12 Responses to “Why Ubuntu 8.04 needs better marketing”

• 1
  Lex Y. Li
  January 13th, 2008 17:08

  Mike, they should hire you to help publish announcement on their front page. Yes, I guess my mom can understand your words while she is puzzled when she takes a look at the original page (but it is funny that as a developer I love the original one because it looks more professional).
• 2
  srinivasan
  January 13th, 2008 18:34

  what you told here in the post is absolutely good and if cannocial makes a note of your ideas and get the marketing for ubuntu done right then it will attain a market share like Firefox gained through their good marketing campaign so we need to spread the word about ubuntu in a more human way then doing it like geks do
• 3
  cucu
  January 13th, 2008 19:14

  Not totally wrong, but the 99% scenario for new people trying Ubuntu is NOT “today I will install a new OS for myself” but instead “I will install Ubuntu on my grandmother computer so that she will no longer get computer viruses every week” - as you can see the decision is made by somebody that probably knows the technical terms.
• 4
  Jeroen Brattinga
  January 13th, 2008 23:03

  Thanks for this article! I’m an avid Ubuntu (7.10) user and completely agree with you. And as a professional software engineer
  I’m going to take this advice to the heart; it’s sometimes easy to forget that your users have other mental models than yourself.
• 5
  Matt Wilcox
  January 14th, 2008 00:14

  Absolutely spot on! The main problem Open Source efforts have is communication with the public. Most projects are entirely powered by enthusiasts, but quite naturally they have no clue about shifting their perspective to their users (because in the vast majority of cases, they think they are the users and that’s that).

  I did a mock-up and re-work of the Miro homepage and came across all the same problems (this was before the re-design). I was happy to see that the Miro team picked up on a lot of things myself and others suggested and fixed them. It’s done them the world of good I think (though there’s still a lot of poorly designed techno-focused stuff floating around in places).

  I wrote something that touches on your post a year ago. Halfway down “Current problems with Open Source projects” and “Problems with the image of Open Source” http://mattwilcox.net/archive/entry/id/805/
• 6
  xevy
  January 14th, 2008 00:27

  OMG, when I read the bottom stuff, I actually wished I was running Ubuntu right now! xD
  very good stuff right here, talk to the ubuntu guys, they need help..
• 7
  Sam
  January 14th, 2008 01:54

  I love it!
  I personally have been trying to get my mom to get this on her laptop instead of Windows, but she’s always complaining about how tech unsavvy she is. I think I’ll show her the bottom part of this article, and probably show it to a few of my coworkers too. Maybe they’ll finally ‘make the switch’!
• 8
  Nick
  January 14th, 2008 02:35

  Probaby there are two target audiences: people new to ubuntu and linux versus existing linux users. It is true that now ubuntu markets itself towards the second group. Maybe they should find a clever way to switch between the two audiences. Why not check if the browser is running on Windows and Mac to display the noob page and if it is running linux to display the existing page?
• 9
  Stephen
  January 14th, 2008 04:06

  I think that they should release two versions on the release. One exactly like the one mentioned here and a MORE geeky one that should be harder to get to (not on the front page or with a name like “technical information” in small print) so that people like me can get more information.

  Other then that the author is correct that it needs to be updated. Unfortunately sales people are rarely geeks who would even know Linux exists.
• 10
  Arun
  April 15th, 2008 17:58

  You’ve put your point across quite well, though I didn’t think the copy on the Ubuntu Web site was all that bad to begin with. But then again, I already knew about Linux, etc. when I first came across Ubuntu.

  This may not be related to your article, but another thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of official Web sites for various Linux distributions are terribly designed (not just in terms of the way they look). In that respect, the sites for Ubuntu and openSUSE are really well made. But again, for someone who is new to Linux (and regular users in general), the content on these sites could definitely be much better.
• 11
  Vadim P.
  April 25th, 2008 00:00

  http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/804features/

  I do believe they listened
• 12
  jwillar
  April 30th, 2008 12:24

  I’d like to see Ubuntu do a parody of the Windows and Mac commercial (USA). A third young person could appear wearing a tux coat/shirt with jeans and discuss the benefits of Linux over Windows and Mac. A commercial could be produced for each benefit. I think it would introduce a large segment of computer users to Linux in a humorous/informative way. Just an idea.

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