Fredag 28 juli 2006 21:35, skrev Katrina Jackson: > You say Ubuntu has better publicity, which it does. But why is this > the case? I know Mark has more money, but since you have so many > programmers, and seem so passionate about your OS, why aren't you as > successful getting publicity? I'm not accusing anyone. I guess I > just really would like to know:
Two things first. 1. Good press coverage don't get the software installed on the computers. People that believe that the software will work for the required use cases, does the job installing the software on the computers. Good press coverage helps out, but it's a big step from having positive press coverage, to get the software installed. A collection[1] of different press coverage, and a voluntary registration[2] of Skolelinux installations should give a picture: 1. http://d.skolelinux.no/artikler.html 2. http://www.skolelinux.org/portal/user_experience/test_schools/test_schools_map 2. The +400 articles in different news media the last 5 year and 60 in 2006, have not given 400 Skolelinux installations. Hard work, both voluntary and by professional sale of Skolelinux pre-installed on the hardware as a package solution with server(s) and reused client machines has given a considerable marked share. > A.) Could Debian do anything to get better publicity and change > people's perceptions. (For instance, if Debian is so more "well > build" then Ubuntu why don't the press keep mentioning this? The press coverage of Debian after the Sarge release was positive in general. The improved installation routine got a lot of kudos. No other distro support the amount of platforms and the number of software packages that Debian does. But a lot of journalists wrote that the 3 year between Woody and Sarge was to long, and that is perceived as a negative thing. Also the lack of support for a newer hardware 6-12 months after a stable Debian is released is also addressed in some articles. Ubuntu have inherently some of the feautures from Debian because it's made from the unstable branch. One of them is the text based installer. A lot of different reviews in computer articles has praised that installer because it recognise the hardware automaticly. It was the manual choosing of hardware that people hated. That shows that the graphical installer was not as important compared to automation. User friendliness was a different thing than making the installation graphical. Anyway, now there is a graphical installer with Ubuntu live CD, and it will probably be something similar with Debian. So we got the best from two worlds :) This efforts makes the adoption of free software more easy. But the thing that really will give impact, is to get Kubuntu/Debian/SuSE of the shelf preinstalled on the hardware without paying Microsoft. Since 1998 municipalities and schools in Norway have signed School Agreement with Microsoft that states that the schools have to pay Microsoft licence also on machines installed with Linux, Apple or other competing PC system. The schools that buy hardware with no MS Windows installed, and not having a school agreement saves 175 Euro for every machine. The Norwegian Competitive Authorities investigates[3] the School Agreements from Microsoft. In Great Britain MS School Agreement is not allowed, so I'm fairly optimistic that we will get more access to the hardware marked. 3. http://www.aftenposten.no/english/business/article1023195.ece > B.) Why hasn't more been done? Why isn't there any major reports by > like PC World which say "Ubuntu is top 100 products, but man if you > want a better distro, more well built etc.. you should check out > Debian. The question you ask is biased, where the selection of distribution is more complicated than an impression of which of the distroes the press put as their preferred solution. I've gone trough some numbers easily reachable on the net. A google search world wide gives 148,000,000 hits on Debian, 56,800,000 for Ubuntu, and 1,510,000 for Skolelinux. SuSE got 81,800,000 hits, and 103,000,000 for "Red Hat". In Norway I got this results with Google: 857 000 for "Red Hat" 783 000 for Debian 749 000 for SuSE 579 000 for Skolelinux 361 000 for Ubuntu A national news search with one of the local search engines gives 414 press hits for Skolelinux and 77 for Ubuntu. Edubuntu got 1 hit. Red Hat got 689 hits. SuSE got 1,671 hits. So the question. Which has the biggest marked share at the schools in Norway? Thats no doubt Skolelinux. Which is the biggest on the servers. Thats probably RedHat with SuSE as a good number two, and Debian as a number three. Debian is also popular on web servers and as a backbone on the national science network. What about Ubuntu? Well, they have won the end user reviews in national computer magazines, but does this give many installations? For a kid or a computer enthusiast it's cool to install 3 or 4 distroes at the home computer. Then (K)ubuntu is the winner. If Ubuntu hadn't been there, it could be SuSE that was the preferred, Mandrake or some RedHat based system. So the biggest impact (K)ubuntu has is on home computers and laptops with enthusiast. When it comes to server installations they have to compete in a different ball game where Linux is much more in use with preinstallation on > 20% of the servers. And that's why the Ubuntu team released Dapper with the extra quality effort that was a success from a marketing view. Ubuntu will need time to build up their credibility as a server distro, and they will probably succeed. But the marked shares is still favouring[4] Debian, and has done so for a 3-4 years now. 4. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/01/28/debian_fastest_growing_linux_distribution.html What's that telling me? The press coverage don't sell a distro, but it helps. There are a lot of different marked out there with different users. We are manoeuvring in a heterogeneous environment with lots of different users with different needs and requirement. In some parts of the world local distroes has done it so well that people believe any Linux-distro installed at e.g the schools are Skolelinux, even if it is SuSE, K12LTSP or Edubuntu. So hard work selling and installing systems get you a marked share, and this is not done by itself. From a marketing point of view, this is good. And it's better that people base it's distro on Debian than RedHat or something else. Lets call it "Debian inside", as I've read in an e-mail from Matt Zimmerman a week ago (that was forwarded by Petter Reinholdtsen). In that perspective it's more easy to look at the marketing effort done by Ubuntu as a positive thing. And with some improvement of the patch issues from Ubunto to Debian, the different marketing effort could boost each other. I think this is a more constructive approach instead of looking at diversity as a unfortunate thing. The one thing does not exclude the other. > Again, I don't want to accuse anyone of anything, but it just doesn't > seem you, with as many as you have working for you, can generate as > much mainstream publicity. I mean from major things like PC World, > not just Planet Debian. Well, the press is not a faithful ally. When the dust has settled after the stories about Mark in space, or Ubuntu and Sun, the press will look in other directions after what they believes is the story of the day. Since Ubuntu will release new versions every 6th month, and Debian will release every 18th month, the Ubuntu will probably get 2-3 more press cover over a 2 year period concerning new releases. But there is a whole lot of stories both locally and internationally where both parties should promote the fact that what we do, is based on Debian. We could make this to an win-win without compromising the differences in the different projects or distributions. Best regards Knut Yrvin