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The big question everyone asks when it comes to Linux is “why doesn’t everyone use it?” That is, obviously, what I plan to address today, but first I want to get a few things out of the way.
No one knows what Linux’s market share is, so don’t argue about it. Do you count server users or just desktops? Do they have to be going online to count? Do they have to install updates and, if so, how frequently? Do they have to visit certain sites? Do they spoof their user agent strings so they look like Windows? And so on… The guesses out there vary widely from just about nothing to about equal to OS X, which is a pretty wide range, so don’t even bother arguing about it.. No one knows.
You don’t have to use the terminal to use Linux, as I have demonstrated with my Terminal Test.
For the most part, the problem is not technical issues. I don’t want to go all the way to saying technical issues are not a piece of the problem, but the average user does not use multi-monitor setups, crazy SLI/CrossOver dual-graphics card setups, or anything else crazy. They use computers – the kind Dell and HP sell. Yes, I have built custom computers, but most people don’t and, if they do, they should be able to troubleshoot their own issues.
It’s never an even playing field for the little guy. Almost no one has the luxury of starting with an even playing field. If you’re smaller, you have to prove you are better –as in a lot better. Sometimes even that isn’t enough. No it’s not fair, but it’s not going to change either.
So what is it?
The answer is marketing. No, not big-budget TV commercials, but ordinary word-of-mouth “hey, give this a try” type marketing.
Look at Apple. Not long ago they were in a similar position to desktop Linux. What was it that got them from there to where they are now? TV ads? They were certainly helpful, but no. Steve Jobs? He definitely helped get the Apple fanboy movement started, but no – at least not directly. Word of mouth marketing? Yes.
Passionate users encouraging their friends and co-workers to try a new type of computer (seriously, most people don’t use the words “operating system”) is what drives people to try that new computer.
Yes, but that already happens.
True, there are already a lot of passionate (perhaps too passionate) Linux users out there marketing Linux to just about everyone they come within twenty feet of. The problem is that Linux also suffers from the problem so perfectly described in this XKCD comic:
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 2.5. Image from XKCD.
(Side note: if you haven’t already heard of XKCD, you need to check it out.)
It’s not that you have to be geeky to use Linux, it’s that a lot of people enjoy becoming geeky while using Linux. (*cough* don’t know anything about this myself). That’s fine. I have nothing against people who like exploring and tweaking their systems, but, please, when you suggest Linux to your normal (not interested in the internals of their system) friend, try to be user-friendly in introducing it. Set everything up for them and help them through any problems without taking terminal-based shortcuts (we already demonstrated you don’t have to, remember?)
And one more thing: don’t recommend “Linux.” Recommend Ubuntu. Or Fedora. Or OpenSuSe. Or whatever distribution you like, but pick one and tell them to try that specific one. Preferably, pick the one you use on your own computer, so that you can best help them out if they run into any issues.
Conclusion
Word of mouth is the most powerful way forward Linux has. The key is just to keep in mind who you are talking to. Not everyone is as interested in comptuers as you are.
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I suspect i am not alone but my experience was marred by lack of info, my first try was Red Hat Valhalla (Red Hat is on all the big servers so it has to be good) big mistake i couldn’t drive it, next after a long break i tried Fedora 8 (Fedora is Red Hat and so on) once again lack of experience doomed this attempt, then i got a copy of PC Linux off a mag, WOW easy to set up and run no worries about add on progs just ask for them and they install. i am now starting to branch out into other distros and am looking at not having a windows partition on my hard drive. The point i am making is that if you load a “professional” disto like Fedora on day one you will be turned off Linux due to not knowing how to drive it and no one ever tells you to start with a novice distro to start with then work you way up. In my view this is how you loose a lot of new users so if you hand out disks make them easy for a novice to use not your favorite distro.
The other problem will all distros when you decide to install is the hard drive partition bit this will scare off a lot of people as they are afraid of destroying their windows install. Sorry to rant but i nearly walked away from Linux but fortunately i am not easily put off and am now glad i kept going.
Here’s why I agree about your main point but disagree on the details:
(1) Of course, word-of-mouth is always helpful. But what is the reason it spreads and goes ‘viral’? There’s always a reason or two.
In contrast to your opinion, Apple is great at starting word of mouth. One source are their TV campaigns: The “1984″ ad is considered the greated commercial in the history of the SuperBowl, “Think Different” won a slew of awards and developed a cult-following, “Get A Mac” is so popular, Linux supporters have to clone it, too.
Another source is indeed the face of Apple, Steve Jobs, his reputation, and his PR campaigns. Another is, of course, their amazing products: iTunes, iPhone, etc.
People have good reasons to talk about Apple. For most Linux distributions, though, there’re no such reasons.
Ubuntu is the only exception right now: They have a better product than their competitors and a representative, journalists can interview, namely Marc Shuttleworth. That’s why many people today confuse Linux with Ubuntu. But the desktop makes no money for Shuttleworth, so we won’t see TV ads anytime soon.
(2) Another important question is: Are there reasons why word-of-mounth won’t go ‘viral’? Yes, especially in Linux’ case.
In general, people don’t care about operating systems — whether you call it Linux or Ubuntu or something else. What their care about is to get things done. They care about applications. This is where Linux fails.
People want applications. There are about 37,000 for Windows. There are many great ones for the Mac. But where are the great desktop applications for Linux? Applications you can’t get for Windows or Mac, also? Maybe there are a few, but people don’t know about them. Why that?
Word-of-mounth doesn’t work for Linux applications. Just look at one of these popular blog topics “20 Linux apps you can’t live without”: they are either well known and boring — or it’s a pain in the ass to get them installed.
I once checked a list of “great” multimedia applications I were given. 40 percent of them were not in the repositories or had no package for my distribution. The other 60 percent were present but I had to search for each of them. Often I had to find the right package in a bunch of results.
It’s also a pain in the ass to burn a list of good application on a CD and share them with your friends. It’s even a pain to find knowledgeable people for a particular problem: They are spread across several mailing lists or forums — one for Ubuntu, one for Fedora, one of OpenSuse, etc. etc.
Journalists have a hard time to promote good applications, too. You either have to waste your reader’s time by presenting detailed installation instructions or you waste your reader’s time by letting them figure it out for themselves. Simply putting the promoted application on a CoverCD doesn’t work, because there’s no package format that works across all distribution. The same holds for drivers.
Even commercial and non-commerical software developers have a hard time promoting their own products due to the lack of a proper installation format. No commercial vendor is going to rely on a bunch of volunteer packagers to promote, distribute and sell his products.
Why should we expect anyone to talk about Linux? Yes, it’s a little bit more secure and it’s a little bit more stable but that’s it. For most people, that’s no compelling reason to switch.
People are risk-averse. They don’t invest time to learn something new unless they are convinced it will pay of. But they’ve been disappointed so many times by false or misleading promises, they don’t buy our promises, either.
And for good reasons: “This is the year of the Linux desktop” was promoted so many times and Linux still didn’t make any impact in the desktop market.
And the reason is obvious: You can’t rely on volunteers to offer proper solutions. Let’s say, I talk a friend into using Linux. One day, he may want to do harddisk recording or cut his family videos or make a video animation. But I doubt Linux will then enable him to do the stuff he wants.
Maybe the application will be there, but it will be hidden behind ugly and unusable web pages, hard to find and hard to install, probably undocumented with experts spread across several IRC channels, distribution-specific mailing lists and forums.
And you want me to talk my friends into using Linux? Sure, I’ll do so the day it’s not a risk, anymore.
Funny article. However I think you miss the point a little bit about Apple (don’t get mad : I’m a linux user since 1993 and have Linux on my iBookG4 running all of the time).
I think that besides the nice Apple word of mouth, I’d say that Apple definitely makes high quality stuff. I don’t mean that Mac OS X is more usable, or nicer or whatever than KDE or Gnome. I just mean that it *just runs*. For example, I’ve just updated my iBook to Lenny and for some reason the touchpad doesn’t work well anymore (known bug, with a known fix : modprobe -r appletouch; modprobe appletouch). Another example, I’ve installed Kubuntu on a friend’s PC and he wanted to play mp3. Those are not enabled by default, you have to install specific packages for that. No problem except that the package one is told to install is quite difficult to reach with the KDE package tool (many search to do, package not found, etc.).
So, obviously, I can live with those bugs, it’s just a matter of a few Google search and a bit of options to set, a bit of console… But the fact is that for a newcomer, as you said, the guy is expecting *at least* that the damn thing works 100% well as soon as it is turned on. A Mac comes with a perfectly working operating system (at least for the first hour) and a PC comes with windows preinstalled by your favourite reseller who has made sure that it works, again, for the first hour (not always true, we all know Micro$oft)… I had to fix the problems in front of my friends, and well, the first impression was not jawdropping.
So to sum it up : my experience is that even for non exotic configuration, Linux has sometimes (at least for me), some little bugs that prove to be showstopper for “common” users.
For the marketing side, I’d say that everybody knows at least one person who can talk about Windows, or about Mac. But that’s much harder for Linux. I’m working in an IT company and nobody uses Linux in my openspace (15+ people). So maybe it’s not a problem of marketing but just a problem of critical mass. There is a word-of-mouth phase and now, we can see Ubuntu which is working hard at selling Linux, that is marketing in a more conventional way.
(not sure if I make myself clear…
)
stF
“And one more thing: don’t recommend “Linux.” Recommend Ubuntu. Or Fedora. Or OpenSuSe. Or whatever distribution you like” – This is a really good idea that I’ve never thought of, personally I’ve recommended GNU/Linux but I realize I should probably recommend Fedora instead
I suspect part of the problem is that a lot of the enthusiasts are not necessarily good system administrators. That is in fact the job that they often end up doing for the people they convince to try Linux. The article has a good suggestion: install a distro that you know and use yourself. Preconfigure things with good attention to detail. Make sure that the next automatic update is not going to kill the oddball driver setup you cobbled together. Generally don’t be adventurous. Before doing anything, find out what applications the users want and how those things would be done on Linux.
That said, the article probably underestimates the effect of conventional marketing in mass media. Desktop Linux has had shockingly little of it. A large proportion on computer users still don’t even know that Linux exists. Likely they also don’t care, either, but at least they need to know that an alternative exists before they can ask questions about it.
I agree about marketing the distro, not the kernel. I mean, you don’t sell the engine, you sell the car. I think the netbook thing has shown that people will buy a system running linux, but not because it’s running linux. They buy it because it does what they need at a good price point.
But that brings up the question, don’t distros do their own marketing? Maybe they should just do more?
I agree, word of mouth is very helpful.
Oh and a strong vendor market.
Oh and that market dynamic that allows funding to get to developers.
Lots to do outside of programming.
could not agree more.
very fun read
Mike – “Generally don’t be adventurous.” <- I completely agree. If you want a stable system, don’t mess with every little bit of everything.