Yes, yes, I suspect I know what you mean:
[ul]
[li]We have a campaign around here to “Buy local.” – I say, there’s an operating system supplier just a few kilometres from here – even those who drive past the SUSE building every day on the way to work, can’t believe that, the company is in business.[/li][LIST]
[li]I point out that using the Redmond product tends to cause blindness … [/li][/ul]
[li]The same applies to a Font supplier just a few kilometres from here … [/li][/LIST]
That is very interesting and quite relevant, I think. And it does correlate in general with my feeling and other sources. What your colleagues told you I experienced quite a few times; obviously most people wouldn’t know what’s openSUSE at all, only small portion do and they respond exactly this way.
Adding Ubuntu into comparison gives quite sad result, as OpenSUSE has a tiny portion compared to Ubuntu. I think Ubuntu has a tech appeal to IT and technically minded people and well develops their “marketing” in that direction. OpenSUSE is not a hair worse distro (IMHO), but struggles to find a path to the end users…
If you people want to contribute, we have a new Marketing Team.
And, assuming that your ISP changes your IP address on a daily basis, vote on the previous reviews – AFAICS, only one vote allowed per IP address …
The problem with this statement is, that it doesn’t help us to learn how to contribute in marketing activities. We all assume openSUSE has a kind of Marketing Team and certainly SUSE has. However, if you want people to get into OpenSUSE marketing, you need to have ways to let them know they can help and guidelines how they can help. So where is the center point of this information (and there should be one)? Perhaps this top search result for “contribute opensuse” https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:How_to_participate? But here is only this “marketing”-related information:
Spread the word
Be sure to spread the word on openSUSE and help others to benefit from it too! openSUSE offers a great Linux distribution and many other technologies like our build service and SUSE Studio which can help home users as well as sys admins and developers to get work done and have fun. Blog about openSUSE, tell your friends and family and help them install it!
On the main page of OpenSUSE web site, there’s a Contribute section at the very bottom. It’s focused on Coding and Hardware, nothing else. The message is clear.
In my opinion, we - willing to contribute - are only grass straws and everyone individually or even in dozens, we won’t make a meadow. But if a lot straws are employed, we can make a difference. While I was looking at your profile for information whether you’re linked to openSUSE or SUSE, I noticed you’re a dad too. And you have probably your day job unrelated to openSUSE and perhaps some projects on your own. So I’m sure you understand, that our resources are very limited and we have to employ them collectively.
So in my opinion, the outcome is, that information about contributing should be improved (the center point of getting it - primarily the web site). And apparently there are really no guidelines that would answer a ton of questions like: If I wanted to contact local school(s), can I? What leaflet and other prints I should show them? What I should propose OpenSUSE or SUSE for Educators? Where are prepared answers for questions they will have? What are other ways to actually “sprad the word”? Are there any marketing programs, events? Etc., etc., etc.
The question in the subject of this post is not a criticism, I really wanted to discuss whether we really know where we, openSUSE community, want to be in future and how to get there :-).
Can you get to the openSUSE/LibreOffice conference where you will find plenty of people with whom to discuss the issues? Alternatively, sessions are often streamed.
I think this is the problem of all distributions. I don’t think that Linux will be popular on desktop ever(aside from Android) and for servers and the cloud docker made distributions irrelevant.
You only need the base OS to be able to run containers and then everything else you care about runs inside a container so what difference does the distro make?
I don’t think anybody can do anything to change this trend which is good IMO.
Looking from a different angle the fact that something has little users doesn’t mean it’s dead if you have a passionate community to keep it alive.
I am here to stay as openSUSE is a lot of fun 
I’m afraid nope, I can’t. I’ve looked at the conference few weeks back, just out of interest. I’d spare some time, but the event is enterprise-targeted and actually encouraging people to get someone (usually their employers) to pay for it. I can’t really spend some 3000+ € on this event, I have some building going on requiring constant investments.
Anyhow, the impulse should come from and be directed by the Marketing Team. Once target is defined, I think that there will be enough experienced volunteers even for helping with the initial preparation stage (making guidelines, “master” marketing material in English, explaining existing/ongoing projects), before the actual activities towards general volunteers commence. Obviously, I’d help if I could be made useful.
Obviously, it’s a valid opinion. But I am a desktop user since I started with SuSE and a reason is, that I believe that open/SUSE takes quite a care to make the system comfortable for a common user.
I have a very different opinion when it comes to Enterprise level, because I think that is the difficult stuff. We should define “enterprise”, though. Employing one or few *services *in the enterprises does not really make an OS enterprise one (IMHO). When you get it across the enterprise, than it’s an enterprise SW. The example of our national post, employing SuSE from the top servers down to every computer behind every desk of each post is a good one and you can call that enterprise application. But how many examples like that we can find?
There are lot of different enterprises and I personally know well engineering companies. There you’d run into troubles like CAM software, which is Windows only and it’s life-cycle is counted in decades. When it comes to complicated software in general, it often started as UNIX but due to user base, moved to Windows. Perhaps you know ANSYS or some 3D CAE, or information systems like SyteLine.
That is why I see a desktop user base as a basic prerequisite for getting a real share in enterprise level.
Sure, you can run part of some enterprise software on linux, such as database server or file server, but why would common administrator do that, if he uses Windows, his 3rd party suppliers use Windows, he’s encouraged to use Windows by only existing (Windows) marketing, he was taught to do it in Windows, the company has been using MS SQL on Windows servers for decades, share point, etc…?
No one cares what runs in that purchased NAS box, when it receives, archives and returns files properly. But moving an a company with engineering and production to (any) Linux is Today nearly impossible, because of the “dependencies”. In fact moving any company, that has serious accounting department (to start with) is going to be near impossible due to lack of software and support in this field. On the other hand, at a user level, it’s quite easy to install and run linux these days. All the major producers of motherboards, graphics cards and such have a native support for Linux and OpenSUSE (not only) is quite user-friendly. And with games, social stuff and leisure activities moving more and more into the clouds, it’s getting easier and easier. Hopefully the cloud stuff will affect accounting and such troublesome enterprise software in near future too.
It’s just my experience and opinion. Anyhow, I’m pleased that it currently at least somehow works for SuSE and OpenSUSE and I will stay and have fun too :).
You have probably been looking at SUSECon in Dublin. I can tell you that the openSUSE Conferences are not enterprise targetted. And, about the costs: openSUSE has a Travel Support Program: openSUSE:Travel Support Program - openSUSE Wiki ( sorry for not posting the link to the Marketing Team, will do that a.s.a.p. ). Contrary to SUSECon the openSUSE ( this year together with LibreOffice ) Conferences are free: No entrance fee, sponsored food ( and some openSUSE beers ), lots of talks and workshops on various levels. And above all, the thing that’s not on the schedules: a community gathering.
Quoting myself, here’s the best place to start from: Portal:Marketing - openSUSE Wiki
One of the things redhat also has going for it is the US government as their largest customer. Federal agencies have mandated and standardized on redhat rhel for a long time now. SUSE until very recently also was very quiet about who they are/what they are doing/why.