Hello.

I stumbled upon this interesting website regarding nVidia and Vista. I wonder if we could do the same to hardware vendors?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070206-8784.html

Seems like those gamers got their wish and vendor support for this OS of choice. What about us? Yes, nVidia does support Linux, however there are many other vendors of both drivers and programs which do not port their software over. We are then stuck using Wine, VMWare, QEMU, etc...

Sure, we do have plenty of OSS alternatives to their software, sometimes ours is even better. However, huge companies that already use Windows, would prefer to get the Linux formated software from the same vendor. Most Corporate America IT departments are just too lazy to look through tons of source code, when they can just get the software from a so-called trusted company in binary form.

Also look how bad Linux advertising is in north America. I am not sure how Linux adverts work overseas. Those IBM ads, targeted companies, and still the ad didn't make sense for most people. Linux needs a community dictated to creating commercials which we can place on the air many TVs through the donations the project could make. If someone had a good Linux TV commercial targeted to the average family, I would be more than happy to purchase a copy online and provide it to a local TV company to broadcast for a month. Once GNU/Linux reaches the general public, and people can see first hand what this Operating System can do in their home, we can win over some desktop share. At the moment, gaining Desktop share is done by show-and-tell. I showed a few of my friends what Linux can do, and they jumped on it and agreed to install it.

I would think the commercial should target a user friendly and huge distribution. I would think Ubuntu, as people could just log onto the website in the commercial to order a shipment of CDs. The commercial should show a few key aspects of GNU/Linux, office apps, games in Cedega, no viruses and such, and a grand finally of Beryl at the end before the commercial instantly ends.

It's just that we have soo many developers creating programs for donations. Why not have a group of people who are skilled in creating commercials and marketing to create a wonderful commercial to show off all of our developers hard work over the many years. If GNU/Linux is ever going to make it mainstream on the desktop and pass Windows by with flying colours, we need to as a community start to market our software, which has been ready and user friendly for a few years now.

Linux already has most of the server market, our next step should be to free the desktop market, and give users choice of their OS. The reason most people use Windows in north America, is these poor souls have always been around Windows and never heard of Linux before. If these people finally open their eyes and see Linux, and what it can do for them. There may be a big possibility that software vendors will start porting over all the software these Windows users want, and some of the software we want. The Open Source movement has only begun on the Desktop market, we need to move forward and let all these software vendors see that Open Source is the future of software. Dell also needs a nice Linux commercial for it's new line of systems pre-installed with Linux, I have yet to see one of these.

I hope that someone takes the time to at least read this post and not just say it's long.

Nah, long posts are fine, when they say something, as yours does.
All in all, I agree totally. But the only thing I know about (television) marketing is that it costs a lot of moolah.

I can see the short version of the commercial now:

Commercial opens with a Windows BSOD, and a caption overlaid: "Tired of this?", perhaps show the poor frustrated Windows user who just lost his data to the Blue Screen.

Then the image changes to trusty Tux the penguin, introducing <insert Linux here>, and caption "Try this!", ad goes on to show some Linux apps, benefits, etc, and closes with the happy new Linux user, who just got a FREE operating system that works!

Thing to mention, which you kinda indicated when you mention Ubuntu, is that this OS to be marketed to the general public, ie Jane & Joe Blow, has gotta be stuffed FULL of drivers for everything out there that is available, plus native hotplugging/device detection, minimal bugs, etc.. Jane and Joe don't want to spend days on LQ asking for help, nor do they necessarily want to compile stuff, or even care to know what a compiler is. The phrase 'it just works' has got to really apply, literally.

Well, I edited my post, but the edits just disappeared into the void.. Grr..

Anyhow, I had added that to market Linux to Jane and Joe Blow, it's gotta be stuffed FULL of drivers for all sorts of hardware, I mean ALL the hardware that is currently supported, if not on-disc, then from the update site.. Plus, there would have to be a way to incorporate such things as proprietary driver for video (like the nVidia driver) so people would get great video, out of the box.
AND - in order to update, it's gotta connect to the net, and for everyone on the planet who currently use a 'Winmodem' that's asking a LOT. People don't want to--- they don't LIKE to-- buy new hardware just to make their OS run properly (as is the case often with the 'other' OS).
Not to mention, it's gotta be as bug free as possible (yeah, that's a given, I know), have native hotplugging/device detection, the updater has to work PERFECTLY, etc.. Because Jane and Joe don't want to be on LQ every other day looking for help, plus, they probably don't want to have to use a console, extract a tarball, or learn what a compiler is. Quite literally, it's gotta 'just work'.

Great concept all in all, but Jane and Joe 'Average' Blow still pose quite the potential roadblock if the OS doesn't 'just work', and the open source hardware support necessary for EVERY device out there to work without hands-on fine tuning, is not quite present, IMO. The 'Winmodem' issue is a fine example of a solid roadblock to Linux landing on every desktop and working out of the box.

Yeah, hardware is sometimes an isssue, but then look at Vista... The distributions we currently have just aren't Windows/Mac user friendly. People can extract tarballs from the GUI(which I prefer a terminal), you can configure most aspects of your system using the GUI in Linux. However, the distributions require lots of configuration before the system is ready for use.

Example: Last night, I installed Ubuntu AMD64 for a friend of mine. The first issue was we needed to add the "noapic" kernel option. He would have never been able to figure this out. The next thing was the installation of his nvidia card, and then the configuration of Xorg. After the first update, Xorg broke. If I was not there, he would not have gotten X back up. For some odd reason, after the kernel upgrade, the PCI bus where his nvidia card is in, changed. The hardware was never touched. The next issue, was the installation of the multimedia goodies from the debian-multimedia repo. After we needed to get beryl installed and working, and have it load on startup.

Well, after all that work, the good news is, he now enjoys the Linux partition more than the Vista one. He enjoyed the fact that he could watch 6+ DivX movies, transparent and wobbly without any slow downs or glitched. He also clearly stated to me, that he was not able to do this in Vista. He constantly asked, "So why doesn't Windows have this?" I really had to response to that.

Anyways, what is being said is that if distributions can automate these processes, and especially the fix the kernel for the user does not need to enter obscure kernel options. Most people would just give up right there, when the system failed to boot. If these minor roadblocks can be fixed, it would make Linux more ready for the desktop. As for Winmodems, most people I see have an ethernet card and a Cable or DSL connection. Like, who uses Dial-up anymore, besides on my phone's CDMA modem.

However, something I would really love to see, is Linux boxes being sold in Computer stores and on display. Letting regular people play around with Beryl and that right in the store. Beryl is somewhat addictive... The only problem with this, is the Monopoly in the computer store. Does Dell sell Linux pre-installed with everything the user would need? Or is there still configuration needed? When is Dell going to be bringing this Linux deal with North America?

Not sure *where* one can get the Dell Linux machines, but I have a suspicion they aren't all one would hope they are, but apparently they did ultimately decide on Ubuntu as the installed Linux, with possibly several other options. Not sure of the whole status if this Dell-Linux thing.

I do know they are sold at Walmart, but again, what countries/locales, I don't know.

In China, computers have been available to the public loaded with 'Red Flag Linux' for quite some time now (several years anyways).