Comments on: Fedora marketing feedback

By: Kevin Kofler

Kevin Kofler — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 05:37:53 +0000

> That *was* our get Fedora page a couple of releases ago

I know. The current one is a regression.

By: Máirín

Máirín — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:33:05 +0000

“I disagree with the first part of the rant, about the too many choices being bad, and in fact I’d much prefer get-fedora-all as the default compared to the current get-fedora.”

Pssst! That *was* our get Fedora page a couple of releases ago, and pretty much everyone hated it which is why so much effort went into what we have today. Don’t believe me, check the fedora-websites-list archives…

By: Mairin

Mairin — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:20:45 +0000

“I disagree with the first part of the rant, about the too many choices being bad, ”

Hey! What do I know, I’m just an interaction designer.

By: Kevin Kofler

Kevin Kofler — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:16:16 +0000

I disagree with the first part of the rant, about the too many choices being bad, and in fact I’d much prefer get-fedora-all as the default compared to the current get-fedora. x86_64 needs to be featured more prominently as it’s the only way forward and most machines are 64-bit these days. And KDE should not be relegated to an extra link on the side.

And this brings us to your second rant. I agree wholeheartedly with the fact that “Desktop” standing for “GNOME Desktop” is misleading and biased and that the choice between KDE and GNOME needs to be on the front download page.

By: Steven

Steven — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:47:04 +0000

I don’t doubt that there was a lot of thinking going in the current page, the old one clearly sucks. I’m just reporting that people are still confused from what I see.

By: Mairin

Mairin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:35:49 +0000

Oh and about the gnome vs KDE choice – Fedora is a GNOME-based distribution. New users probably do not know or care about the difference between GNOME and KDE. There are far more GNOME maintainers in Fedora than KDE, so they get GNOME. And they doubtless will not care about that.

The more choices you present to the new user, the way more confusing the page is. A *lot* of thought went into the current Get Fedora page, and it was extremely difficult because everyone wanted to add “just one more choice” “just one more option”. The problem is, if everyone added the “just one more choice” that they proposed to me for the page, the page would look like this again:

http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-all

Nobody wants that by default.

By: Mairin

Mairin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:32:49 +0000

The reason the Live Media for x86 is presented as the primary choice:

- The user can try Fedora out without having to erase anything on their hard drive
- CD burners are far more common than DVD burners
- x86 works on x86_64 just fine so if you have no idea what you have, it will Just Work
- Many people do not have the bandwidth to download ~2GB in a reasonable amount of time. I know it’s hard to believe but it’s true.
- Any software the user wants to try out that isn’t in the default install is *easily* added post-installation.

By: Steven

Steven — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:14:31 +0000

Sure, I hear you. Note that i don’t think we absolutely tried to market it as “The Linux for everyone”. But this shouldn’t stop us to provide a nicer power-user experience on the website :p

Let’s face it, lots of Fedora users come from a first experience with other distributions, I see a constant flow of ex-Ubuntu users on the forums who want the bleeding edge software wise. These people usually have some background and understand how to add a repository.

By: Mace Moneta

Mace Moneta — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:02:39 +0000

“…without it I’m not sure we would see such a rapid development of things like the Nouveau driver.”

That’s the point though; Fedora is driving development. It’s a developer release; embrace that. Don’t try to make it something it is not prepared to be. Otherwise it ends up being a compromise and a disappointment marketed to the wrong audience.

By: Steven

Steven — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 14:52:35 +0000

I have to agree on 95% of your points, particularly the bugreport/irc/mailinglist stuff. I also think that a lot of people are aware of this problem, which is a huge issue considering the pioneer role of Fedora in the FOSS world. Moving fast and squashing all bugs are usually quite at the opposite.

Not being able to install Flash, codecs and display driver without having to know RPM Fusion s a real show stopper for any new user. Ubuntu does it “right” from the end-user perspective in the sense that the proprietary repositories aren’t enabled by default, but if you need it they are pre-configured. I honestly don’t know which legal implications (not counting the philosophical ones) for Fedora to do the same. Not to do this was pretty much a choice from the beginning, and without it I’m not sure we would see such a rapid development of things like the Nouveau driver.

But as said before, Ubuntu wants to be the Linux on every PC in the OEM market (and more power to them if they succeed). Fedora wants to push the technology in Open Source.