Choosing the Best Linux Distro for the Enterprise

All of the distros face an uphill battle when it comes to the desktop, says Gartner analyst Michael Silver. Most enterprises have a legacy investment in Windows that makes migration an unwieldily task. "There's not a clear answer in terms of how that's going to be done by any of them." A company shopping for, say, the best printer or the best fax machine would find copious guides as to the best units for their particular needs. These standard business tools are divided up into tiers -- for light, medium or heavy user -- and priced accordingly. Choosing the best one for your business is far from rocket science.

But no such clear guide exists for Linux distributions. An enterprise looking for the best Linux distro encounters a blizzard of terminology and few standard guidelines, other than those provided by the vendors themselves. Approach Red Hat, SuSE, Debian or Mandrake, and proponents of each will tout its advantages.

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