Workstation text on Fedora.next website

[Michael Catanzaro]

Oooh, good job, marketing folks.

On Wed, 2014-11-12 at 11:55 -0500, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> (1) Is the text description of the product acceptable?  If not,
> specifically what changes are needed to make it so?

I'm going to list a few minor concerns/suggestions first. I have one
important point, listed last:

* The first thing I see is "Developers, this is the Linux desktop you've
been waiting for" next to a picture of a laptop computer. Let's look for
a different word than "desktop" since it has multiple meanings and I
wasn't expecting to see it next to a picture of a laptop. I think "OS"
would work best here, or even "workstation."

* Nitpick: stylistically, I don't like the ampersand in "hobbyists &
students," that's not really typical or expected. Simply writing out
"and" would look better. [1] has some guidance on when to use these.

* "Fedora Workstation is a reliable, user-friendly, and powerful
operating system for laptops and PC hardware." This is a little
confusing. Is a laptop not "PC hardware?" Does this mean I can run
Fedora on any laptop, but only desktops that came pre-installed with
Windows? ("I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" teaches us that the world is divided
between PCs and Macs, after all.) So it might be better to say
"...operating system for laptop and desktop computers" or something
along those lines instead.

* The quote from Christine Flood (which I guess you know is duplicated
again at the bottom, as a placeholder I guess?) is next to a picture of
someone who is most probably not Christine Flood; that looks a little
odd. Though probably most people won't be paying enough attention to
notice.

* The image of the laptop next to "Minimalist, sleek user interface"
with GNOME Terminal open was taken at a time when there was a style bug
with Terminal, causing the background to appear pure black instead of
the intended dark gray. This has since been fixed, and it'd be better if
the image was updated, if reasonable.

* Major concern: this works well for an advertisement targeted to
developers, but in its current form it's not suitable to be the landing
page where we try to convince users to download Fedora Workstation due
to its intense focus on developer experience. By omission, this makes it
seem that Fedora Workstation is only appropriate for developers, which
is not the impression we want to give. "Developers, this is the Linux
desktop you've been waiting for" -- the first text I see on that page --
immediately excludes anyone who isn't a software developer, and that
line is going to convince a lot of people considering Fedora for the
first time to not download Fedora Workstation. The goal should be to
target developers, yes, but while also presenting Fedora as suitable for
non-developers, and without giving the impression that it is anything
other than a general-purpose operating system. Fedora Workstation is a
big marketing change, and hopefully lots of people will be checking out
Fedora for the first time -- it's a great chance to pick up as many
users of other distros as possible, both developers and non-developers.
So, this needs some more work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand#Usage
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