Another fresh month and so we have the latest operating system market share details from Statcounter, and it's another impressive showing for Linux from August 2024.
While I know the M word is often seen as bad, I’ve long thought Linux could benefit from some actual real marketing that’s utterly divorced from any nerd shit ;)
As to who in the world would pay for that, I have no idea, but there’s a lot of like about Linux if you could get a slick, clean, polished explanation and NOT have some Linux nerdbeard (like, say, myself) try to explain, well, any of it.
GNU Linux users are stuck in the early 20th century in marketing strategies, including you. Rational marketing explaining objectively how product P will help its consumers in XYZ is not the mainstream strategy of marketing anymore. It was surpassed by Irrational marketing, where a company will try to associate specific ideas and emotions with its brand and products, like an ad with big cars riding in rough natural landscapes that will show to everyone who is the real man in the block, who has high income, who is the most sexy, most adventurous, who the hot girl will want to date, etc (and NOT an ad that explains how the SUV has 6x6 wheels, can travel 555,8 miles, carry 1,8 metric tons of cargo, with air conditioning, etc, even if those informations are true).
Apple did not really explain what their various models of computers are to its clients, they just made several marketing pieces of content (including public performances by steve jobs) that transmitted the ‘‘vibes’’ of what using them ‘‘feels like’’ (i.e. what image apple wanted to associate itself). Being ‘‘futuristic’’, ‘‘smart’’, ‘‘successful’’, ‘‘luxurious’’, ‘‘easy’’, etc.
They need some actual marketing firm that will do a full psy-ops that manages to associate using linux distros with irrational but desirable traits (ideas, emotions, etc), that common people will identify and start trying to ‘‘Keep up with the Joneses’’ (the joneses being the linux users now). Show using Arch Linux as the knack of genius people that will hack anything they want and earn millions, show using Fedora as the thing of smart successful beautiful rich people, show handsome entrepreneurs doing high middle class work in Mint or Ubuntu, show high score Gamers using RGB PCs with Garuda Linux, etc. That kind of marketing is however generally rejected by Linux proponents.
100% agree. Most Linux users and companies are trying to sell on a list of things Linux doesn’t do, or technical features which pretty much absolutely nobody gives a crap about who isn’t a tech nerd in the first place.
I was actually thinking of Apple’s I’m a Mac/I’m a PC ads as something that could actually probably work, because at this point Windows has shittified itself to the point that even non-technical people I know IRL grumble about it. (I tell them to buy a Mac because I’m absolutely not about to become level 1 Linux desktop support.)
But again, who pays for it, and why? I don’t think there’s ANY financial incentive for consumer marketing from anyone who makes a distro that can afford an actual ad, because none of them are structured to give a shit about consumer use: it’s all enterprise support contracts, and if someone happens to use it on their desktop, cool but not their actual business.
There are some hardware sellers specialized in Linux, no ? the european Tuxedo Computers, and specially the north american System 76 (who is also the developer of PopOS, therefore the closest Linux equivalent of Apple in having both hard and soft wares). They could be the ones to do it by having an incentive (selling hardware in more scale, and merchandising too, also accepting donations). Honestly, a company that focused on just assembling good enough computers that run a very hands-off but functional linux distro (pretty much Ubuntu KDE with flatpaks and lots of pre-installed programs a la Linux Mint), while having a good enough price and most importantly focusing on the marketing in the forms mentioned, could change the status-quo. I agree Fedora, Red Hat, will be catering to companies on the foreseeable future. Ads on Youtube are far reaching and not expensive, and possible to scale with time.
The amusing thing here is that I forgot all about Tuxedo and System 76.
I would suspect that might be exactly the problem: as far as I know, neither of them advertise at all, or if they do, it’s something that’s completely forgettable and somewhere that someone who’s not deeply involved in Linux is ever going to see it.
You’re right that they have the most incentive since they actually sell something you could (theoretically) want to buy, and are probably not living on large enterprise contracts since I don’t think I’ve ever seen hardware from either in the wild.
They are very niche for the moment, and yes, they do advertise on Linux related youtube channels, like constantly appearing on The Linux Experiment, which itself is trying to be a more accessible linux and foss news channel avoiding the technobabble and too much details on things, but is accessed mainly by converts (with a bigger sized portion of new and potential converts than the norm for linux channels) so the preaching to the choir also applies. But their marketing is of the form we criticised, dry technical explanations. Let’s hope they increase in size and inspire others to up the stakes (or expand themselves), i think a full desktop SteamOS that companies can make a gaming PC around is also on the horizon, seriously challenging the home consoles.
While I know the M word is often seen as bad, I’ve long thought Linux could benefit from some actual real marketing that’s utterly divorced from any nerd shit ;)
As to who in the world would pay for that, I have no idea, but there’s a lot of like about Linux if you could get a slick, clean, polished explanation and NOT have some Linux nerdbeard (like, say, myself) try to explain, well, any of it.
GNU Linux users are stuck in the early 20th century in marketing strategies, including you. Rational marketing explaining objectively how product P will help its consumers in XYZ is not the mainstream strategy of marketing anymore. It was surpassed by Irrational marketing, where a company will try to associate specific ideas and emotions with its brand and products, like an ad with big cars riding in rough natural landscapes that will show to everyone who is the real man in the block, who has high income, who is the most sexy, most adventurous, who the hot girl will want to date, etc (and NOT an ad that explains how the SUV has 6x6 wheels, can travel 555,8 miles, carry 1,8 metric tons of cargo, with air conditioning, etc, even if those informations are true).
Apple did not really explain what their various models of computers are to its clients, they just made several marketing pieces of content (including public performances by steve jobs) that transmitted the ‘‘vibes’’ of what using them ‘‘feels like’’ (i.e. what image apple wanted to associate itself). Being ‘‘futuristic’’, ‘‘smart’’, ‘‘successful’’, ‘‘luxurious’’, ‘‘easy’’, etc.
They need some actual marketing firm that will do a full psy-ops that manages to associate using linux distros with irrational but desirable traits (ideas, emotions, etc), that common people will identify and start trying to ‘‘Keep up with the Joneses’’ (the joneses being the linux users now). Show using Arch Linux as the knack of genius people that will hack anything they want and earn millions, show using Fedora as the thing of smart successful beautiful rich people, show handsome entrepreneurs doing high middle class work in Mint or Ubuntu, show high score Gamers using RGB PCs with Garuda Linux, etc. That kind of marketing is however generally rejected by Linux proponents.
100% agree. Most Linux users and companies are trying to sell on a list of things Linux doesn’t do, or technical features which pretty much absolutely nobody gives a crap about who isn’t a tech nerd in the first place.
I was actually thinking of Apple’s I’m a Mac/I’m a PC ads as something that could actually probably work, because at this point Windows has shittified itself to the point that even non-technical people I know IRL grumble about it. (I tell them to buy a Mac because I’m absolutely not about to become level 1 Linux desktop support.)
But again, who pays for it, and why? I don’t think there’s ANY financial incentive for consumer marketing from anyone who makes a distro that can afford an actual ad, because none of them are structured to give a shit about consumer use: it’s all enterprise support contracts, and if someone happens to use it on their desktop, cool but not their actual business.
There are some hardware sellers specialized in Linux, no ? the european Tuxedo Computers, and specially the north american System 76 (who is also the developer of PopOS, therefore the closest Linux equivalent of Apple in having both hard and soft wares). They could be the ones to do it by having an incentive (selling hardware in more scale, and merchandising too, also accepting donations). Honestly, a company that focused on just assembling good enough computers that run a very hands-off but functional linux distro (pretty much Ubuntu KDE with flatpaks and lots of pre-installed programs a la Linux Mint), while having a good enough price and most importantly focusing on the marketing in the forms mentioned, could change the status-quo. I agree Fedora, Red Hat, will be catering to companies on the foreseeable future. Ads on Youtube are far reaching and not expensive, and possible to scale with time.
The amusing thing here is that I forgot all about Tuxedo and System 76.
I would suspect that might be exactly the problem: as far as I know, neither of them advertise at all, or if they do, it’s something that’s completely forgettable and somewhere that someone who’s not deeply involved in Linux is ever going to see it.
You’re right that they have the most incentive since they actually sell something you could (theoretically) want to buy, and are probably not living on large enterprise contracts since I don’t think I’ve ever seen hardware from either in the wild.
They are very niche for the moment, and yes, they do advertise on Linux related youtube channels, like constantly appearing on The Linux Experiment, which itself is trying to be a more accessible linux and foss news channel avoiding the technobabble and too much details on things, but is accessed mainly by converts (with a bigger sized portion of new and potential converts than the norm for linux channels) so the preaching to the choir also applies. But their marketing is of the form we criticised, dry technical explanations. Let’s hope they increase in size and inspire others to up the stakes (or expand themselves), i think a full desktop SteamOS that companies can make a gaming PC around is also on the horizon, seriously challenging the home consoles.