s own Fedora project as the top downloaded community Linux distribution, and there’s no signs of its energy abating anytime soon.

OpenSUSE

Web Site: http://www.opensuse.org

Like Ubuntu, OpenSUSE is a relatively new player on the community/free Linux distribution game — its not even three years old as an Open Source project. However, its relatively new community status is misleading, because the product is supported by 16 years of experience from its parent company, SUSE, the most popular Linux distribution in Europe, which was formally acquired by Novell in January of 2004. SUSE is the basis for both SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, which are two of the most polished corporate/enterprise Linux products available on the market today.

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