Last night I was honoured to be on the Linux Link Tech Show . I was fairly active on the TLLTS forums over the last week following comments on how to promote Linux to the mainstream media. The lads were good enough to let me on so I could argue my point that we should promote from the ground up. I intend to do a more detailed episode on this theme for Hacker Public radio so I’ll fill in the detail there.
For now just a thanks to the TLLTS guys for allowing me to come on and add my voice to the Longest running Linux Internet show.
Ken,
Great job. I’m in total agreement with your views on how to promote Linux and FOSS and how ‘guerrilla’ tactics hurt the cause.
I’ve been thinking of doing a few really grass roots and low effort things. One thing is to put up a flyer in the local market offering to revitalize ‘those old pc’s’ people have at home. I mean why throw out that P3 machine when it’s perfectly usable. I’d offer to wipe the hard drive and make it usable once again for very little cost (maybe 20 bucks for my time). It’s got to be low enough that people just say, ‘well heck, what’s the risk..’.
I’m thinking about the flyer design right now. Some ideas:
– don’t mention distributions, or other technical mumbo jumbo, minimize all ‘scary’ language
– we’re aiming this at parents who want to have a pc that does office stuff, internet, email and maybe photo stuff – impart those ideas at it’s most basic level
– make it attractive and mainstream (graphic design is one of my hobbies, so this part would be fun). No tux, no Comic Sans fonts. 😉
– make it simple but attractive, something that would interest people into trying it without feeling any trepidation.
I realize that it’s not pushing Linux at the forefront of technology, but there are a crapload of middle-aged PC’s getting thrown out when they can still be perfectly usable. People will say it pidgeonholes Linux as an OS for old hardware, but I think it will at least show people that there is an alternative. 99% of everyday people don’t know that.
Anyway, sorry for the long-winded comment, but it’s an important issue.
There really should be a central place for linux promotion ideas. Just not sure if a freely editable wiki is the place or method for doing that. Maybe.
Cheers. RQ
Hey Ken,
Sorry, I forgot to fill in the particulars in that last comment I left. Hit the Enter key too fast. 😉 It might fall into your comment spam catcher – just wanted to give you a heads up.
RQ
Hi Richard,
First of all thank you for your kind comments. As for the rest I agree with you except a nice tasteful tux logo is absolutely fine. I’ve seen the logo side by side on the back of some sandisuk usb sticks together with the Mac and window’s logo and I think it looked great. It does say a lot about the spirit of the community and if nothing else it sparks conversation.
Pushing the reuse of PC’s is a great idea and not only saves the consumer money is a very green. People are focusing on both of these topics right now.
Don’t worry about Linux as an OS for old hardware argument. On one hand we have Dell, Lenovo, HP, asus etc shipping Linux on top of the range PC’s and on the other 460 of the top 500 supercomputers runs Linux. It just proves how flexible the operating system is.
One word of warning, if you do this for people they will expect support. So you need to set levels of expectation here. Charging is a very good idea as it will give them cause to think before they pick up the phone.
What I’d love you to do is post your experiences good but epically bad so we all can learn from your experiences.