Best Linux Desktop for Small Business?

The reviewers at ZDNet UK evaluated a range of Linux distros, looking for ease of deployment and management for desktops within a small business. The candidates: Redhat Desktop 4, Mandriva Linux 2006, Novell Linux Desktop 9, SUSE Linux 10, and... the winner, Ubuntu Linux 5.10. Bundled with the increasingly capable OpenOffice, Evolution (Exchange-compatible client), and GAIM (Instant messaging), Ubuntu is completely free.

Over at O'ReillyNet, Andy Oran calls attention to "another desperate attempt to discredit Masschusetts' OpenDocument adoption." OpenDocument is an open-standard file format (for office documents) that promises to bring better interoperability to the world of electronic docs.

And, in a related, server-side development, PHP 5.10 has just been released. The net-net? A litany of performance, date/time computation, and security improvements.