Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
I think this is a problem that will have to be solved with all the distros in a room. Unless we come up with a solution that is so elegant end-users just use it. Saying we shouldn't do an installer because each distro is different, is ignoring a user problem. apt-get and yum are beyond the average user that I think we are trying to target ... (If we ever want more than 10% market share, we can't count apt-get and yum as solutions. We also can't live in a world where you have to use multiple installers. Last time I installed something on Ubuntu, I used their installer and then got sent to synaptic.) Stormy On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 12:15 PM, Brian Cameron brian.came...@sun.comwrote: Dave: I am against any Linux ISD (including ourselves) trying to provide a one-size-fits-all installer, until a packaging system that allows that comes along. I have high hopes for PackageKit, but in the meantime, your goal should not be to give people installers, but to document installing it on the most popular distributions (Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, Fedora, SuSe) with generic apt-get or yum instructions. Each distribution has a distribution specific installer, that is what we should be targeting. I have to say that I agree with you. I know, for example, that Sun Microsystems patches the upstream code in numerous ways to make the code work on Solaris/OpenSolaris. We work hard to get our patches upstream, but there is usually a lag time and some modules are not well maintained (we have patches in bugzilla for modules like libgnome and gnome-vfs that have sat idle for years). Providing an installer that provides builds that are not provided by distro are bound to not have such needed patches and modifications, be hard to support, and will likely not work well or as users expect. Perhaps, instead of providing an installer, we could just point users towards the correct resources to get the latest code from their distro directly? Or perhaps we could write a wrapper script that provides a common interface for the various distro update systems? Brian -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
2009/6/19 Stormy Peters sto...@gnome.org: I think this is a problem that will have to be solved with all the distros in a room. Unless we come up with a solution that is so elegant end-users just use it. Saying we shouldn't do an installer because each distro is different, is ignoring a user problem. apt-get and yum are beyond the average user that I think we are trying to target ... (If we ever want more than 10% market share, we can't count apt-get and yum as solutions. We also can't live in a world where you have to use multiple installers. Last time I installed something on Ubuntu, I used their installer and then got sent to synaptic.) I totally agree with Stormy here, to what is worth, NetBeans has an installer/unstaller and people seem really happy with this approach, it gets installed on your home directory so it doesn't clashes with anything else. What we really need in the linux landscape is an .app like approach for users for bundle applications. Developers have to waste loads of time on learning the mechanics of every packaging system to deliver their apps efficiently, and users can't get a decent app installation experience. I think package managers are really nice for the system software/services, core components, the desktop, but for standalone desktop apps is just a fail approach that doesn't benefit anyone (except for the distros that avoid to make the effort/pain that it gets to agree on a common format and a roadmap for migration mid/long term). Given that GNOME pretends to be a platform to create apps for our desktop, I think this is a sensitive point and that it'll be for the benefit of our developers and users to try to approach this issue. Stormy On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 12:15 PM, Brian Cameron brian.came...@sun.com wrote: Dave: I am against any Linux ISD (including ourselves) trying to provide a one-size-fits-all installer, until a packaging system that allows that comes along. I have high hopes for PackageKit, but in the meantime, your goal should not be to give people installers, but to document installing it on the most popular distributions (Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, Fedora, SuSe) with generic apt-get or yum instructions. Each distribution has a distribution specific installer, that is what we should be targeting. I have to say that I agree with you. I know, for example, that Sun Microsystems patches the upstream code in numerous ways to make the code work on Solaris/OpenSolaris. We work hard to get our patches upstream, but there is usually a lag time and some modules are not well maintained (we have patches in bugzilla for modules like libgnome and gnome-vfs that have sat idle for years). Providing an installer that provides builds that are not provided by distro are bound to not have such needed patches and modifications, be hard to support, and will likely not work well or as users expect. Perhaps, instead of providing an installer, we could just point users towards the correct resources to get the latest code from their distro directly? Or perhaps we could write a wrapper script that provides a common interface for the various distro update systems? Brian -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- Un saludo, Alberto Ruiz -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
Not to promote, but Linux Plumbers Conference is exactly about solving this kind of stuff. If someone was willing to write a paper about PackageKit or something like that would be really good so that we can highlight this problem. Then we can work on it together to move Linux forward. Does that make sense? (papers are due by Monday! So we can still ge ta paper in!) sri On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 12:52 PM, Stormy Peters sto...@gnome.org wrote: I think this is a problem that will have to be solved with all the distros in a room. Unless we come up with a solution that is so elegant end-users just use it. Saying we shouldn't do an installer because each distro is different, is ignoring a user problem. apt-get and yum are beyond the average user that I think we are trying to target ... (If we ever want more than 10% market share, we can't count apt-get and yum as solutions. We also can't live in a world where you have to use multiple installers. Last time I installed something on Ubuntu, I used their installer and then got sent to synaptic.) Stormy On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 12:15 PM, Brian Cameron brian.came...@sun.comwrote: Dave: I am against any Linux ISD (including ourselves) trying to provide a one-size-fits-all installer, until a packaging system that allows that comes along. I have high hopes for PackageKit, but in the meantime, your goal should not be to give people installers, but to document installing it on the most popular distributions (Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, Fedora, SuSe) with generic apt-get or yum instructions. Each distribution has a distribution specific installer, that is what we should be targeting. I have to say that I agree with you. I know, for example, that Sun Microsystems patches the upstream code in numerous ways to make the code work on Solaris/OpenSolaris. We work hard to get our patches upstream, but there is usually a lag time and some modules are not well maintained (we have patches in bugzilla for modules like libgnome and gnome-vfs that have sat idle for years). Providing an installer that provides builds that are not provided by distro are bound to not have such needed patches and modifications, be hard to support, and will likely not work well or as users expect. Perhaps, instead of providing an installer, we could just point users towards the correct resources to get the latest code from their distro directly? Or perhaps we could write a wrapper script that provides a common interface for the various distro update systems? Brian -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
Am Dienstag, den 16.06.2009, 12:15 -0500 schrieb Brian Cameron: We work hard to get our patches upstream, but there is usually a lag time and some modules are not well maintained (we have patches in bugzilla for modules like libgnome and gnome-vfs that have sat idle for years). Probably because libgnome and gnome-vfs are both deprecated and there's no interest in spending much time on them. I can imagine that the current maintainers are open for requests on co-maintenance. andre -- mailto:ak...@gmx.net | failed http://www.iomc.de/ | http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
On 06/16/2009 11:46 AM, Dave Neary wrote: Hi, Stormy Peters wrote: I think we need an installer - for Linux and for Windows. And I think there's interest from several distributions to have an application install solution so if we were willing to create one (or a plan for one), I think we might be able to find resources to put behind it. I am against any Linux ISD (including ourselves) trying to provide a one-size-fits-all installer, until a packaging system that allows that comes along. I have high hopes for PackageKit, but in the meantime, your goal should not be to give people installers, but to document installing it on the most popular distributions (Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, Fedora, SuSe) with generic apt-get or yum instructions. Each distribution has a distribution specific installer, that is what we should be targeting. In some cases, you can even include just a link that people can click. You can install, say, Transmission in Ubuntu from the browser using a link pointing to apt:transmission, and in OpenSUSE you can use the one click installer-thing http://software.opensuse.org/ymp/openSUSE:11.1/standard/transmission.ymp;. The closest thing I could find for Fedora is outlined in a blog post from Hugsie [1], but that requires a mozilla plugin apparently. Can any kind of browser detection thing figure out the distro you're running? 1. http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2008/09/09/packagekit-web-plugin/ - Andreas -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
On Mon, 2009-06-15 at 21:54 -0600, Stormy Peters wrote: I think we need an installer - for Linux and for Windows. And I think there's interest from several distributions to have an application install solution so if we were willing to create one (or a plan for one), I think we might be able to find resources to put behind it. Stormy I think I could write a initial plan for an installer. It would describe the major use cases, some real world problems of a central system, the resulting requirements, current Open Source solutions and their pro's and con's. If you'd like to have such a paper, maybe as a foundation for a rational discussion with others, just let me know. Best regards, Claus -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
On Tue, 2009-06-16 at 12:26 +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote: In some cases, you can even include just a link that people can click. You can install, say, Transmission in Ubuntu from the browser using a link pointing to apt:transmission, and in OpenSUSE you can use the one click installer-thing http://software.opensuse.org/ymp/openSUSE:11.1/standard/transmission.ymp;. The closest thing I could find for Fedora is outlined in a blog post from Hugsie [1], but that requires a mozilla plugin apparently. Mint has .mint files. [1] But that doesn't solve the problem. Say yesterday Transmission just released an amazing new version that you want to try. So you click on the Download link. The above tools would tell you that you either have Transmission installed, already, or they will install the Transmission version in your repository -- not the one you want to try. But it's at least a workaround. Can any kind of browser detection thing figure out the distro you're running? Some distros have their name in the user agent string. [2] A better approach would be feature or capability detection [3] but there seems to be no proper way for the above kind of features. Best regards, Claus [1] http://linuxmint.com/software/ [2] http://user-agent-string.info/list-of-ua (scroll down) [3] http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/using-capability-detection/ -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
Dave: I am against any Linux ISD (including ourselves) trying to provide a one-size-fits-all installer, until a packaging system that allows that comes along. I have high hopes for PackageKit, but in the meantime, your goal should not be to give people installers, but to document installing it on the most popular distributions (Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, Fedora, SuSe) with generic apt-get or yum instructions. Each distribution has a distribution specific installer, that is what we should be targeting. I have to say that I agree with you. I know, for example, that Sun Microsystems patches the upstream code in numerous ways to make the code work on Solaris/OpenSolaris. We work hard to get our patches upstream, but there is usually a lag time and some modules are not well maintained (we have patches in bugzilla for modules like libgnome and gnome-vfs that have sat idle for years). Providing an installer that provides builds that are not provided by distro are bound to not have such needed patches and modifications, be hard to support, and will likely not work well or as users expect. Perhaps, instead of providing an installer, we could just point users towards the correct resources to get the latest code from their distro directly? Or perhaps we could write a wrapper script that provides a common interface for the various distro update systems? Brian -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
On 16 Jun 2009, at 11:26, Andreas Nilsson wrote: In some cases, you can even include just a link that people can click. You can install, say, Transmission in Ubuntu from the browser using a link pointing to apt:transmission, and in OpenSUSE you can use the one click installer-thing http://software.opensuse.org/ymp/openSUSE:11.1/standard/transmission.ymp . The closest thing I could find for Fedora is outlined in a blog post from Hugsie [1], but that requires a mozilla plugin apparently. And FWIW, OpenSolaris also has one-click web install for its IPS packaging system: http://opensolaris.org/os/community/desktop/testing/projects/new-app/webinstall/ Cheeri, Calum. -- CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer Sun Microsystems Ireland mailto:calum.ben...@sun.comOpenSolaris Desktop Team http://blogs.sun.com/calum +353 1 819 9771 Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
I think we need an installer - for Linux and for Windows. And I think there's interest from several distributions to have an application install solution so if we were willing to create one (or a plan for one), I think we might be able to find resources to put behind it. Stormy On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Claus Schwarm clschw...@googlemail.comwrote: On Sun, 2009-06-14 at 08:02 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: So maybe a modification is to create our own product page for each promoted app with a link to the original page? I still think the foundation of the ideas is sound which is to drive interest in products that compete with others on more popular systems. sri Yes, the basic idea is sound. That's why I suggested to have a better apps directory back in February 2004. [1] Thus I also argued to have a separate projects.gnome.org to manage project homepages more easily.[2] Good apps drive adoption of the underlying platform. If there's a decentralized installer for an app -- which could simply be LSB-complient DEB that installs into /opt --, marketing is no problem. Just put a large button Download Now on the homepage, improve its content, and people would use it. Whenever a new version is released, there's lots of media to spread the word and drive traffic to the project homepage: * Twitter and other microblogging tools * Blogs and planets * Forums such linuxquestion.org, etc. * Linux sites such as LinuxToday, LWN, etc. * Download directories such as gnomefiles, etc. * Social sites such as Reddit, Digg, etc. With a little bit of SEO, one could maybe even make it into the top ten of search results for generic keywords such as audio player. No need to pay Adsense. But even Adsense would make sense. Additionally, the new version could be distributed directly: * CoverCDs of Linux journals * Self-burned CD to be distributed on schoolyards, etc. When Firefox 1.5 was released, two major German PC magazine had it on their CoverCD. That meant 1 million people in Germany alone got it for free, including an article describing how awesome it is. The Firefox crew didn't really need to promote it back then, journalists did it for them. In other words: It's easy when there's an installer. Without an installer, however, most of the word-of-mouth advertising fails. Most users will have to wait a few months for the new version, anyway, before it's packaged and distributed by their distribution. Then, why waste time being informed today? Why talk about a new version to your friend, if he or she is not able to download and install it? Why read a blog about it? Or blog about it? Why visit gnomefiles each week? Makes no sense. Because doing so is boring. As a result, there's no hype when a new version is released. And good applications are being ignored. But I have no clue how to change the lack of installers. It would be the job of developers, wouldn't it? Best regards, Claus [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-web-list/2004-February/msg00025.html [2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2006-July/msg00169.html -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
On Sat, 2009-06-13 at 11:01 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: Actually, the original idea I had about this is to do away with our platform (eg the apps that make gnome.. after all the whole thing is a distro decision these days anyways) Instead we would promote them via adsense and drive traffic to these apps thus using them as marketing tools. That might make people work harder to get themselves into compliance in a particular niche. I agree to the idea that we would not need an default GNOME applications package. A list of suggested apps would be sufficient. But spending money on an Adsense campaign would be wasted. Look at the Rhythmbox homepage, for an example: From a sales point of view, the page is simply bad. It mentions no benefits. It triggers no curiosity to find out more. There's no social proof. There's no call-to-action. Even if there would be a call-to-action: What would it be about? Download the tarball and compile yourself? As long as application developers fail to understand how important a decentralized installer is for marketing, promoting their apps or even improving their homepages is basically just a waste of time. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but that's just the way it is. Best regards, Claus -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 5:34 AM, Claus Schwarm clschw...@googlemail.comwrote: Sorry if that sounds harsh, but that's just the way it is. I can always depend on you to get to the heart of the matter, Claus. :-) I don't think your comments are harsh, but does reflect a reality behind my suggestion. Yes, I agree that perhaps driving people to developer websites might have the opposite effect if a product web page is lacking. There is of course the branding and consistency of a GNOME supported app. Perhaps that means we create our own product page I don't know. So maybe a modification is to create our own product page for each promoted app with a link to the original page? I still think the foundation of the ideas is sound which is to drive interest in products that compete with others on more popular systems. sri -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
On Sun, 2009-06-14 at 08:02 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: So maybe a modification is to create our own product page for each promoted app with a link to the original page? I still think the foundation of the ideas is sound which is to drive interest in products that compete with others on more popular systems. sri Yes, the basic idea is sound. That's why I suggested to have a better apps directory back in February 2004. [1] Thus I also argued to have a separate projects.gnome.org to manage project homepages more easily.[2] Good apps drive adoption of the underlying platform. If there's a decentralized installer for an app -- which could simply be LSB-complient DEB that installs into /opt --, marketing is no problem. Just put a large button Download Now on the homepage, improve its content, and people would use it. Whenever a new version is released, there's lots of media to spread the word and drive traffic to the project homepage: * Twitter and other microblogging tools * Blogs and planets * Forums such linuxquestion.org, etc. * Linux sites such as LinuxToday, LWN, etc. * Download directories such as gnomefiles, etc. * Social sites such as Reddit, Digg, etc. With a little bit of SEO, one could maybe even make it into the top ten of search results for generic keywords such as audio player. No need to pay Adsense. But even Adsense would make sense. Additionally, the new version could be distributed directly: * CoverCDs of Linux journals * Self-burned CD to be distributed on schoolyards, etc. When Firefox 1.5 was released, two major German PC magazine had it on their CoverCD. That meant 1 million people in Germany alone got it for free, including an article describing how awesome it is. The Firefox crew didn't really need to promote it back then, journalists did it for them. In other words: It's easy when there's an installer. Without an installer, however, most of the word-of-mouth advertising fails. Most users will have to wait a few months for the new version, anyway, before it's packaged and distributed by their distribution. Then, why waste time being informed today? Why talk about a new version to your friend, if he or she is not able to download and install it? Why read a blog about it? Or blog about it? Why visit gnomefiles each week? Makes no sense. Because doing so is boring. As a result, there's no hype when a new version is released. And good applications are being ignored. But I have no clue how to change the lack of installers. It would be the job of developers, wouldn't it? Best regards, Claus [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-web-list/2004-February/msg00025.html [2] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2006-July/msg00169.html -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
Am Sonntag, den 14.06.2009, 20:11 +0200 schrieb Claus Schwarm: Thus I also argued to have a separate projects.gnome.org to manage project homepages more easily. This has happened in the meantime. andre -- mailto:ak...@gmx.net | failed http://www.iomc.de/ | http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
Got a bit inspired by: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2009-June/msg00012.html news.gnome.org got some really nice project blogs, so lets add some more! A couple of nice feeds I can think of from the top of my head: * Banshee - http://banshee-project.org/blog/ * Inkscape - http://inkscape.org/inkscape.rss * Ardour - http://ardour.org/rss.xml and a couple I couldn't find a feed for: * Pitivi * Abiword * F-spot * Tomboy Any more tips? - Andreas -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
Here are some apps I personally find cool, with my personal comments below. I apologize, I don't have time to see if they have feeds while I'm at this docs conference. I did check the news.gnome.org feed, and didn't see them. Maybe they can be convinced to start one. :) * Brasero (just added to GNOME in the last year, might help to introduce users) * Cheese (Just a fun, cool app) * Empathy (Distros considering switching to it from Pidgin) * GNOME-Do (One of the most innovative apps that I've seen in years) * Gwibber (I haven't seen a better micro-blogging app yet) (Obviously the last two aren't official GNOME projects like you mention, but they have a lot of buzz in the community.) Paul On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 10:11 AM, Andreas Nilsson nisses.m...@home.sewrote: Got a bit inspired by: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2009-June/msg00012.html news.gnome.org got some really nice project blogs, so lets add some more! A couple of nice feeds I can think of from the top of my head: * Banshee - http://banshee-project.org/blog/ * Inkscape - http://inkscape.org/inkscape.rss * Ardour - http://ardour.org/rss.xml and a couple I couldn't find a feed for: * Pitivi * Abiword * F-spot * Tomboy Any more tips? - Andreas -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
Actually, the original idea I had about this is to do away with our platform (eg the apps that make gnome.. after all the whole thing is a distro decision these days anyways) Instead we would promote them via adsense and drive traffic to these apps thus using them as marketing tools. That might make people work harder to get themselves into compliance in a particular niche. Probably might be that this might not scale if there are a lot of apps out there or if there are competing apps and of course there is the money situation. Anyways, something to think about. In the mean time, this looks like a nice idea, Andreas. (and why not Rhythmbox..) sri On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 8:11 AM, Andreas Nilsson nisses.m...@home.sewrote: Got a bit inspired by: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2009-June/msg00012.html news.gnome.org got some really nice project blogs, so lets add some more! A couple of nice feeds I can think of from the top of my head: * Banshee - http://banshee-project.org/blog/ * Inkscape - http://inkscape.org/inkscape.rss * Ardour - http://ardour.org/rss.xml and a couple I couldn't find a feed for: * Pitivi * Abiword * F-spot * Tomboy Any more tips? - Andreas -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org
On 06/13/2009 08:01 PM, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote: Actually, the original idea I had about this is to do away with our platform (eg the apps that make gnome.. after all the whole thing is a distro decision these days anyways) Instead we would promote them via adsense and drive traffic to these apps thus using them as marketing tools. That might make people work harder to get themselves into compliance in a particular niche. Probably might be that this might not scale if there are a lot of apps out there or if there are competing apps and of course there is the money situation. Anyways, something to think about. In the mean time, this looks like a nice idea, Andreas. (and why not Rhythmbox..) I wasn't able to find something resembling a newsfeed for Rhythmbox on http://projects.gnome.org/rhythmbox/ It's a well known GNOME app, so if there is a newsfeed, I think it should be added. - Andreas -- marketing-list mailing list marketing-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
