[luau] Newsforge: What Linux needs most (it's not more features)

[John & Sheila Nickerson]

On Sunday 03 March 2002 02:53 pm, you wrote:
 http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/03/01/1555254&mode=thread
 Commentary: What Linux needs most (it's not more features)
 - By Elwin Green -

 I've had an epiphany. Let me tell you how it happened. My wife brings home
 an issue of Newsweek (the January 28 issue, to be exact), and I'm browsing
 through it, and it flips open to a big ad, a two-page spread with a nice,
 clean look that attracts the eye. In this case, my eyes are drawn to a
 banner headline, which reads: "A special message to Windows users: Welcome."
 And I see a series of paragraphs with boldface headings that say, "Myth 1,"
 and "Fact," then "Myth 2" and "Fact," and so on. My heart skips a beat
 because my very first, hopeful thought is, "An ad for Linux?!?"

 Nah. It's an ad for the Mac. Or rather, the iMac. And as it turns out, it's
 not just two pages; it's 12 full pages of seductively well-designed text and
 graphics. And when I realize that it's not an ad for Linux, I feel somewhat
 sad, because in that same moment I realize that it couldn't be an ad for
 Linux; that I will probably never see such a thing, because Linux does not
 have a marketing department.

 Which led to the epiphany: Linux needs a marketing department.

 (continued in article)

=========================

I had an epiphany of sorts as well.  I've used/owned most of the major home 
and business computer systems over my years in IT.  I won't go into the 
rather long list of mainframes minis and micro's I've used and programmed 
ovet my nearly 40 year career.  At home I currently have an NT 4.0 box a SuSE 
box and I recently got an iBook.

I suppose you've guessed what the epiphany was.  

The iBook with OS X and it's bundled in software which included AppleWorks is 
what I have been hoping Linux will become.  It ain't Linux and it ain't open 
source but it's close enough for me to say I hope Apple's marketing 
department is wildly successful and Apple and OS X make serious inroads into 
the Microsoft hegemony.

I'm sorry to say that for the majority of the readers of News Week etc. the 
Linux marketing dept. wouldn't have any where near 12 full pages of copy.

Just my $0.02 worth.

John



-- 
The Nickersons, Kailua, Hawaii

http://www.pixi.com/~johnnick/homepage.html