Linux's Marketing Problem | Hacker News Reader

Linux's Marketing Problem

hackaday.com

9 pointsfortran777 comments

Realistically, the closest use of "Linux on the Desktop" + marketing is ChromeOS and Chromebooks. Yes, its using Linux underneath but Google is marketing the system as ChromeOS which is easily relatable with the Chrome Browser which everyone knows. With every other distro out there, marketing "Linux" would just introduce confusion towards the average user due to customization, different DEs and apps available and errors involved. Google had to unfortunately market Linux under a different name for users to notice their product.

Apple and Microsoft have dedicated support that helps users whenever a hardware/software error occurs, they are usually the main point of contact. Linux distros sort of have this with "bug reports" but its very user unfriendly and due to the distro software stack, multiple points of contact: (X/Wayland team, GNOME team, kernel devs, distro maintainers, etc). Google knew too well to improve on this pitfall with their Pixel lineup to have a dedicated support team for their Chromebooks.

Linux still dominates the server market, however the desktop will always be a issue for Linux as it is not for the faint of heart for changing sane defaults, customising the DE, window manager and startup scripts which the user may end up spending hours searching error codes or having to revert their setup altogether, which just wastes time to get started. At least ChromeOS and Fuchsia are aiming for a consistent experience similar to Windows and macOS.

> It’ll only come if someone can unify all the splintered groups around a cohesive, simple message and market it to the public.

Sane defaults in a Linux distro would be a start for a standardised Linux desktop and would finally solve the inconsistency problem and reduce the MxN configuration issue for narrowing bugs. Apart from Google, The Haiku project [0] is doing well at creating an integrated OS with sane defaults for a desktop OS + an SDK for developers which is unified, similar to macOS and Windows but open-source. If they can do it with less than 10 core developers, I find it hard to believe as to why the Linux community could not come together to achieve the same thing.

[0] https://www.haiku-os.org/

This is the worst article on Linux I've read in years. Installing Puppy Linux to disk almost never happens in reality, because that's not even a secondary aim of it. They picked a distro that isn't aimed at being installed to demonstrate their point, because no distribution in the top ten is actually difficult to install.

"Instead, the front page is largely a treatise on how Puppy Linux isn’t actually a “distribution” per se, and a technical description of what does and doesn’t count as a true Linux distribution."

I think the above quote from the article is why Puppy was used.

Why is the front page for Puppy full of technical nit-picking about terminology? Why isn't it focused on getting the user to productivity faster and easier.

Or maybe to follow on to your point, why doesn't the Puppy home page clarify that install to disk isn't a goal. That info on the home page would have certainly helped the author more than the definition of a distribution.

Puppy Linux isn't in the mainstream, isn't aimed at users who aren't in the know, and you can cherry-pick anything if you look far enough outside the realm of "Plausibly installed on more than five hundred consumer systems."

Is that clear from their homepage?

> Ease of use → grandpa-friendly certified™

http://puppylinux.com/

If I wasn't tech savvy and I stumbled into Puppy, I'd assume it was targeting non-tech savvy people based on that statement at the top of the homepage. Then I'd likely feel burned by "Linux" when it wasn't. There is a marketing problem there.

Although in that example, why is a mainstream user looking at puppy in the first place? So I think you're right, that's a cherry picked example.

I actually think it's the worst.

" cohesive marketing strategy"

Doesn't work with cats.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com