Often when a new distribution of piece of software comes out in the Linux community, the feature list looks something like this:

• Updated package blablabla to 1.4.00.10
• Fixed bug in <name of other package>
• Added support for random hardware x through qjidjf 2.3.00.1

Ok, its not quite that bad, but it could be a lot better. If Linux is going to attract general users, it needs to start advertising the “cool” features, not the under-the-hood tweaks.

KDE 4 did this really well. The release announcement, while also talking about some developer-oriented features, is mostly about the over-the-hood changes, the changes the users care about.

Although it seems like a small thing, advertising features that users care about is an important step to spreading open-source software and Linux.

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