Net Radio Exec Says "Don't Mention Linux"

Barence writes "It might be reliable enough to power their device, but it seems some companies are still a bit reluctant to use the 'L word' when talking about their products. Speaking at the launch of the touchscreen Pure Sensia digital radio, director of marketing Colin Crawford was pressed for specifics of the new device's software. But after his CEO reminded him that the new radio was based on a Linux OS, Crawford remarked: 'I don't like the using the word "Linux" on a radio.'" Of course the presence of (possibly embedded) Linux may not have any relevance to consumers in some products; but does the word itself carry a commercial stigma?

Comments

Stigma to Linux

[TUOggy]

I think there is some stigma to the word Linux. When I am recommending "Linux" to people, they explain to me that they have heard that it is very difficult to use and would rather just continue to use Windows, and I have to go through the "No it's not hard to use, it's just not Windows" spiel. When I recommend Ubuntu for their desktop, they basically tell me (1)if they have heard of it, that they hear it's easy to use (2)if they haven't heard of it, "will it do everything that Windows will?" I explain that it will and if they switch then they generally like it better.

overall, I think that people still relate Linux to "Command Line" and "Nerdy basement hacker geeks who are fat and have too much facial hair"

People are really surprised when I show them my netbook running Ubuntu and all they have to do is click the firefox icon on the dock. They are always shocked when I explain that it's based on Linux.

Re:Stigma to Linux

[mdda]

Maybe you tried this before you installed Windows out of frustration, but did you know that you can (most often than not) move a window around by holding down Alt while clicking & dragging? [ I've also been frustrated by screen-size dialogues not ensuring they fit on the current screen... ]

Re:Stigma to Linux

[Kjella]

Points 1, 2, 3 and 5 are all about wine. Your ISP software is probably trying to change some windows network/dialup settings that don't exist in Linux, use the native broadband configuration. Your "web accelerator" is probably a http proxy setting so again it's trying to modify things that don't exist, use the native proxy configuration. Wine is a system to run Windows applications under Linux. If you think you can do Linux system administration and change system settings through wine, then that is your problem. It's certainly not been my problem with any ISP since 2000, though I've only used it on the desktop for 1-2 years.

There are much better native browsers and as far as I can tell also native Amiga emulators, though I don't know the quality of them. So you come from Windows and expect Linux to run all your windows applications. Not unusual, but not really helpful either because then the only Linux project you're interested in is wine. Software not designed for Linux or cross-platform would normally not run at all, sometimes I wish newbies were forbidden from using wine until they've at least tried to use a Linux application. Yes, I know there's some irreplaceable windows software, but still.

Now the two things that are problems with Linux software: About the files, yeah that is stupid. I discovered the same using ark, if you try to unzip ten archives it'll start ten processes at the same time and go crazy trashing the disk instead of queuing them up. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Don't know why it's this way. To be fair the music players typically have a normal add to playlist dialog, but from a file browser the behavior is terrible.

As for 640x480, I don't know when I was last in that mode, I'd call it an obscure problem getting stuck in it, but you can get out of it holding down the ALT button though I admit that's not obvious for someone coming from Windows. I'm guessing StellaX switched resolution to 640x480, then it crashed and left you in a 640x480 desktop? I know the problem from other games, it's again that wine isn't working like a native application so the original resolution won't be restored in case of the application crashing and taking wine with it. So really this problem also traces back to wine.

Sure, it's not perfect. But you're constantly finding fault running Windows applications under Linux, not Linux applications under Linux. Personally I've found that the answer is more Linux, but I guess you never reached that tipping point. Windows applications are the square peg with Linux being a round hole, and wine is the hammer. Sometimes it works but it never fits well. It's a learning curve but except gaming I've found that there's usually an equivalent Linux application that's good enough for my purposes.

Re:Competitive advantage

[gzipped_tar]

"Linux" a trademark of Linus Torvaldes and that's it. As long as you don't use it as a trademark of *your* product it will be fine.