Ubuntu is more proven on the desktop. I would imagine as a server in a larger organisation it would need to be supported by Oracle.

It probably is possible to install Oracle on it with some fiddling about, but as soon as you hit a bug Oracle wouldn't help you if it's not in their list of supported platforms.

For print, web and file services it would be a fairly good platform. So long as you aquire your products and printers to suit the OS.

Why would I buy a cheap OS like Ubuntu and then put an expensive database product like Oracle on it?

Frankly, if I owned a small business, I'd install proven standards like Server 2003 and MS SQL Server. I am not going to "fiddle about" as you say. And is that even more expensive, given that SQL is cheaper than Oracle?

And why bother to even buy it as it can be downloaded free! And why not run with MySQL which is installed anyway? Ubuntu server is simple to set up and can do standard LAMP-type things "out of the box". I've resurrected an old Sun Ultra Sparc box with it. Works fine...

Oracle is a Fortune 1000 level DB package. Frankly, the idea that a small-to-upper-middle-sized business would be using Oracle is laughable.

MySQL is more than adequate for the small-to-middle-sized business. Saddling one's self with Microsoft's proprietary glop is foolish.

I personally like SME Server for the small-to-middle-sized business. It's only fault is you need to know Linux when you're setting it up. (atleast the last version I played with did. Don't get me wrong, I like Ubuntu as well, but I like what the guys have done with SME Server

http://www.smeserver.org/

@Don

Oracle does recommend that you run it on Linux. (not that I ever have, we've always used pretty hefty Windows Servers.)

Dell have some weird allegiance with Intel in their server hardware devision, in otherwords they have little to offer in the way of Opteron based servers. So if they can cut their sole allegiance with Microsoft surely they can do the same with Intel in the hardware arena.