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New Contest Will Seek the Best "I'm Linux" Video
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.
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.
I'm sorry, that was just terrible.
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
With all the distros out there vying for this, I'm sure this will end up being like Spartacus.
User: Which one of you is Linux?
Ubuntu: I am Linux!
Gentoo: No, I am Linux!
Red Hat: No, I am Linux!
SuSE: Don't listen to them - I am Linux!
Shouts from Slackware, YellowDog, DamnSmallLinux and thousands of others fill the air.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
You're welcome. Maybe you would prefer the alternate version where PC has leprosy, and server share drops off.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
IBM Won.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
A man walks to a corner and is solicited by two ladies of the evening.
(Windows) [dressed in fishnet and miniskirt] - "Wanna have a good time baby? I'm very popular, I do _all_ the fun things. [pause] I'm cheap."
(Mac) [catholic schoolgirl look with heavy makeup] - "Take me sweetie! I'm fun too and I'm cuter! [giggle, then dead serious] Not cheap."
[Mac and Windows get into a hair pulling fight while Marketing, old leering suited man, pulls up a jello filled wading pool.]
(Linux) [A girl next door type walks up] "Hi again, wanna grab dinner, [pause] I'm buying."
(Man) "Sure. Wait, you're buying? Do you expect to get paid?"
(Linux) "No, it might be nice if you buy some time, but that's up to you.
(Man) Dutch?
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
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
Sorry dude the casting is done.
"Linux" per se is not an OS, it is a set of common libraries and standards that is shared by many OSs. Heck, binaries compiled for one Linux distro won't even work on half the others (reason I mentioned this is because binary incompatibility is a good way to distinguish between customizations of a single OS, as opposed to different OSs, which, while belonging to the same family, are just that - DIFFERENT OSs.
Advertising Linux is like advertising x86 architecture or the Unix Standard. It may be useful for engineers, programmers, or adiministrators, but not to end users. The fact that all Linux distros share the same kernel is about as useful to end users as telling them that their particular Chevy model uses the same engine block as a dozen other cars from GM. The service technician will need to know this, not the end user. The end users need to know WHAT a distro does, not HOW it does it. And every distro does things differently, and for a good reason - it is optimized for a particular audience and a particular way of doing things. By definition, that means that a single distro can't please eveyone - and shouldn't try to.
Advertise Ubuntu. Advertise Red Hat. Advertise Gentoo. Pick a market and promote the Linux brand that suits that market best. And if someone else isn't happy about your choice, they can go and advertise their own distro to their own target audience.
Linux distros need to start adopting a good old capitalist trick known as USING A BRAND.
The answer, then, should be a Mac / PC ad spinoff where the "Mac" and "PC" start their banter, then "Linux" comes out as a Borg, injects itself into both, and we end up with all three as part of the Linux "community".
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.
Picture an I'm a Mac/I'm a PC commercial as they typically start!
Richard Stallman shouts from offstage, "I'm linux, and I'm freee free FREEEE"
He the proceeds to prance naked around stage throwing rose petals to the ground as the other two are stricken with a deep terror.
Freeeee! Free freeeeee!
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
The key to the Mac and PC commercials has been their positioning.
Apple's Macs are all-in-one machines, that come with both hardware and software. So it's easy for them to position their avatar and straw man appropriately to showcase the advantages of their platform versus Microsoft's. "I'm a has-it-all-together Mac, you're a slightly confused yet assertive PC. Gee, why am I simpler to set up and use?"
Microsoft sells just the software, so they aimed to take the focus off of the 'whole package' aspect and instead focus on the users. Hence their "I'm a PC" campaign. (Incidentally, someone needs to tell Microsoft that PC stands for 'Personal Computer,' and not 'Person using a Computer'..)
The proper Linux positioning should be about Open Source, and how everyone contributes. So instead of an "I'm Linux" response, I'd suggest "We're Linux." Unlike how Microsoft's approach bends the meaning of words 'til they break, "We're Linux" would actually ring true on a lot of levels, from all of the different people whose pieces are put together to make one distribution, to the number of distributions available, to the sheer number of platforms that Linux has been ported to.
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.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'll tell you the commercial they'd like to do, if they could, and I guarantee you, if they could, they'd do this, right here:
Here's the woman's face, beautiful.
Camera pulls back, naked breast.
Camera pulls back, she's totally naked. Legs apart.
Two fingers, right here, and it just says, "I'm Linux".
Now I don't know the connection here, but goddamn if Ubuntu isn't on my download list that week. -- Bill Hicks
Squirrel!