Forwarded with Michael Tiemann's permission. The short version: should we look into (1) figuring out an optional (opt-in, I'd suggest) tweak to get Fedora-specific search results when looking for Linux howtos, and/or (2) SEO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization) at some point?
--Mel
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Review: 3 top Linux distros go for different users Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:13:05 -0500 From: Michael Tiemann tiemann@redhat.com
Kara Schiltz wrote:
Computerworld 12.16.09
Review: 3 top Linux distros go for different users By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
[clip]
Paul Frields, Red Hat's Fedora Project Leader, described Fedora to me as being "first and foremost for users interested in and capable of contributing to open source." So if you're a Linux power user, you're going to love Fedora. If you're not, this probably isn't the distro for you.
I just installed Fedora 12 (DVD iso x86_64) this past weekend on a very hostile piece of hardware: an old MacBookPro version 2,1. By hostile I mean that it's now old enough to reject the installation of modern versions of Mac OSX. The installation process went perfectly smoothly until it was time to reboot, and that failed because the MBR and/or the GPT has a "bootable" flag that needed to be reset. I reset the flag, and then grub failed. Some googling led me to question whether my ext4 boot partition was really a proper choice, and when I backed up /boot to some temp space in my rescued filesystem image, reformatted /boot as ext2, and restored the contents, everything worked perfectly thereafter. WIN!
What does this have to do with Ubuntu, the implied distro for non-power users, you might ask?
I have yet to find a way to search via Google for answers to my Fedora problems without Ubuntu being a prominent, if not nearly exclusive search result. Well, that's not quite true...by adding +fedora -ubuntu I start to get the kinds of results I'm looking for, but by golly for all that Google is supposed to be my Big Brother, it keeps trying to lead me away from Fedora and over to Ubuntu.
If there were some way to make technical support help focus on the OS installed on one's machine, I think we'd find at least a level playing field. Any way we could set up Mozilla preferences (and other browsers) to treat "Linux" like Fedora?
M
A few "first blush" thoughts, I'll think more on this though:
1) Tiemann's idea on setting preferences to treat "linux" as "fedora" is interesting. One problem I can see with that is that if the browser with the preferences is, say, not yet installed because the user is going through some process similar to what he's went through below, and they happen to be a first-time user or this is (or going to be) their only Fedora machine, then they're defaulting to going and using google on their "other" machine, which isn't going to have those preferences anyhow.
2) Unless we make the distinction -VERY VERY- clear when people are installing that we are going to be slightly altering their google results via some set preference, I could see a lot of community uproar over this, particularly from developers who are developing / testing on multiple platforms, who don't necessarily want to have fedora-tuned results.
3) All that said - rather than changing preferences, doing something like a Fedora toolbar that is a plug-in to the browser might be a better idea. We could probably include a google search box that would tune search results, links to community "stuff" like mailing lists and documentation, etc. (And Fedora Insight!) We could recommend that people install it (a) when they're installing the Fedora OS, and/or (b) when they're downloading it, quite possibly from a machine that is -not- the machine they will be installing it on, and would be the machine they would be consulting in the very unlikely situation that they do not have a flawless installation. :) ie: "Installing Fedora? We don't anticipate that you'll need our help. But if you do, this toolbar has the magic."
4) SEO -never- hurts.
On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 10:41 PM, Mel Chua mel@redhat.com wrote:
Forwarded with Michael Tiemann's permission. The short version: should we look into (1) figuring out an optional (opt-in, I'd suggest) tweak to get Fedora-specific search results when looking for Linux howtos, and/or (2) SEO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization) at some point?
--Mel
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Review: 3 top Linux distros go for different users Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:13:05 -0500 From: Michael Tiemann tiemann@redhat.com
Kara Schiltz wrote:
Computerworld 12.16.09
Review: 3 top Linux distros go for different users By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
[clip]
Paul Frields, Red Hat's Fedora Project Leader, described Fedora to me as being "first and foremost for users interested in and capable of contributing to open source." So if you're a Linux power user, you're going to love Fedora. If you're not, this probably isn't the distro for you.
I just installed Fedora 12 (DVD iso x86_64) this past weekend on a very hostile piece of hardware: an old MacBookPro version 2,1. By hostile I mean that it's now old enough to reject the installation of modern versions of Mac OSX. The installation process went perfectly smoothly until it was time to reboot, and that failed because the MBR and/or the GPT has a "bootable" flag that needed to be reset. I reset the flag, and then grub failed. Some googling led me to question whether my ext4 boot partition was really a proper choice, and when I backed up /boot to some temp space in my rescued filesystem image, reformatted /boot as ext2, and restored the contents, everything worked perfectly thereafter. WIN!
What does this have to do with Ubuntu, the implied distro for non-power users, you might ask?
I have yet to find a way to search via Google for answers to my Fedora problems without Ubuntu being a prominent, if not nearly exclusive search result. Well, that's not quite true...by adding +fedora -ubuntu I start to get the kinds of results I'm looking for, but by golly for all that Google is supposed to be my Big Brother, it keeps trying to lead me away from Fedora and over to Ubuntu.
If there were some way to make technical support help focus on the OS installed on one's machine, I think we'd find at least a level playing field. Any way we could set up Mozilla preferences (and other browsers) to treat "Linux" like Fedora?
M
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On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 11:41 PM, Mel Chua mel@redhat.com wrote:
Forwarded with Michael Tiemann's permission. The short version: should we look into (1) figuring out an optional (opt-in, I'd suggest) tweak to get Fedora-specific search results when looking for Linux howtos, and/or (2) SEO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization) at some point?
--Mel
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Review: 3 top Linux distros go for different users Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:13:05 -0500 From: Michael Tiemann tiemann@redhat.com
Kara Schiltz wrote:
Computerworld 12.16.09
Review: 3 top Linux distros go for different users By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
[clip]
Paul Frields, Red Hat's Fedora Project Leader, described Fedora to me as being "first and foremost for users interested in and capable of contributing to open source." So if you're a Linux power user, you're going to love Fedora. If you're not, this probably isn't the distro for you.
I just installed Fedora 12 (DVD iso x86_64) this past weekend on a very hostile piece of hardware: an old MacBookPro version 2,1. By hostile I mean that it's now old enough to reject the installation of modern versions of Mac OSX. The installation process went perfectly smoothly until it was time to reboot, and that failed because the MBR and/or the GPT has a "bootable" flag that needed to be reset. I reset the flag, and then grub failed. Some googling led me to question whether my ext4 boot partition was really a proper choice, and when I backed up /boot to some temp space in my rescued filesystem image, reformatted /boot as ext2, and restored the contents, everything worked perfectly thereafter. WIN!
What does this have to do with Ubuntu, the implied distro for non-power users, you might ask?
I have yet to find a way to search via Google for answers to my Fedora problems without Ubuntu being a prominent, if not nearly exclusive search result. Well, that's not quite true...by adding +fedora -ubuntu I start to get the kinds of results I'm looking for, but by golly for all that Google is supposed to be my Big Brother, it keeps trying to lead me away from Fedora and over to Ubuntu.
If there were some way to make technical support help focus on the OS installed on one's machine, I think we'd find at least a level playing field. Any way we could set up Mozilla preferences (and other browsers) to treat "Linux" like Fedora?
I've been meaning to reply to this for a while and was reminded again tonight when reading
http://poelcat.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/gnome-desktop-full-of-files-director...
As a Fedora user I occasionally encounter some problem, usually fairly obscure. I search and occasionally find a solution embedded in some similar problem encountered by someone using Ubuntu or another distribution. I can see how from a marketing perspective it might be nice if I found a solution to my problem on a Fedora related link but the truth is that as a user I really don't care. I have a problem I want solved, I really just want the fastest access to the solution so I can move on. And I write it off as those other guys have so many people having problems it is just natural that I'd find the resolution on one of their links.
Without knowing whether the solution actually did exist on a Fedora link I would be very much against changing the search behavior that we have now. I like finding answers more than seeing Fedora related links especially in the negative context of having problems.
On the plus side have you ever checked the number of Google matches for the following?
I hate Ubuntu - about 6,420,000 I hate Fedora - about 364,000
Maybe the fact that we can't find problems on Fedora links isn't really such a bad thing.
John
marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org