Let's invade Ubuntu Forums!!!!!

[rmjones101]

Originally Posted by GofBorg

FYI, It's well known that Novell could not market themselves
out of a paper bag.

It's not that they can't.

It's simply because Novell's focus is on the enterprise network for commercial use. Same business model you see from RedHat. Canonical on the other hand focuses on the desktop model and the opensource community.

Novell simply lets openSuSE market itself, much like RedHat does with Fedora.

[viperskunk]

Originally Posted by beli0135

Viper, you better take advice of majority of people that responded to you and drop the issue. Also, I recommend you re-read the post of Oldcpu. Wisdom is gained by expirience

However, if you still have in mind that you should convert some 'buntu user to openSUSE, I suggest you do 'invade' ubuntu forums and IRC channels and try to help as many people as you can in solving problems.
Linux is Linux and things are very very very similar.

Keep in mind that we use openSUSE because we explored distros and happened that WE LIKED openSUSE, not because someone convinced us, converted us, etc.

totally in agreement with you there. if you haven't noticed in the thread, the intial issue has already been dropped and we were now talking about something a bit more serious. it is true,linux is linux and things are indeed very very similar. but still there are some differences. and sometimes they are not pretty.

[GofBorg]

> It's not that they can't.
>
> It's simply because Novell's focus is on the enterprise network for
> commercial use.

Unfortunately no, it's not.
They've repeatedly failed to convince and sell enterprises on their
products for many many years.

[buckesfeld]

Please don't encourage people to spam other forums. Thank you.

Uwe

[else_where]

Originally Posted by GofBorg

> It's not that they can't.
>
> It's simply because Novell's focus is on the enterprise network for
> commercial use.

Unfortunately no, it's not.
They've repeatedly failed to convince and sell enterprises on their
products for many many years.

I'd argue that to a certain extent, and yet agree to another extent, but it's irrelevant. Novell isn't out to market openSUSE, that's the job of the openSUSE community.

And in fairness to Canonical and co., it was the community that marketed Ubuntu, there was no advertising budget behind it. They've done a fanstic job there. They do seem to be the Apple of the linux world in terms of building buzz, rabid loyalty and generating press. They succeeded by simply building an accessible distribution.

Personally, I'd question whether the substance is there to justify the acclaim, but then that's what marketing is all about...

Just my 2c...

Cheers,
KV

[Magic31]

So the question here really is... how do we create a bigger market for openSUSE? Instead of invading lets try to trade secrets and create more boost for both? I've always been more into scratching backs...

[ken_yap]

This forum gets indexed by search engines. If the quality of the answers here is high, then more people will see it and maybe think, hey I should join that community. Perhaps we can help it along by digg-ing particularly useful postings.

[viperskunk]

one of the first things that attracts people to debian/ubuntu,is the notion that there are so many packages available for it. a third-party manufacturer, if it makes a software for linux, is most likely have a .deb package for debian (excludind tarballs). agreed, that if a package can be installed on one distro, it can be made to work on another...but most users do not want to go through (or don't even know of) ./configure, make, make install process.

our build service and 1-click-install is an answer to this. but many newcomers to linux, haven't got the slightes idea of even its existence. and only when you have gone through the trouble of dependency errors, or compiling and building packages for cli, can you truly appreciate what a great thing 1-click-install is.

one suggestion would be to market this feature of opensuse as much as openuse releases themselves.
no need for adding repos, typing codes, going through dependency hell...everything is taken care of. you just search, and you click, and you are good to go!
this advertisement, will not only attract more users, but also more developers will be begin building the packages for 1-click-install.

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by viperskunk

our build service and 1-click-install is an answer to this. but many newcomers to linux, haven't got the slightes idea of even its existence. and only when you have gone through the trouble of dependency errors, or compiling and building packages for cli, can you truly appreciate what a great thing 1-click-install is.

1 click may be great for newbies, but IMHO once one quickly gets over the newbie stage, many openSUSE users will migrate to using Software Package Manager, with their repos setup. One has far more control this way as to exactly what will be installed, and what is available.

My own view is 1-click-install (as you note) IS a marketing / newbie thing, but in practise it is NOT the best method to use in installing.

[viperskunk]

we can't really do much, if people hate Novell. What we can do, is stress that we are NOT Novell itself. We are still a community, and we still work almost similar to ubuntu. funded in part/whole by a big fish, but working as community. one major asset to ubuntu's markting, is its stress on community, and the diversity thereof. it satiates an ideaology, that we love to love, in the modern world at least.
our marketing (for a new user) is nothing more than a few blog reviews, with pictures of YaST. and a green lizard.

we need to answer this question first:
1)why should you choose opensuse? (the question here is not why you should NOT choose <distro>, but why should you CHOOSE opensuse?)

if we answer this as a community, and put it out there, in various manfestations...blogs, articles, reviews, etc. it will do us good.