[Ambassadors] A few observations on the Fedora 13 CD covers

[inode0]

2010/8/6 Máirín Duffy <duffy at fedoraproject.org>:
> Hi Ville-Pekka!
>
> On Fri, 2010-08-06 at 16:23 +0300, Ville-Pekka Vainio wrote:
>> I'm currently at the Linux booth at the Assembly demo party at Helsinki,
>> Finland. I've noticed a few things about the CD covers we have.
>>
>> - I might be revisiting a really old discussion here, but because we
>> have both KDE and "Desktop" (i.e. GNOME) live CDs here, some people seem
>> to be confused about the GNOME CD being called "Desktop Live Media"
>> while the KDE CD is called "KDE Desktop Live Media". I think it would be
>> clearer if the GNOME/Desktop disk clearly said on the cover that it's
>> GNOME.
>
> The problem is that we want there to be one default Fedora so folks who
> don't know what a desktop environment is or what GNOME or KDE means can
> download Fedora without answering difficult questions they don't know
> the answers to (e.g., 'do you want gnome or KDE?' 'do you want live or
> dvd?' 'do you want x86 or x86_64 or ...?' Many people who would
> otherwise be interested in trying Fedora would have no clue how to
> answer any of those questions.
>
> I think that the printed media should mirror the labeling on the website
> which is why the GNOME version is labeled 'Desktop.'
>
> That being said, the audience at a Linux conference (as opposed to other
> conferences that we might be going to; eg I may be giving out Fedora
> media at a design conference next year) is very likely to understand
> what GNOME and KDE mean. So maybe the design team could produce a
> sticker kit of small round stickers that say "KDE" and "GNOME" that
> could be placed on the sleeves, specifically for Linux-oriented
> conferences?
>
> Just an idea....

I think folks at those sorts of events also just come out and ask what
it is if they care which gives people at the booth an opening to chat
with them. I don't view this as any sort of "problem" at events I
attend.

>> - Some people also seem to be confused about what "Live Media" means and
>> they think they won't be able to install from a live CD. We also have
>> Ubuntu CDs here and those don't say anything about being live media, so
>> it might be better to either drop the live media thing completely or add
>> "installable" or something like that on the cover.
>
> Ah, I can see how the term would be confusing to folks who aren't
> familiar with it. I really like your suggestion to use the term
> 'installable', and I think it makes a lot of sense, but I worry that
> 'Installable' vs 'Install DVD' is going to be confusing :(
>
> I kind of think we should just provide live media and not DVDs, but I
> don't know how other folks feel about that. It would make our basic
> installation instructions a lot easier to follow, I think.

I think live media will likely end up being DVDs anyway, but I agree
100% that we should move to only producing live media for shows. Not
so much to simplify things (although it would remove some confusion we
see) but to streamline production and give people at shows something
they can use at the show.

John