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New Contest Will Seek the Best "I'm Linux" Video

Posted by kdawson on from the dust-off-directors'-chairs-and-hats dept.

LinuxScribe writes "From Apple's ubiquitous 'I'm a Mac,' to Jerry Seinfeld, to Microsoft's 'I'm a PC' retort, operating system commercials have been flooding the airways. Except that Linux is the one OS that has been notably absent. Now the Linux Foundation is launching a video contest on their new video site to fill this void. The winner gets a trip to Tokyo next year to participate in the Linux Foundation Japan Linux Symposium, and some serious geek cred." The contest doesn't officially open until late January; the blog post has an email address to contact if you want to get a head start.

7 of 460 comments (clear)

  1. Novell already did this by Anthony_Cargile · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Novell has already done this in several viral videos, just do a youtube search. The Linux foundation no doubt has less funding than Novell, so they should partner up on this and get a commercial out together, since Novell not only has experience/material on this, but a viable pitch as well what with the woman being Linux and more creative/better than the PC/Mac representatives.

    And honestly, why are they still beating this whole "I'm a $PLATFORM" bit death rather than creating a new pitch, as Apple will undoubtably do once everyone has parodied their commercial to death.

    1. Re:Novell already did this by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Wow! This is TOTALLY different from Microsoft's "I'm a PC". Campaign!

      This is a great idea if you want to further reinforce the idea that Linux is just a low cost community funded Microsoft. (OpenOffice vs. Office XP, Windows vs Linux, Firefox vs IE, Android vs Windows Mobile etc etc). When Open Source and linux goes hunting for ideas they usually shamelessly clone Microsoft products... for better or worse. SO yeah.. let's reinforce that stereotype by cloning Microsoft's ad campaign for Vista.

  2. Re:Script by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sorry, that was just terrible.

  3. Stupid idea by syousef · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If it had been done right about the time the Microsoft Ads came out, it would have been okay. Doing it now sends the message that Linux is behind the times and unoriginal. Much like using Jerry Seinfeld years after his TV show was a hit.

    --
    These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
  4. Re:Script by steveha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I admit that unlike with these guys I don't easily work with the hardware you already have...

    Oh come on, that's needlessly harsh, and not funny. It's not even correct. Does OS X work with the hardware I already own? Does Windows Vista?

    Take an Ubuntu 8.04 install CD, and try booting it on "the hardware you already have". In my experience, it will Just Work on just about any computer from the past few years. (An Ubuntu 8.10 install CD will probably work also, but I have seen that fail to work on a laptop... some drivers issue. 8.04 is the "Long Term Support" version, and extra care was taken to make it stable, so that's slightly better for Just Working.)

    Ubuntu will do a better job of Just Working on "the hardware you already have" than Windows Vista! 1 GB of RAM is plenty for Ubuntu, and while it might be enough for Vista, I have heard that it's not "plenty". (Supposedly you really want to have at least 2 GB.) Semi-lame graphics cards are fine for Ubuntu, including the desktop bling, where Vista will run in some kind of fallback mode unless your card supports programmable shaders.

    If a user can be happy with just a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, email program, web browser (with Flash support), instant messenger, photo viewer, photo editor, music player, and a few light games such as a minesweeper game, then that user can be happy with Ubuntu, nearly out of the box. (For the music player, you will probably want to install the extra codecs such as MP3 that are not installed by default.)

    An average user might not be able to install Ubuntu, but will be able to use it if an expert sets it up correctly. An average user might not be able to install Windows, either.

    steveha

    --
    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
  5. Re:Script by Americano · · Score: 5, Insightful

    99% of computer users in the world don't care whether they can use program X. They just care that they can use SOME program to do Y.

    Actually, no. The vast majority of computer users that do not read /. on a regular basis equate "doing Y" with "program X." If you suddenly drop them in front of a completely unfamiliar interface and say, "But you can still do Y, you just have to adapt to a new interface & way of doing some/many/all things you used to do," you will meet with resistance, irritation, and frustration.

    Reasonably sophisticated, computer-savvy users can adapt to new programs pretty quickly, and will even go out in search of a program that does things the way they want. The vast majority of users do not fall in this category. They have their status quo that they've learned to use, and they don't want it to change.

    It's this fundamental misunderstanding of the willingness of an "average" computer user to change that fuels so much of Linux's struggle on the desktop.

  6. unlikely script by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Stallman would never say "I'm Linux". ;-)

    Script suggestion: Have someone saying "I'm Linux", yelling starts off-camera, camera pans over sort of haphazardly, and Stallman launches into a rant about how it's GNU/Linux.

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    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10