Rice Technology Solutions (RTS) announced that it has been selected by Canonical Ltd. as an Ubuntu linux solutions partner.

Ubuntu  is a Debian based Linux distribution with a stronger focus on usability than other linux releases. Ubuntu is sponsored by Canonical Ltd, owned by South African billionaire entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth.

"We are very pleased that Canonical has chosen RTS as a solutions provider. We believe linux is the future of enterprise and consumer based computing and we could not have found a better partner than Ubuntu" said John J Rice, president and lead engineer for RTS.

Ubuntu releases new versions every six months, and supports those releases for 18 months with daily security fixes and patches to critical bugs. There are also Long Term Support (LTS) releases, which have three years support for the desktop version and five years for the server version.

"In the past we have been hard pressed in our ability to offer a stable and easy to use alternative to MS based software. The linux platform was not ready for prime time as they say, but with Ubuntu that has changed. Not only do you get a stable operating system, but you also get world class software comparable with anything MS has to offer." said Rice