In my opinion, the target audience is not the person that runs it already or can install and support it for their parents. And while there aren’t a lot of OEMs providing Linux, there are a few and their willingness to spread to additional models is a reflection of their current success in getting it to their current customers. So this leaves the target audience being the hobbyists. Get them curious, they have the skills to burn an iso and do the install. But, as I said before, if they have a failure doing the setup, you’ll lose them.

It goes back to the points made in a few responses. The user has to have a good experience, support needs to be easily gotten and the product needs to be “easy” to use; however you define “easy”.

At the end of the day advertising is more effective than word of mouth, people need to be aware of Linux as an operating system for the average user and not a “Geeks Only” distro. All of my family (including in-laws) use a (wide variety of) Linux distros. But that is due to me convincing them and, at times, maintaining them, they don’t seem to want to brag about their new operating system to their mates. They like it because it’s fast, good for browsing and can write letters; but this is not something they will be screaming from the roof tops.

If people are so against spending money on advertising then why not have two donation pots one that “Definitely will not be spent on advertising” and one that “May be spent on advertising” to be honest the later would probably only come from companies wishing to sponsor their distro of choice.

BTW, we also had one around the same time in a big newspaper in Germany – but few people remember that one.

Gerv

Gerv

I think advertising must have some sort of self-interest involved, you are talking about something with the aim of personal gain. I was going to go on and say therefore that when I talk about Ubuntu it isn’t advertising, but when you talk about Ubuntu it is as you are employed by Canonical so it is in your self-interest to promote it. However, I realise that point is flawed as I am also doing it for personal gain, which is that the more people I convert to Ubuntu the more likely it is that it will become a better OS.

It must therefore be financial gain which is the criteria for advertisement. I guess it must be that for something to be an advertisement its aim must be to convince people to buy a product or service. Of course how you determine whether that is the aim of what someone says or not is not easy! I guess this is why on the BBC they make a point of mentioning ‘other leading brands’ or whatever if they happen to mention a product, to show that they are not endorsing one product.

Ok enough of my armchair law…

To make it simple: What is allowed on BBC is “speaking about” which I’m not against, and what isn’t is advertisements and crap.

Well universally easy means no dialogs with tracebacks and weird errors. Like if I saw “Could not get executive lock” I would be a very confused new user. It is easy to install but some things are still not as streamlined as they should be for a mainstream OS.

If you mean easy means “no bugs”, which it sounds like you are saying, that will never happen. Software always has bugs.

We need to clean up and streamline the platform itself I think before we are truely ready.

What do you mean by clean up and streamline?

We need some work on GTK to make it look more modern.

How do you define modern?

I am not denying that they are true, but it highlights my point that “easy” is such a fluffy and interpretable word.

Advertising is evil. It is our collective human culture that needs to change. It shouldn’t be that the ones who lie the best get to make the most money.

This is why I like the stupid name GIMP, for example. FOSS isn’t about bullshitting. A catchy name shouldn’t make a difference.

On the other hand, though:

Sometimes, maybe the ends justify the means? Example: Amnesty international or other “good” orgs advertise and sad but true: they get more money donated and can help more people/whatever.

We need to clean up and streamline the platform itself I think before we are truely ready.

Like for app development we still have some way to go to be streamlined for the likes of the Mac community developers and companies making stuff for the app store. I know Quickly and Quickly-Widgets are helping here but we still need a lot of work.

We need some work on GTK to make it look more modern.

We need to make things simple like integrate the update manager into the software center. We need a marketplace like the Apple store and like Microsoft’s marketplace for content delivery.

We should have better attention to detail like adding ubuntuforums and other great ubuntu websites bookmarked in the default browser.

It would be nice if the community projects and canonical could have a nice way to get in touch with users like a nice news alerts thing in the default install.

Just throwing out ideas here but there is lots of stuff we need to do to be ready for mainstream use. The problems are small though.

So, I’m a deceitful, morally wrong, manipulative, dishonest trickster, right?

One definition I grabbed and translated from the Norwegian Wikipedia page: “An advertisement is made by one company who has paid for it and has decided where it should be, and its target is to change the receiver’s buying behaviour.”

If it is accurate enough I don’t really care because I’m neither a lawyer nor a linguist. I feel it is wrong morally to have this trickery in place to get people to buy and use your products.

In our society it is too much of this crap around. I hate to see FLOSS products poisoning the world with more of it.

If Linux was to succeed on the desktop it will have to be pre-installed. Not only that but it needs to be widely available.

I really think that Canonical needs to get the whip out and start letting companies know they are serious about Ubuntu on the desktop.

For example you can buy a Ubuntu PC from DELL but ONLY if you live in certain areas. Also you have a choice from 2 netbooks and a desktop, all outdated hardware! This looks like even DELL doesn’t believe Ubuntu is ready for the general public. Canonical need to push for Ubuntu availability on all DELLs and across the globe.

Then there is Yahoo which Canonical have done a deal with. Yahoo will be the default search engine but just try checking your Yahoo mail and you get a message saying: Yahoo mail has not been tested with your OS! Linux works just fine with Yahoo mail but its Canonical who have the power to tell Yahoo to get rid of that page!!

So the way to do it for Ubuntu would be to get a hardware vendor to build computers with it preinstalled (like Dell does right now) and then market them as a separate brand (instead of the ugly brother of the windows machine). Just the way Apple does it with Macs: they don’t market it as a PC with a different OS (although that’s what it is) they market it as a completely different thing.

I agree there are people who don’t know about free software and could benefit from it, but I don’t think advertising is a good way of spreading the word out. Advertisements are manipulative and dishonest beneath and I’m against “fooling” anyone into trying anything.

I pulled 50% out of the air. If manufacturers would allow Linux to compete at that level I think we would win on the desktop.

You say Google has little power in the hardware world. Have you seen the number of Android devices being built? If Google Chrome OS turns out to be as good as Android OS manufacturers will widely deploy Chrome OS.

Another way to gain attention may be through low cost advertising on NON-Profit College and Community Stations. They need money in order to operate, but often work through Donations. It may be possible to support a few shows, at a much lower cost than that of a Commercial radio station.

That pop at the Outlaws was fucking harsh BTW!