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MacMillan Sells Most Linux, gets No Respect
g8orade wrote to us with a
column currently running on ZDNET about Macmillan Linux, aka Linux-Mandrake. The column is regarding the fact that while Macmillan is the best selling, the "geeks" of Linux don't give it any respect - which is an interesting point, although I would like to say that we've done more then one story on it. The column has some thought-provoking comments about useability and the direction of Linux, as well.
The discussion following this article is interesting, but did anyone else think this was a Slashtroll, that is, an article written with the intent to make it on Slashdot. The big key is actually mentioning /. in the text. About three of Byte's articles every week are of this variety, now it looks like Zdnet is learning a thing or two.
They say that they are the "best selling". Perhaps that's true. But so what?
That doesn't even mean they're the most popular. All of the good Linux distributions are free software, which means that we're free to share them with our friends. Around here, a lot of people burn Red Hat CD-ROMs for each other. (Well, OK, not a lot of people, but enough that I thought it worthy of mention.) On the other hand, I use Debian, and while I have purchased Debian CD-ROMs (makes bootstrapping faster), usually I download from the unstable release.
So, in at least two cases, there are major Linux distributions in use where sales aren't being made. This is basically the same problem that the Linux counter project(s) have tried to address -- since Linux can be freely redistributed without accountability to the programmers, there's no real way to know how many people are using Linux, or what distribution(s) they're using.
And more to the point, most of us here are not strongly commercial. I don't care that AOL is the best-selling ISP in this country; I use a local ISP because they offer me real (albeit slow) connectivity to the Internet, whereas AOL... doesn't. I don't think AOL is a better ISP just because they're richer. And likewise, I don't think Mandrake is a better distribution just because it's selling.
Unfortunately, while that strategy does get books onto bookstore shelves quickly, quality suffers just a tad...
They may be giving some funding to the Mandrake/Linux folks, but they haven't sponsored the development of X servers like Red Hat or SuSE, and it appears that they generally don't actually produce any free software themselves.
Unfortunately for their "level of respect," the "quality of product" matter results in some "negative respect points," and there isn't any other source of "positive points" that they are using to earn back respect.
None of these things are the "fault" of anyone other than the management of Macmillan, as they represent their policy decisions of what to do and what not to do. It appears that their priorities are largely economic; to get "respect" they would have to modify those priorities as well as their actual behaviour.
I don't feel sorry for them in this; they have made their bed, and will have to sleep in it...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I think there are a number of reasons for this happening. Main among them is "who in the hell is Mandrake?" Up until a few weeks ago I don't ever really remember paying attention to any press they issued. I know all about the /. link here to see the past Mandrake stories, but I think a majority of people relate more to the Big 3 (soon to be 4) - Red Hat, Caldera, SuSe, and soon Corel. You see those names and you know it is a Linux article. I think Mandrake needs to start jumping up and down and waving a flag or something to get some more attention. From what I have read about Mandrake, it seems like an excellent distro.
I think another thing I consider to be a problem is Distro-bigotry. A case in point: last week I went into the efnet #linux channel. What a disgrace! The ops were there flaming everyone they could, made fun of this one newbie because he was playing around with WinLinux and was having some problems with it, and just plain making asses out of themselves. I was in the channel for an hour and all they could do was sit and bash this distro and that distro. Of course, they had their favorite, and everything else was pure crap to them.
So, imagine what is going to be happening... new guy comes in and wants to get some opinions, everyone chimes in "Red Hat!" and off they go. Those using Mandrake or Caldera or SuSe are not going to say a word for fear of either a) being flamed, or, as I saw the ops do to the WinLinux guy, b) kick and ban him.
We in the Linux community have a lot of attitudes to change and they need to be changed really fast.
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Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may be drafted...
Some people won't like the concept of a "Non-Techie" company selling Linux. The more people that use Linux, the less exclusive Linux becomes. It's the same phenomena as the the sports car driver that sells his car when he sees another person driving the same type of sports car.
Personally I think that the more people using Linux, the better. More newbies using things like Gnome or KDE means more usability feedback, which in turn means better applications.
I don't think that more newbies means that the command line should be hidden: When I first started with Slackware and Redhat 4.1 in early 97, I wondered what the hell BASH was. Was I doing something wrong, hence the system wanted to "bash" me? Now of course, I prefer to do most stuff from the command line, like editing the xfs config files to add a truetype directory... Although I must admit I'd prefer it to be done for me, and for those sorts of functions to be grouped in some kind of windows-like control panel (with nice icons, etc, I detest Linuxconf)
The more people that use Linux regularly, the more likely it is that we'll get stuff like quicktime at the same time as other platforms. The more people not using windows, the better the web and computing in general becomes. (Even the worst MS-loving PHB won't want to drive 60% of customers away from an "e-commerce" (blech) web site by making it IE specific if IE is proven to be installed on only 40% of computers)
The fact that the MacMillan books tell people quite a lot about Linux should be helpful. Hopefully the whole clueless factor of newbies will decrease. (I was one, and O'Reilly's Running Linux was a godsend)
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
Sorry, Mac.
I like you guys. I actually do. Your Personal Bookshelf is an surprisingly useful site when I need a quick primer on some tech that I really should know off the top of my head by know, and you've kept that thing up for years.
But it's not fair for you to say you have a distribution. I think you know it.
Fellow Slashdot readers, I've been following the Mandrake guys ever since they merged with BeroLinux. BeroLinux, for those who don't know, was the first 2.2kernel distribution with everything recompiled to be pentium optimized. It was one heck of a slick package, unfortunately hobbled by some broken install routines.
Once Bero joined Mandrake(at the time, "Redhat+KDE"), I knew we'd be seeing a major powerhouse.
MacMillan may be doing great sales and marketing, but they're marketing the superlative work of the Mandrake people. I'm sorry if some Sales and Marketing folks at MacMillan don't feel they get much respect, but the bottom line is that the entire Linux community has been delivering rounds of applause to the Mandrake folks--those aw-shucks kinda guys who actually put together the package--to the degree that they got product of the year at the last Linuxworld Expo.
MacMillan should do the honorable thing and allow Mandrake to market the name of its distribution. There seems to be something quite faustian about his whole arrangement if you ask me; it's as if MacMillan went to Mandrake and said, "You could create the number one selling distribution, but it wouldn't be your name on it..."
That being said, I think they're doing a tremendous amount of good getting Linux out there, and we shouldn't take biased ravings(those geeks don't know what Linux is all about, thus he raved) too seriously--not even, mind you, from the person doing the raving. Five bucks says the guy was just quoting some out of line MCP guy off the record.
One lamer does not an organization doom...
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com