On Monday 22 September 2003 12:16 am, Vincent Danen wrote: > I really have nothing to add to this thread other than one thought (I'm > taking a back seat in this one... it's not worth it for me to open my mouth > since I'm not in marketing... I've also only begun to read the thread for > "moderator" purposes). > > If most people in North America, or the US, feel this way, then let me pose > this question. Why has Red Hat then, the most well-known Linux vendor in > the US, decided that they are getting out of the retail box market, if this > is in fact the case? Seems to me that if Mandrake has stupid marketing > folks, then Red Hat must as well. However, considering Red Hat's revenues > are also increasing, it would seem to me that they think this is viable and > will not hurt the business. > > So which is right?
Not that I want to get drawn into this conversation but comparisons with Red Hat only work if the targeted market is the same. Red Hat, IIRC markets its distribution to businesses, specializing in corporate and small business environments and specifically target servers. Those customers probably purchase retail boxed sets pretty rarely, they have dedicated IT personnel to install and support, in most cases, and they are probably not sending the local CEO or owner out to a store to buy a boxed Red Hat set and install it on all of their business servers. Not to mention that a pre-packaged installation is probably not valid for most servers in any case. Mandrake, IIRC, is marketing itself more to consumers and as a desktop alternative, not simply as a server alternative. On the desktop, one is more likely to see a consumer go to a retail store and purchase a boxed set than for a business. That having been said, I still don't see this as being applicable to the discussion. Unless we are suggesting that Mandrake Linux is installable and configurable by an unsophisticated user who would be the person most likely to purchase an OS from a retail chain, the the existence of retail boxed sets is immaterial. Assume for an instant that your mother or grandmother were to purchase Mandrake from a retail chain, do you think that the experience installing and configuring will be fair to the distribution and recommend further purchases by others? I like Mandrake and think that it is one of the easiest of all Linux distributions to work with and I have worked with several others including Red Hat, Knoppix, Debian, Mepis, etc. Still, knowing end users as I do, I would not expect a casual user to get very far trying to properly configure Linux of any flavor. I am not the most technical of persons, but I do work in the IT field and run Linux. I do NOT buy software from retail outlets. I research packages and either buy online or find open source alternatives. Either way, I do not know anyone that I would expect to be able to configure and run Linux adequately that would purchase software from a retail outlet. If I were trying to market this, I would attempt to get the OS pre-loaded, as others have suggested and as I believe that Mandrake is trying to do with HP (a very good move, IMHO). I might also try to produce some easy to use scripts to ease mass installation and configuration in a business environment (perhaps use a script that draws from a text file that contains properties like Samba shares, domain names, machine names, email address, other options) so that admins could quickly setup new machines by pre-populating with the auto install disk and then running the configuration script. The script would place the correct info into configuration files to ease the process of individual personalization of the machine. With the auto install disk and a personalization script, I think that the Mandrake experience would be even better than current disk imaging of alternative-OS (evil-empire) machines. This might make Mandrake more attractive to the corporate desktop crowd and even if Red Hat is the choice for the server, they may choose Mandrake for the desktop. Eventually, desktop might influence server and Mandrake might extend throughout the enterprise. Keep in mind, this is nothing that a savvy admin couldn't do themselves, but having something already made would simply be one more reason to choose this particular distribution. All of that assuming that the corporate desktop is the targeted segment. -- Bryan Phinney Software Test Engineer
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