I stand corrected! If I say more, I'm in deep doodoo! -RJ "Robt. Miller" wrote:

More like willingnes to explore new computer things.

On Fri, 24 Jan 2003, Robert Jacobsen wrote:

...

Very interesting observation. It perhaps says something about willingness to explore new things and gender.

However I hope your physio-therapist is not a woman who has read this e-mail! We may be on the brink of getting reams of hate mail from female MS users who somehow heard about this from the 0.2 percent you mention!

Laughs!

-RJ 8-)

KMcLauchlan@chrysalis-its.com wrote:

...

I haven't caused enough trouble, today, so:

Has anybody noticed how rare WOMEN are on this list?

When the percentage gets up around 30, we'll know that SuSE is succeeding at "Linux on the desktop".

Since we're currently at about 0.2 percent, there's a little way to go yet. Do you suppose SuSE has any schemes to make Linux attractive to non-male, non-geek users?

G'night all. Time to go get beat up by my physio-therapist.

/k

--

(o< //\ Powered by SuSE Linux V_/_ Virusproof. Crashproof. 5:14pm up 22 days, 7:46, 22 users, load average: 3.13, 3.11, 2.66 processes 4325612

On Fri, 24 Jan 2003, DJ wrote:

Kcic> I haven't caused enough trouble, today, so:

Kcic> Has anybody noticed how rare WOMEN are on this list?

I enjoy the content of this list tremendously and find it very educational. I try to contribute when I can. But, I'm sorry, this is a stupid question and imho is inappropriate for a technical list.

We are in the 21 century and for someone to even think this way is really depressing.

Because it's the 21'st century nobody's supposed to wonder why women aren't interested in a heavily technical operating system? Now we know. -- (o< //\ Powered by SuSE Linux V_/_ Virusproof. Crashproof. 5:34pm up 22 days, 8:06, 23 users, load average: 1.24, 1.54, 2.05 processes 4328377

* DJ [01-24-03 18:02]: snip

...

...

Kcic> Has anybody noticed how rare WOMEN are on this list? snip No please wonder all you want, about anything you want. I'm just saying your hypothesis is limiting your vision and was lacking supportive evidence. I'm sorry I was very offended by your email. I like to believe that anyone can be or do anything they want --- watching way too much Star Trek ;-) I have plenty of friends, male and female, that are techies and love it. This has been my experience. I'm sorry that it hasn't been yours. I've read a lot of books on women in mathematics, engineering, computer science, etc. I know about the statistics of who enters these programs at University. I just don't need it to be thrown in my face on a technical list.

I guess it is time for me to leave this list.

No accusations were made ano no slanderous statements issued. An observation was made and voiced as such. If you opt to leave the list, it will be because you are thin-skinned and your feelings were unintentionally injured. Please have a good day, -- Patrick Shanahan http://wahoo.no-ip.org Registered Linux User #207535 icq#173753138 @ http://counter.li.org

On Friday 24 January 2003 23:00, DJ wrote: <snip>

I guess it is time for me to leave this list.

Bye.

One techie gal who was offended.

No not at all. Please stay and just ignore mails that offend you. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com

On Friday 24 January 2003 17:30, DJ wrote:

We are in the 21 century and for someone to even think this way is really depressing. What, is ethnicity next?

You seem to be implying that some sort of sexism was in the question, and I don't think there was any. He simply was observing. For example, in my city we have 2 user groups: a general PC user group and a Linux user group. The PC user group has probably 40% women. The Linux user group has probably 5% women or less. This discrepancy is worth exploring. *************************************************** Powered by SuSE Linux 8.0 Professional KDE 3.0.0 KMail 1.4 This is a Microsoft-free computer Bryan S. Tyson bryantyson@earthlink.net ***************************************************

On Thursday 30 January 2003 10:16 pm, scsijon-tpg wrote:

I support a reasonable number of very small businesses, most of those that have moved from m$$$$ to linux (either before I started supporting them of with my help in converting) have female staff (if allstaff = 5 then femalestaff = 2 (usually)). It's usually the 'girls' that pick up things quicker, want to know how to fix REAL problems themselves, customize layouts, etc. first. The men tend to play first, then learn or ask the 'girls' later. Especially in a training session.

And i'm male!

scsijon

Some of the Ladies I've introduced to Linux are happy tp have an OS where Suzie and Katie rule the roost. (Its really SuSE and KDE, but you can't tell the ladies that...) -- _________________________________________________ John Andersen / Juneau Alaska

On Friday 24 January 2003 17:30, DJ wrote:

Kcic> I haven't caused enough trouble, today, so:

Kcic> Has anybody noticed how rare WOMEN are on this list?

I enjoy the content of this list tremendously and find it very educational. I try to contribute when I can. But, I'm sorry, this is a stupid question and imho is inappropriate for a technical list.

We are in the 21 century and for someone to even think this way is really depressing.

What, is ethnicity next? Argh!

Well, that's a point of view, I guess. But, a person who was not accustomed to bending over backward to find things about which to be offended... would have interpreted my observation differently. Allow me to translate: Linux-for-the-desktop, at least the way SuSE does it (I haven't really watched RH or Mandrake mailing lists enough to form an opinion about them) is obviously not yet addressing a major portion of the potential market. It happens, by the most elementary observation, to be ridiculously easy to identify that potential market segment. And, dagnabbit, me lads, she be female! Hiding from a fact of life is not a fruitful passtime, so maybe SuSE marketing droids should be giving some consideration to the notion. A radical and possibly profitable step might be to hire a non-geeky, female business-development manager. Someone who has some insight into the market segment they need to address. About half an hour after that happened, you'd hear an amazed chorus from the SuSE boardroom... something to the effect of: "Oh, THAT's what they meant by practical and easy to use!" "Gee, we should have had you around sooner!" :-) And by the way, a study of ethnicity might definitely open up some more target groups to which the product could be adapted and marketed. What, is ...... language next? Argh! Oh, wait. SuSE already addresses a bunch of languages. Could it be they do that because they have identified some specific market segments, for whom a particular and focussed product variant generates significant additional sales? Golly. Cheer up, it's Friday. /kevin

On Saturday 25 January 2003 13:59, Kelly L. Fulks wrote:

And how did you arrive at this estimate?

Educated guess and tongue partly in cheek... which should have been obvious, because who could *possibly* know to within a fraction of a percentage point?

It is still a rare thing to have a family of complete geeks where both the male and female would be interested in Linux.

My point exactly. It's still seen as geek heaven, and as a mysterious and unfriendly beast to use, compared to Windows.

And as to unmarried geek females, maybe they are smart enough to have a life away from the CRT or LCD. That is more than I can say for most single geeks I know whether they like Linux or MS.

I work in a techy office. By far the majority of people have computers at home -- though one or two did say that they get enough of the nasty things at the office and have better things to do in their off-hours. By asking, I found out that seven people (including me) out of 75 have Linux at home. I'm one of just two who are running without Windows. Not one of the Linux users is female. Several people use their home computers simply as appliances for e-mail, browsing and maybe schoolwork and to do their bookkeeping and taxes. Not even games. I say "You could do that with Linux." They say: "Why? Windows works." Now, many of you have probably realized that I'm not the sharpest tool in the box, especially when it comes to Linux, so you are probably thinking that it would really be better if it was somebody else, instead of me, who is trying to be the vanguard of "Linux on the desktop" in our little company. Well, here's the bad news: I'm it. The IT group have been investigating Linux, but they are mostly agonizing over server-side stuff, and their time is limited. I'm the guinnea-pig. What my fellow employees see, happening to me, is what they think of Linux. Some of the guys show the occasional glimmer of interest, but the women are too practical. They just wonder why I waste so much time when Windows already works. Almost everybody who stops by my office remarks about the video flicker. Some of the guys wonder why I don't do something about it... but they don't wonder enough to help fix it..., but every one of the women just wonders why I don't switch back to Windows before I ruin my eyes. Practical. That's precisely the audience SuSE needs to address: people who are not much interested in playing with the box -- they just want an appliance that works. At the office, a few people use Linux once in a while when they have to write some code for the platform, or when they have to test our products. Otherwise, I'm the only person who regularly has Linux running for "office-work" reasons. But, back to the specifics of this list: Let's say that one of the obvious women (i.e., someone who is known to be female) were to ask all the other women to contact her privately (i.e., "safely"). Let's say that after a couple of weeks she reported only the number of unique respondents. When that number was compared to the number of current list subscribers, how many people believe that it would come anywhere near 10 percent? I'm betting WAY less. The difference between that number and 51% of the population is, ipso-facto, a huge untapped, potential market for SuSE... or for their competitors... whoever gets there first. /kevin

On Saturday 25 January 2003 15:04, Kevin McLauchlan wrote:

On Saturday 25 January 2003 13:59, Kelly L. Fulks wrote:

[stuff deleted]

...

It is still a rare thing to have a family of complete geeks where both the male and female would be interested in Linux.

My point exactly. It's still seen as geek heaven, and as a mysterious and unfriendly beast to use, compared to Windows.

My point also. I am a male BTW, but my wife uses linux and strongly dislikes the tactics used by MS. She would likely have found Linux without me. But she would not likely have found this list as this list does have more of a geek air about it than what normal average users would migrate to. I wouldn't call Linux mysterious and unfriendly, but I would say that it is less friendly to the latest hardware (which is what the average consumer would be purchasing). This is one of those "which came first, the chicken or the egg" scenarios. Until the hardware folks believe that there are enough Linux users they will not deliver drivers for new hardware and until there are drivers, no one can use the hardware with Linux, and thus Linux appears to be less friendly.

...

And as to unmarried geek females, maybe they are smart enough to have a life away from the CRT or LCD. That is more than I can say for most single geeks I know whether they like Linux or MS.

I work in a techy office. By far the majority of people have computers at home -- though one or two did say that they get enough of the nasty things at the office and have better things to do in their off-hours.

By asking, I found out that seven people (including me) out of 75 have Linux at home. I'm one of just two who are running without Windows. Not one of the Linux users is female.

Lucky you. There are only 6 in my office of 106 that I have located and this is a techy type office also. There are 3 in IT and 3 programmers. One of those 6 is female (but is a rare one with an entire geek family), she is our W2K system admin and her husband is an HP-UX admin where he works. Our office runs on Windows and there are only two machines that run Linux in the entire organization. I am working on some server side stuff that could possibly take off shortly, but I am not betting on it yet. Of the 6, three of us do use SuSE (all the programming guys), but I am the only one on this list.

Several people use their home computers simply as appliances for e-mail, browsing and maybe schoolwork and to do their bookkeeping and taxes. Not even games. I say "You could do that with Linux." They say: "Why? Windows works."

[stuff deleted]

The difference between that number and 51% of the population is, ipso-facto, a huge untapped, potential market for SuSE... or for their competitors... whoever gets there first.

In short, I don't think that this list is a good indicator of the users of SuSE Linux (or Linux in general). Lists like this tend to have a higher geek membership than the general population. The other side of it is the "Why" group that when they purchase a machine it comes with MS installed and working and "Why would they want to start over from scratch?" The same would apply in the reverse for them, if the machine came with SuSE (or some other version of Linux), they probably wouldn't change that either.

/kevin

-- Kelly L. Fulks Home Account

On Saturday 25 January 2003 19:08, John wrote:

On Saturday 25 January 2003 12:59 pm, Kelly L. Fulks wrote:

...

And how did you arrive at this estimate?

Most of us are only known by our email address (not a name) and with names from so many different countries and so many names that can be of either sex, I am not sure that you have any concept.

I am a good example, my name can apply equally to either sex, as can that of my spouse (Jackie). Would you care to guess which of us is the male and which is the Linux using female?

And on top of that, the users on this list really don't matter as to what sex uses Linux. Even if the male is the one installing linux and on this list, the female might be a user as well (or vice versa). It is still a rare thing to have a family of complete geeks where both the male and female would be interested in Linux.

And as to unmarried geek females, maybe they are smart enough to have a life away from the CRT or LCD. That is more than I can say for most single geeks I know whether they like Linux or MS.

Good grief! This has got way out of hand. It was a simple observation by someone. Plain and simple! Anyone who is up in arms about it, has got too much crap in their head or is someone just waiting for something like this to come up, just to cause shit! Cool your jets, calm down, and learn to take a simple observation with a breeze.

john

I wasn't attempting to cause problems. I was attempting to get the point across that this list isn't an indicator of the users of Linux or SuSE Linux in particular. There is more to membership on this list than just being a SuSE Linux user. Lists like this tend to draw geeks more than average users, the same would be true to MS lists, RH lists, or any other list of a similar nature. -- Kelly L. Fulks Home Account