On Sun, 2008-05-11 at 00:00 +0200, Florian Philipp wrote: > Yep, gentoo.org really seems to have been created from devs and users > for devs and users. There is nothing like a "Features" page or "Why to > choose Gentoo" for newcomers. Heck, you have to search hard to even > learn whether it is suitable for desktops or servers! Just compare > ubuntu.com with gentoo.org, for example. The difference is striking.
I think you hit the nail with that one. The difference between ubuntu.*com* and gentoo.*org* is just that. Whereas Ubuntu, or rather Canonical, is a for-profit company that actually has a commercial objective, a big budget, full-time paid developers, professional support services, many times more resources and staff who actually have degrees in marketing it should come as no surprise that ubuntu.com looks the way it does. As much as Canonical wants you to believe that Ubuntu is a community, Ubuntu is in fact a brand and they work very hard and no doubt spend a lot of money promoting that brand. OTOH, Gentoo is a group of volunteers. Is it even a non-profit organization anymore? No, or hardly no, budget. No market research, access to professional art or artists, public relations staff, etc. etc. A more fair comparison, would be that of Debian. Now if you compare the front page of gentoo.org with debian.org they are not that dissimilar. Similarly Debian is regularly being criticized for late release and, just as Gentoo, every once in a while someone will post a blog or start a thread about how Debian is "dead" or "dying". Big deal. Let's face it: the all (mostly) volunteer-based distros are never going to have the flash or press coverage as your Ubuntu or your Fedoras. And it can be argued that they're not going to be as popular. But I would hope that their main goals is not to win popularity contests. I would agree that concerning Gentoo's home page are may be areas of improvement, but to compare it to Ubuntu.com is not exactly balanced. -a -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
