Onsdag 22 oktober 2008 12:58:41 skrev Stephan Binner:
So any idea what are we missing, how to reach and help Windows users better (this can be also feature requrests for future distro releases like [6])? :-)
One thing that strikes me particularly is pretty poor netbook support from openSUSE. These boxes are selling like crack, and they generally come with sucky limited operating systems that people wish to replace with something useful. Should be a great window of opportunity for openSUSE, but openSUSE isn't nearly the easiest distro to get on these things, and I'm not aware of any special effort being made to make openSUSE 11.1 the lord of the netbooks... Here are some more general remarks on the subject... I don't think the problem is attracting Windows users - I see a million n00bs on forums, irc and lug meetings trying out openSUSE every week. The problem is _keeping_ them on openSUSE or GNU/Linux in general imo. My impression is that most attempts at switching to GNU/Linux fail. And a lot of them even fail miserably. Because people don't know what to expect, they're not really motivated, they have noone to help them and online help is incredibly ineffecient compared to face to face help/demonstration - especially when people don't even know the absolute basics of anything. I think quite a few of these people end up angry and disappointed and discouraging others from trying GNU/Linux. Firstly we need to try and target "the right segments". In my opinion that's either: 1) young people/students with free time and some technical savvy and perhaps even some ethical ideals 2) middleaged and older people where the kids have left home and they don't really like the wife that much anymore, they have spare time and their computing needs are fairly simple. Secondly we need to figure out how to help, educate and motivate these people better. For help maybe a better and smaller quickstart guide - maybe 30-40 pages would be great. I an all modesty I think my Danish guide is a pretty good example of how it should be done (http://suse.linuxin.dk/). Some training/courses and more local user groups offering face-to-face support would be excellent - perhaps existing lugs could be used as a platform for this - in my lug we have weekly meetings in three different towns every week where people can get help (or just have fun) face to face. We need to motivate people more to switch. I'm not sure how to do this, but we should think of ways to brand openSUSE and GNU/Linux as a system for cool and intelligent people. Maybe by pushing the message of freedom, openness, open standards more... or maybe that just works on me :-) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org