Re: real marketing or just catchy slogans?

[Gezim Hoxha <gezimetc telus net>]

On Sat, 2005-12-10 at 11:58 +0000, Tom Chance wrote:
> On Friday 09 December 2005 22:12, Gezim Hoxha wrote:
> > I agree that the next step would be to install Linux, however when they
> > are greeted by a different desktop, be it KDE or whatever, they're going
> > to want to know what happened to the nice looking lovely desktop (gnome)
> > and they'll ask their local LUG or someone who supplied the distro for
> > help.
>
> How many people will have this reaction? Where's your evidence? What makes any 
> of you think that your personal experiences are a good guide to understanding 
> GNOME's target markets?

This was a pure opinion piece and I have no proof whatsoever. As far as
what makes me think that my personal experiences are a good guide to
understanding GNOME's target markets, nothing. I guess I made two
assumptions:
1.) that people like myself would be one of GNOME's target markets 
2.) and I assumed people are like me (doesn't everybody?). 


> In my limited experience with friends and family, they've really not been too 
> bothered whether it was GNOME or KDE. I've had people try the Ubuntu LiveCD 
> and be perfectly happy when they got SuSE installed, and likewise happy when 
> they saw Kubuntu on my machine then got Ubuntu installed (pre-Kubuntu ;-). 
Assuming the GNOME in the above distros was a version where the
Applications menu was at the top, your finding is a surprising one.
Didn't people notice that the applications menu (in KDE) is all of a
sudden at the bottom? Didn't they see the difference?

> What proportion of GNOME's target markets who receive a LiveCD will know what 
> a LUG is, where to find one and who will actually go and ask them (and get a 
> good answer to) the question: "How do I replace this with GNOME?" How would 
> you find the answer to this question?
You make a good point. Again, I was assuming people are like me, which
isn't always the case (Surprise, surprise :). Aside: this reminds me of
Family Guy when Peter notices he's fat. 
But, I guess, we shouldn't waste time discussing this, rather we should
design some sort of surveys and get our target markets to fill--first
though, we got to figure out who our target markets is and make it
official on a web site or wiki or whatver. 

> I find KDE more usable than GNOME.
I guess the response to that is, we don't care. Once we figure out that
you and I and Bill Roberts is in our target markets _then_ we'll want to
know about his likes and dislikes.  


> Without some prior analysis of GNOME's target markets it makes no sense to 
> talk about people who will ask their LUG or supplier; it makes no sense to 
> even talk about people wanting "the nice looking lovely desktop" instead of 
> whatever they get in the end, because you have no evidence to suggest that 
> (a) that's why they liked GNOME and (b) they won't think the desktop they got 
> wasn't also a "nice looking lovely desktop".

Well said. I completely agree. 

Regards,
-Gezim