alan c wrote: > From a marketing viewpoint, facts are only used when convenient, > which may not be often for some products. It is surprising what can be > achieved with clever marketing, even with a poor product. Microsoft?
Microsoft came to the rise with more than just marketing. Shady legal tactics in and out of the courtroom were among some of it's successes. However, Microsoft just beat Apple and UNIX to the punch. They offered an appealing product to the masses faster and better than the competition during the early days. > The more that something is stated then the more it begins to become, > then becomes, accepted as fact. It goes without saying that marketing > budgets pay their way. Our whole (developed nations) economic culture > and way of life seems embedded in marketing and its symptom, > advertising. There is hardly a single fact to be seen! Sure. Marketing and advertising play a big role in the success of any product. The more that a company or organization can pay to advertise their product, the better chances of success they will have. > What I actually see is an erosion of the top place that ubuntu has in > the distrowatch rankings. It is a number, and it is moving in the > wrong direction. I also see some publicity, including hype, that > encourages attention for and use of pclinuxos. When it goes up the > rankings, there is a congratulations on the forum (when I looked at > one time a while ago). The team is focussed on success, why not? One > success would be 'Top of distrowatch'. For all I know every pclos user > clicks on distrowatch twice each day! First off, Distrowatch rankings are only the number of page hits on Distrowatch's site, not the distro site. Again, these are just page hits, and should be taken very likely. No distro's success hangs on the page rankings of distrowatch. A true measurement of success is dependent on many variables, not just page hits. Again, I would take the rankings on Distrowatch very lightly. > My agenda is to encourage success for ubuntu, not pclos. > > In addition to the continuing erosion of the ubuntu numbers on > distrowatch, I have now seen a very rare event - a committed windows > small trader *asking* me for pclinuxos, and not asking for ubuntu! > Their message seems to be getting across. I do not like this > situation, but this happened, and I think it is significant. I have never had anyone ask for PCLinuxOS, and I've been in the Linux industry for years. I hear new people asking either about Fedora Core, SuSE Linux, Ubuntu/Debian, Gentoo, Slackware or RedHat. And that's probably giving them more credit then they are allowed. I would say, the average Joe (your grandma or uncle) have only heard of Windows and Macintosh. Mention Linux, or UNIX even, and they have no idea what you're talking about. "Is Linux a program I can run in Windows?" I hear all the time. Only the true hardcore nerds are familiar other distros such as Yellow Dog, Nexenta, *BSD and even PCLinuxOS. > There are some attractions to be had by using pclos that are not in > ubuntu, and the reverse is also true. Some facilities could be changed > in ubuntu (or kubuntu) of course. It is a marketing function to assess > how product function affects sales and to inform designers, giving > direction if appropriate. However I do *not* believe the technical > differences are significant. As has been said, for example, kubuntu is > also available and I know it can compete very well indeed. I use it > almost exclusively. Every distribution is going to offer advantages and disadvantages that other distributions do not have. This is the nature of forking software. A team, or individual looks at a piece of software, and decides that some changes need to be made, so he/she/they fork it. This is what separates Free Software from proprietary software. Besides, the only difference that I see, is PCLinuxOS comes with Windows Media formats by default, as Ubuntu does not. The reasons for this are legal ones, and I would hardly call them an "advantage". > One explanation is that the PClinuxos message (whatever that is) is > getting across and the ubuntu (Kubuntu?) message is not getting across > so well, at least to a very visible population of clicking users. Well, if you don't know what the message is, then how do you know that it's getting across so well? I can tell you what drives Ubuntu's success. It's community. It's Debian based. It has superior hardware recognition. It has commercial support. It's easy to use. > We are here to get -our- message accross. We have to judge our own > actions, although distrowatch is giving me much cause for reflection. Again, I wouldn't worry too much about Distrowatch. Any serious Linux user that has been at it for some time, knows that Distrowatch is merely *one* measurement of success. Debian is ranked #6, Gentoo #13 and KNOPPIX #14, and yet I would call all 3 of those distributions *very* successful. Maybe even more so than Ubuntu. All Distrowatch is saying, is people are looking at those pages, _on_ _Distrowatch_, which probably reflects desktop users more than corporate entities. In a nutshell, PCLinuxOS seems to be doing fairly well. And I hope that they continue to become very successful. Linux adoption isn't going to come from a single Distribution, but from the Linux community as a whole. While I enjoy seeing more and more people use Ubuntu, I don't want Ubuntu to become a monopoly in the Linux market. I enjoy seeing people using other Distributions. It's healthy, and should be encouraged. Mark Shuttleworth estimated around 3-4 million Ubuntu users. That makes for a very successful operating system, even if the market share is still small. So, keep spreading Ubuntu. If PCLinuxOS takes the top spot on Distrowatch, so what? Congratulations for them. I'll still be using Ubuntu and still spreading it to those I meet, as well as Debian, *BSD, Damn Small Linux, KNOPPIX and many others. Cheers, +--------------------------------------------------------------+ |Aaron Toponce _ Join the ASCII Ribbon Campaign | |OALUG President ( ) http://www.asciiribbon.org | |http://www.aarontoponce.org X Against HTML e-mail | |http://www.oalug.com / \ Against proprietary attachments| +--------------Best viewed with a monospace font---------------+
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