On 15 October 2010 02:19, Graham Lauder <[email protected]> wrote: > On Friday 15 Oct 2010 12:14:04 J.A. Magallón wrote: >> On Thu, 14 Oct 2010 22:30:25 +1300, Graham Lauder <[email protected]> > wrote: >> > We are in the desktop computing market, the chunk we want a part of is at >> > present occupied by MS. In this market the name we want to promote is >> > Mageia, we have no need to identify with Linux. >> >> Don't know how much salt I need for this, but please don't even try that, >> specially for non techincal people. >> They will think: ah, I can choose Windows, Linux or Mageia. Lets try some >> linux, people talk well about it...who will I impress if I said I installed >> a 'Mageia' ? > > If Impressing someone else with their Computing platform is important to a > person, they will go Mac. > >> Compare to 'hey, I finally found a Linux distro I can use', 'which one', >> 'mageia', 'mmm, lets try it...'. > > The plethora of distributions simply adds confusion. Are people deciding on > Mac deciding between OSX and FreeBSD? > > For nontechnical people Linux is confusing, because nontechnical people aren't > going to be able to make a sensible choice between a deb based or rpm based, > Gnome centric or KDE centric, zypper yum or apt and on and on. > > Ask a nontechnical user "What is a distribution?" what do you think the > answer would be. People identify with brands. The question that they will > most likely ask is Windows, Ubuntu, Mac or Mageia?(eventually :) ) Linux > will feature for some but only a small minority. >
I don't think any respectable Linux distro should go the Ubuntu way in the branding part. Promoting ourselves as just "Mageia" not as "Mageia, a Linux distro", even implicitly, is just wrong. People who contribute to the FOSS world still have ethics and "values" to uphold. I don't care if it's commercially successful or not, and we _can be a successful Linux distro_. Now I don't see anything wrong in getting users to educate themselves on what Linux is, that's a 10 minute search on the internet :) > Nontechnical people, especially coming from a windows environment simply want > to know: "Will it do what I can do now in Windows", they really don't care > about the kernel or any of the other stuff. > > > -- > Graham Lauder, > OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ > http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html > > OpenOffice.org Migration and training Consultant. > > INGOTs Assessor Trainer > (International Grades in Open Technologies) > www.theingots.org > -- Ahmad Samir
