Re: Linux Demo Day

[Al Hudson <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

On Sat, 17 Jul 1999, Paul Sims wrote:

> The philosophy of Linux is not in question. I just don't see retailers
> giving over shelf space to gpl disks on which there is little profit. Sure,
> they can charge what they like, but Joe Public only has to be made aware of
> CheapBytes, Linux Emporium etc. to realise that, say, £10 is a lot more than
> the £2 the others are asking.

But the boxed sets are not the same as the GPL CDs? I personally don't buy
many £2 cds from the emporium because they're generally quite crummy - you
don't get half the good stuff you get with the full versions. Plus, when
people buy OSes off the shelf they want manuals, phone support, etc. The
boxed sets are more expensive for no good reason - I've seen linux selling
at over £1000. You don't get the same stuff on a GPL Cd. I don't think PCW
should be in the business of selling the GPL CDs - cheap CDs put most
people off trying linux because they compare them to the big box MS
products, etc., and there's no comparison. They don't understand how they
fit into the linux scheme of things.

> The big boxed distributions are another
> matter - what's at question here is the level of commercial risk. Do PCW,
> for example, go out buy 10,000 copies of RH6 do a proper marketing
> campaign, or do they buy 100 and let the boxes rot on the shelves. No doubt
> the powers-that-be in purchasing are aware of Linux in the market, the
> results are there for you to see.

I think probably we'll have to wait for demand to pick up. But I do think
demand will start picking up. KDE is getting really rather good, I have
Mandrake on my machine and it's about twice as hard to install as windows,
which is a hell of a long way from my first slak install.

> The best way forwards as I see it is for one of the big LUGs - presumably
> London-based - to host a mini-expo for the purchasing techie guys at PCW,
> independent PC makers, etc, to get to the people who make the decisions. For
> such a degree of penetration I'm sure it would be in the interests of RH,
> SuSE and possibly the FSF/Gnu Project to send representatives, so the
> marketeers may speak unto their breatheren likewise.

I agree. A Linux Expo over here would be really good, especially if the
LUGs had a part in it. But I would still want to see linux mature a little
more (by linux I mean the distros, not necessarily the kernel itself).
It's not at the Joe Public user level just yet, although it's pretty damn
near. It's still to hard to install, which is always going to be a factor
before OEMs start installing it as standard.

Cheers,

Alex.

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