I was asked to develop a users support community forum for a small and young hi-tech company. This kind of forums is very popular with companies these days and is a great alternative to the official product support lines. An example of what we look for is the Analog Devices' Engineer Zone forums.

I am totally noob to this area so any advice will be appreciated - how to start developing such a site, what platforms are available (preferably open-source/free) and what are the advantages and disadvantages of these platforms.

Is a stackexchange style forum appropriate for such site?

* If you think there is a better SE site to post this question, please let me know.


Question: Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS vs. Ubuntu 12.10?
Answer: Since 12.04 is LTS. I'd suggest 12.04, if you're not willing to upgrade. 12.10(And 13.04 soon), I'd suggest those two if you'd want a more "fancy" feature-updated machine.

New features in 12.10 is listed here: http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/whats-new - And if you can go without those, I'd install 12.04.