[Fwd: Fedora looses position in Germany]

[Colin Charles]

This is somewhat interesting - anyone care to post an analysis?

Seems we're unpopular in Germany, in-spite of FUDCon II being there?!?
-- 
Colin Charles, http://www.bytebot.net/

[Jeremy Hogan]

SUSE has always been strong in Germany, and Mandrake has always been
strong in Europe in general (and has a reputation for being an Easy
Linux.)  I think that would explain the numbers, and if they only have
room for two distros, there's no room for a third player (which would
likely be Knoppix in Germany anyway).

--jeremy

On 8/3/05, Colin Charles <byte(a)aeon.com.my&gt; wrote:
>  This is somewhat interesting - anyone care to post an analysis?
>  
>  Seems we're unpopular in Germany, in-spite of FUDCon II being there?!?
>  --
>  Colin Charles, http://www.bytebot.net/
>  
>  
>  
>  ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>  From: Claus Schwarm <c.schwarm(a)gmx.net&gt;
>  To: marketing-list(a)gnome.org
>  Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 14:08:40 +0200
>  Subject: Fedora looses position in Germany
>  
>  Hi!
>  
>  I thought, some of you may find it interesting: Starting with
>  the new edition 08/2005, Germany's magazine for Linux beginners called
>  "EasyLinux" drops Fedora as a supported distribution. [1] (in german)
>  
>  Rationale is an online poll about used distributions answered by 700
>  participants: The results are as follows
>  
>  Suse Linux         94,4 %
>  Mandrake Linux     11,5 %
>  Fedora Core         7,3 %
>  Knoppix + Kanotix  27,3 %
>  Ubuntu Linux       13,9 %
>  Debian GNU/Linux    3,5 %
>  Misc.               2,3 %
>  
>  Numbers don't add up to 100% due to multiple choices.
>  
>  'Supported distribution' means that an article discussing software in
>  the magazine needs tested packages for all supported distribution.
>  
>  >From now on, this will be just SUSE and Mandriva. The addition of DEB
>  packages is currently discussed.
>  
>  To remove installation instructions from articles completely, EasyLinux
>  started in 06/2005 to ship an additional DVD (sic!) to update the
>  supported distributions. The usual CD for discussed software remains.
>  The price for the magazine raised from 3,90 Euro to 5,50 Euro.
>  
>  
>  My 2cts:
>  
>  1.) Linux beginners do know Knoppix, obviously. ;-)
>  
>  2.) Linux beginners still have problems installing third-party software,
>      and they need a journal to get started -- mailing lists discussions,
>      outdated informations on web sites, etc. makes google almost useless
>      for a beginner.
>  
>  2.) Maintainers of end user relevant applications such as Evolution,
>      Totem, Sound-Juicer, etc. may think about using and thus promoting
>      autopackage if that hasn't happend yet -- not for themselves but to
>      help GNOME's smaller FOSS ISV's.
>  
>  Cheers,
>  Claus
>  
>  [1] http://www.easylinux.de/Artikel/ausgabe/2005/08/003-edi/
>  --
>  marketing-list mailing list
>  marketing-list(a)gnome.org
>  http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-list
>  
>  
>  
>  --
>  Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
>  Fedora-marketing-list(a)redhat.com
>  http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
>  
>

[Michael Schwendt]

On 04/08/05, Jeremy Hogan wrote:
>  SUSE has always been strong in Germany,  
And still sells boxes, even in small shops in small cities.

>  and Mandrake has always been
>  strong in Europe in general (and has a reputation for being an Easy
>  Linux.)  I think that would explain the numbers, and if they only have
>  room for two distros, there's no room for a third player (which would
>  likely be Knoppix in Germany anyway). 
It's more than that. EasyLinux (it's not a popular print magazine, is
it?) has been pretty focused on SuSE Linux and Mandrake Linux in the
past. The content of their magazine (also the content of their CD/DVD
compilations) defines their target group.  You [EasyLinux] don't get
any interest from Red Hat Linux or Fedora Core users if you neglect
those distributions. You [EasyLinux] cannot raise interest in your
download section if you only offer a very limited selection of rpms
for FC2, taken from various repositories (like DAG or Freshrpms.net),
when FC3 is current and FC4 is newest.

Where did they announce that online poll? Did they also ask the
subscribers/readers of their more popular "Linux Magazin"?

[Alexander Dalloz]

Am Do, den 04.08.2005 schrieb Colin Charles um 5:24:

>  This is somewhat interesting - anyone care to post an analysis?
>  
>  Seems we're unpopular in Germany, in-spite of FUDCon II being there?!? 
>  Colin Charles, http://www.bytebot.net/ 
SuSE has been strong in Germany because it was a German company, with a
focus on good German localisation and with really good ISDN support
(ISDN is / was up to DSL times, as far as I know, most popular in
Europe/Germany). Certainly some other features like Yast(2) made it
popular, not only for private users but too in companies. The support
the SuSE GmbH offered gave it some leadership for the local market here.
The presence in computer magazines is strong up till now. We'll see what
now happens under Novell's leadership and from the just these days
announced strategy to make SuSE too a community based project[1].
Mandrake became in some way popular in time when it was an enhanced Red
Hat Linux, more focused on desktop user requirements. It early targeted
toward ease of use. I don't think Mandrake (now Mandriva) is strong in
the enterprise market.
Debian is / was popular among the more ambitious Linux users, which in
first line are able and like to configure things through command line
and editing text files rather than using GUI tools. Often Debian users
appear as the "real Linux" users and they strongly claim the FOSS flag.
For private users Debian is attractive as it has the huge package base
and apt to handle packages and dependencies quite easy. In enterprise
area Debian isn't that well spreaded here, because there is no company
behind it and managements often don't like that idea.
It is amazing how fast Ubuntu became popular. This certainly has 2 major
reasons: as a Debian based distribution it is easy for Debian users to
move over and feel at home and the users get a stable release with
relative up to date software versions whereas Debian was either pretty
old (stable Woody) or testing / unstable (Sarge / Sid) with the problems
such a development orientated release gets you.
I don't know how well Knoppix matches into this comparison. Knoppix got
it's user base as being the swiss knife Linux live-CD usage. More and
more magazines reported about that Linux distribution as it is easy to
get an impression about Linux nowadays without need to place it on the
computer - well, that is what a live -CD is :). Until Ubuntu went to
become widely used Knoppix filled the gap for Debian users being
displeased with the situation about the age of stable Debian, running
non-stable otherwise or massively using backports.
Last but not least, Red Hat Linux has never been on so much home user
PCs, but had a better standing in enterprise area. Too with the argument
- like the one with SuSE - that there is a company with support. From my
own experience I can judge how relative difficult it was to get a good
and proper ISDN setup for dial-in with RHL, when SuSE users just made
some choices in ncurses based Yast. Though too Red Hat Linux and SuSE
were / are both RPM based distributions, package management was easier
on SuSE for the normal Linux user. Many Linux users I know still
identify Red Hat with "rpm dependency hell" experiences. Fedora as the
successor of Red Hat Linux is of course done very much to be more user
friendly and desktop user orientated. I see a good chance to get a much
better use base here in Germany. Unfortunately the German edition of the
Red Hat Magazine has been canceled some time ago. It brought Fedora to
some attention, as sold in book shops, kiosks and gas stations. Compared
to the Debian -> Ubuntu situation described above, Fedora does not have
the fundament of users switching from old RHL to current Fedora. Fedora
has to be promoted actively. Sure, it appears in computer magazine
articles, like the well known c't magazine (not only famous in Germany I
think, but beyond borders, read by ambitious computer users). In the
growing notebook user market Fedora though has a difficult standing
against SuSE for instance, which seems to be supporting notebook
specific hardware like WLAN or power-management somewhat overall better
than Fedora.

This is said from my small hill. Not really an analysis but a long time
perspective from mid 90s on. I do not claim this to be the wisdom about
Linux distributions in Germany up to this moment and for future
perspective.

Alexander

[1] http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/62400


-- 
Alexander Dalloz | Enger, Germany | GPG http://pgp.mit.edu 0xB366A773
legal statement: http://www.uni-x.org/legal.html
Fedora Core 2 GNU/Linux on Athlon with kernel 2.6.11-1.35_FC2smp 
Serendipity 18:47:12 up 19 days, 23:19, load average: 0.09, 0.38, 0.47

[Elliot Lee]

On Thu, 4 Aug 2005, Colin Charles wrote:

>  This is somewhat interesting - anyone care to post an analysis?
Someone stuffed the online poll?

A self-selecting sample is not representative of the entire population. 
The key question is whether the magazine can be convinced of their error.

The Gnome marketing team has done some good thinking on the problem of 
market research - it might be useful to talk to them so we can do market 
research to show the magazine its error.

Best,
-- Elliot