Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-marketing (108 mails)

["Chris Coray" <chris.coray@xxxxxxxxx>]

I agree with much of what has already been said.

I think that one of our biggest assets for attracting new users,
whether from Windows or elsewhere, is the web site. I don't feel we're
utilizing it to its full extent right now.

As a new user myself (I've been on Linux completely at work for about
three weeks), I can relate to the frustrations that a new user feels.
Steve (decriptor) came to my office when I told him I'd made the
switch to openSUSE 11.0 after a bad Windows crash, and he showed me
things on the website like the 1-click installs section and other
resources that probably would have taken me a long time to realize are
even there.

I think Martin is on the right track with his quickstart guide. If we
had a section that was clearly for beginners with links to the various
resources on the site, I think it would help. If you want to convert
the Windows user, in my opinion WINE and some of the emulators don't
cut it. The best thing to do is sell them on the "right tool for the
right job" attitude. Inform them about GRUB and how easy it is to set
up a Windows/openSUSE partition with the installation software. They
can use Linux for surfing the web, office productivity, etc., and
leave the Windows partition for gaming or other use.

A lot of this would simply be creating pages with links to existing
resources, both on and off opensuse.org. The information is out there,
we just expect that people are computer-savvy enough to go through and
type "YaST repository configuration" in the search bar, and then to
have it provide the exact results they want. The search function,
while it works, does not allow for operators (so typing in "YaST
repository configuration" with the quotation marks will return all
references to YaST, repository, and configuration). If we had a
beginner section with clearly laid out FAQs, I personally feel it
would be more inviting and less intimidating.

I realize this isn't an entirely original idea, but I also have no
idea what the status of it is. If we could get some volunteers to help
gather this information (such as Martin's quickstart guide), I could
try and start to put something together using the current page
template.

On the flip side, we've got some great ideas here - which one do we
focus on? What is the most valuable for right now?
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