Killer apps/"selling" points of FC and GNU/Linux

[Sean Middleditch]

This getting off-topic for this list.  Please send future replies to me
and not the list.  Or at least move this to fedora-list and not the
development list.

On Tue, 2004-11-16 at 21:53 +0100, Kyrre Ness Sjobak wrote:
> But then Novel, RedHat, part of the comunity etc. - i.e. firms and
> people involved - should give them that reason. We should produce those
> "cool" things everybody just got to have - and the solution is Linux!

I think you missed half of what I said.  There is nothing you can
produce on Linux that isn't going to also exist in some form on Windows,
and there will still be tons of things on Windows that don't exist on
Linux.

Again, what is the "problem" you are trying to solve?  You even did
exactly what I told you not to do - you just shouted out that "the
solution is Linux!" without stating what it's a solution to.  You want
to convert Windows users for absolutely no good reason that I can
ascertain.

> 
> Mac has understood this. Now "everybody" wants a mac.

No, they don't.  Less people want a Mac than the people who want a Linux
PC, according to some counts.  The only people I've ever seen want a Mac
were people who were already using Linux, or people who's family or
workplace were already Mac-users.

The average guy does not want a Mac for the exact same reason that the
average guy does not want Linux.  The only real thing Macs do better
than Linux is software installation, namely in that it's possible
without using a shell or needing deep yum/apt-foo.

> 
> first thing i can come up with (maybe not so usefull, but really cool)
> that *might* be a killer app is Sun's looking glas 3D desktop.
> 
> http://wwws.sun.com/software/looking_glass/

If that is what the OSS movement calls a killer app then it's painfully
clear why people stick with Windows.  That app has absolutely no
practical purpose.  It's eye candy at most, and it isn't even
particularly *good* eye candy.  Most of the demos I've seen of it show
all these 3D structures that actually make the desktop *harder* to use.

Looking Glass people did the exact same thing I accused you of doing -
they found a solution without a problem.  They have no freakin' clue
what to do with Looking Glass or how to make it useful to anyone, but
they developed it anyhow just because they can.

> 
> Kyrre
> 
-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis at awesomeplay.com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.