I recently came across this list of the top ten Linux-powered devices. Most of the devices on the list are things everyone would recognize, yet I was only aware that half of them ran Linux. In fact, I would only expect most people to know that two of them ran Linux, the Eee PC and Google’s Android. That might even be generous. Most users of these devices will probably never know they are running Linux.

This can easily be viewed as a loss of possible marketing for Linux, yet the truth is that Linux is just not made to market itself. In reality, the similarities between a GPS device running Linux and my computer are almost non-existent. Linux is just a name and a bunch of code. It has no ability to promote itself, nor does it easily identify itself. Instead it stretches and bends, as was pointed out in this article, to fit the needs of whoever is using it.

This is the base reason why I sometimes point out that promoting “Linux” does not make a lot of sense. It would be like promoting “appliances.” They all share the same basic “code” (the basic circuits), but they are made by many different companies to do many different things. Thus, it makes more sense to promote a Mr. Coffee Coffee Maker, which is the equivalent of a distribution.

Though the kitchen appliance analogy does not work perfectly, the same basic idea applies to both kitchen appliances and Linux distributions: promote the product, not the category.