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Alan Cox Interview
cuvavu sent in a lengthy interview with Alan Cox. He talks about his responsibilities at Red Hat, Microsoft, the Linux Standard Base, etc.
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He was great to talk to. This interview is exactly how our conversation went. Alan is very forward thinking and understands the role that larger companies take when partnering with Linux. Interesting to note that he said in the article that Linux has had a tough time entering the desktop market. When I met him, he was claiming that the desktop market had already been penetrated. I wonder why the switch in ideology.. Go figure.
In their Assembly they'll be told "Now then boys,
A little explanation for the benefit of our American friends. The Welsh call their parliament the Assembly. An assembly is also the morning meeting at schools where the head teacher makes announcements and often reads a moral or religious story.
itwales.com: Do you think Linux markets itself effectively to businesses?
Alan: That is really a job for the vendors, and I think they are doing a good job. There is a difference between effective marketing and claiming to be the one true solution to all problems. Linux is not the one true solution (if such a thing truthfully ever can exist), but we are working on it.
For as much grassroots effort there is in marketing, there's still a long way to go, and I don't really see linux vendors attacking this at all. I'm talking about general mass media. MS has ads in every magazine (even linux ones!) but I don't think I've ever seen a RedHat ad in anything but linux magazines (preaching to the choir).
Some distros are in BestBuy and CompUSA these days, which is a good first step. The next step, imo, is some general print ads to get the visibility up. Perhaps RH could trade some consulting/installations with some regional business magazines in exchange for adspace? I'm thinking about something like Crain's in our area (detroit, and I know it's in some other areas too).
People reading magazines are often decision makers, but they don't want to get too technically savvy. Move the mountain to Mohammed, take the message to the streets, etc.
Thoughts?
creation science book
Given that Bill Gates is a Democrat (despite the Republican Party being far more sympathetic to Microsoft), I doubt you'll see him posing with President Bush like he did with Blair. Pity the reality check the Clinton Justice Department whacked him with didn't take.
Gates has the arrogant paternalism that all too often comes with great wealth. Gotta look after the little people, y'know.
According to this interview Redhat is having a Q&A-session with Alan. Send your questions to (scroll to bottom of interview for this) asktheexpert@redhat.com and they'll send the most interesting questions to Redhat.
That was pretty much how the quake3 install went under linux.
Most software I want under linux doesn't come on cds anyway... it's freely available on the net, and generally I just run apt-get to grab the program I want... which is pretty easy. There are even some GUIs for it. The end user can kind of look at it like they look at Napster or Morpheus... a list of all the files and programs they can install if they click the button, except in this case it is all legitimate.
Ease of installation isn't really what's holding Linux back... Linux won't really do much on the desktop until it's preinstalled by OEMs and the user just buys their computer. The majority of desktop users out there aren't going to install any new kind of OS on their system, much less an upgrade to Windows. They get the latest version when they get a new computer. Until Linux is an option in that arena (and given MS's tactics with OEMs, it will be slow going), it won't make too many grand strides. But again, the reason isn't that it's too hard to install a program, it's just that people don't get it by default.
Most people keep the defaults.