Ubuntu Desktop Support: Even If No One Wins Big, Everyone Still Wins
by Kristin Shoemaker - Jul. 31, 2009Comments (1)- Related Blog Posts
- Over 50 Free, Must-Have Open Source Resources
- What Does a User Cost?
- Amarok Refreshed: Better, Stronger, Faster!
- Dell's Multimedia Mini PC Ships With Ubuntu
- What Lies Ahead for Chrome OS?
As Computerworld's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols explains, Canonical has always offered commercial support for Linux, though its services largely targeted the enterprise market. Today, Canonical is announcing its plan to extend commercial support services to Ubuntu desktop users: individuals and small- and mid-sized businesses desiring a dedicated helping hand with Ubuntu installation, data migration, and network configuration.
Canonical offers three levels of support -- starter, advanced, and professional (the comparison chart breaks down coverage nicely) -- for one- or three- year periods.
After eight years of daily Linux use, I can say without reservation there are a few things Canonical covers in its Professional support package that I still have issues setting up and configuring. I will freely admit that when networking three Linux boxes (perhaps two with one distribution, one with another) and two Windows boxes (same version, same service packs) not one of those machines will behave the same way with any of the others. It's a complete mystery.
Community support does a fairly good job replacing the mysterious elements with science -- and it often, honest to Pete, ends up being an all-out community effort. It all gets sorted out, 99% of the time -- but it takes some time. Presumably those people purchasing the Professional support service are smaller businesses, and cliche as it is, time often is money.
That doesn't mean that paid support will necessarily work through a problem faster or as elegantly as community support will, but it does mean that your issue is, for the techs, a priority -- not something only tackled on lunch and coffee breaks.
Eight years ago, when I chose my first distribution, the two free phone calls to the SuSE tech support line was the advantage that sealed the deal. I did, in fact, use those two calls. While the support staff was very courteous (and spoke with gorgeous, thick, somewhat hard to understand Irish brogues) the calls weren't imminently helpful. In the end, it was the community that got me up and running -- and I've not looked back.
Knowing there's a real, live human in tech support -- one who is compensated to work on your problem -- gives an undeniable, very valid sense of security to someone making the switch from another operating system. Perhaps eventually they'll find, as I found, the community is a great place to get (and give) support. Maybe it'll all go flawlessly and they'll never have to get support at all.
Two things are certain, however. This will gently nudge at least some people hesitant about trying Linux -- really trying it -- into taking that first real step. It will also ensure some of those new users give it the real college try -- if the community help is slow to respond, or the first two possible solutions don't put a problem right -- the money laid down, and the more intimate level of discussion with the tech support personnel increases the chances that the new user will wait a bit longer and try to hammer the problem out.
I would be surprised if Canonical's bottomline increases significantly due to its offering desktop support, but even if nobody wins by a landslide, nobody stands to lose -- not by a longshot.
