Ubuntu voted 'Linux distribution of the year'

Ubuntu has been voted the best Linux distribution on the market by the users of a Linux community site.

LinuxQuestions.org reported on Monday that of the 2500 users that voted in a site poll, 19.5 percent voted for Ubuntu as the Linux distribution of the year, narrowly beating Slackware, which received 19 percent of the votes.

This is the latest in a long line of awards that Ubuntu has racked up over the last six months, an impressive achievement considering that the distribution is less than two years old.

In November 2005, Ubuntu Linux 5.10 was named the Editor's Choice for small businesses by ZDNet UK, beating the commercial distributions Novell Linux Desktop 9, SUSE Linux 10, Red Hat Desktop 4 and Mandriva Linux 2006.

Ubuntu also won the Best Debian Derivative Distribution award in a ceremony at Germany's Linux World Expo in November. In October, it was awarded the Reader's Choice Award by Linux Journal and the Reader Award at the UK Linux & Open Source Awards dinner.

The Ubuntu project puts down its success to the fact that it produces regular and predictable releases, is easy to install and is "absolutely free of charge", unlike many commercial Linux distributions, according to the project Web site.

However, some businesses may be reluctant to use this distribution, as it is mainly supported by smaller third parties, who may not be able to offer the contractual guarantees that larger vendors such as Red Hat or Novell can provide.