Advocating Linux
Posted by Michael Robinson on January 11, 2007
Something that has historically held Linux back is that up until a few years ago finding any sort of beginner friendly help was impossible. You could piece together the answer to your problem from manpages and clunky mailing lists, but only a minority of computer users have the time for that. Now it’s 2007 - Linux is fairly easy to install and run, and information on resolving issues is available in the form of user maintained wikis, websites, and forums. With all this, Linux still hasn’t hit mainstream. Why is that?
Marketting
Marketting is why Apple is able to dominate with a $300 music player with a music rental service that tries to keep you from using the music on any other device. Marketting is why Sony was able to dominate the console market with its technically inferior Playstation 2.
IBM ran a very awkward ad some years ago with a small boy in white clothes in a white room by the name of Linux, and it was so horribly vague that if you didn’t already know what Linux was, you would think IBM had lost their collective minds. Beyond that I haven’t actually seen any TV ads for any distribution. Linux needs marketting.
Network Effect
“Network Effect” is a phrase that’s often thrown around by marketers, but it’s a real thing, and it’s very important for something to achieve mass adoption. Windows started off as a business desktop environment running on top of DOS - it later moved on to 9x, which was still built on DOS, but didn’t require that you own a copy of it. That was around the time Windows started to gain mass adoption. Now we have XP, which runs over 90% of the world’s desktops. Ubuntu is a great start - they provide free CDs, and there’s an enormous community built up around it. Even with how far the Linux desktop has come, it still lacks something very important…
Hardware Support
What does the avid gamer say when they hear that their new video card will work, but they have to go through extra steps to enable 3D acceleration, and that it might be buggier than on windows?
“Why should I switch then? Windows handles it just fine.”
Linux has come a long way in terms of hardware support, but to achieve mass market adoption, you have to bring in the people that typically drive adoption of technologies. If the latest and greatest video card or the wireless card in their shiny new laptop won’t work without changing configurations, or not at all, you’ll have a hard time convincing them that switching is a good idea, and it’s unlikely that they will reccomend Linux to their friends.
Marketting is easy enough, but hardware support is a sticking point. It’s trivial to get someone to look at something - people are naturally curious. When they get there and find out that some of their hardware might not work without tweaking, they go elsewhere. Some people stay and work through it, but most people are happy with Windows and won’t be compelled to switch. With the budgets behind some of the larger distributions, it’s surprising that none of them have used it to cut deals with hardware manufacturers to at least provide stable, redistributable binary drivers for Linux when they ship their hardware.
