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Linux Foundation Asks Who Says "I'm Linux" Best
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Mar 18, 2009 01:32 PM
from the creepy's-definitely-the-way-to-go dept.
from the creepy's-definitely-the-way-to-go dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Everyone has seen Apple's clever 'I'm a Mac' ads, and Microsoft's attempted responses, first with Jerry Seinfeld, and next with 'I'm a PC.' The Linux Foundation tries to fire back with its community-generated 'We're Linux' video contest: all of the eligible videos have now been submitted and are ready to be voted on. Thankfully, the quality of Linux is much higher than the quality of some of these entries: entries range from the hilarious but inappropriate, to the well-made but creepy, to the 'I'm sure it sounded good in your head.' Thankfully, there are one or two that could actually be real commercials."
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Submission: Linux Foundation video contest voting begins by Anonymous Coward
[+]
"We're Linux" Finalists Announced 133 comments
Last month, we mentioned the Linux Foundation's contest asking people to illustrate the idea "We're Linux"; Now, ruphus13 writes "Over 90 entries were received, and the finalists are now out. From the article, 'The contest was spawned from the idea that other software companies were paying millions of dollars to celebrities for endorsements, while Linux was promoted and shared by enthusiastic, passionate, actual users. Contestants were given a simple directive: tell the Linux Foundation what Linux is for you, why you use it, and why you'd encourage others to do the same. Humor and professional production quality weren't required — it just had to be genuine.' Details on the finalists can be found on the Linux Foundation Video site here."
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Evil Geniuses Use Linux (Score:5, Funny)
ahttp://ubergeek.tv/article.php?pid=54
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Whatever happened to predictability?
The milkman, the paperboy, and late night tv?
Re:Evil Geniuses Use Linux (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Evil Geniuses Use Linux (Score:4, Funny)
Alex, the question is...... 3 things your wife likes more than you?
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And that so sums up Linux... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And that so sums up Linux... (Score:5, Interesting)
It'd be nice if Canonical (or any other serious player, or especially a consortium) released ads which played on Linux' strengths and dispelled the myths of modern Linux. They could show a stylish but smart person being the Linux user and his curious but skeptical friend asking the questions:
But more importantly, Linux must go on the offensive. They must stress that they are capable of doing fancy stuff(show the oblig compiz-fusion screenshot), and they should mention the freedom that users will have to do whatever they want with their computer while reminding the users how annoying iTunes is for trying to install other crap under your nose. Maybe have a cheap shot at the "Vista capable" fiasco and the fact that Vista and 7 are the same thing are both prime targets for malware. Stress that users do have a choice!
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Re:And that so sums up Linux... (Score:5, Insightful)
You ever notice how nobody really talks about features the way you're describing? It's because that's basically nerd porn. Everyone else would just go "jesus, that's boring" and tune out.
This is something most of the Linux community doesn't get: People don't give a fuck about computers. It's like a car: the only time they care is when it isn't doing what they want it to.
And, right now, it's a lot easier to get a Linux machine to the isn't-doing-what-they-want-it-to point than a Windows machine. (If you have to mention WINE, you pretty much already failed. WINE is an admirable effort that requires a level of technical proficiency or at least willingness to Google to get a lot of stuff running well--neither of which are things end users will do.)
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Re:And that so sums up Linux... (Score:5, Informative)
Well said. Put slightly differently [hbs.edu] by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt:
People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.
There's a reason why most Mac ads talk about how the Mac makes "real stuff" (photos, video, music, email, setting up a new printer...) easy: it's the holes they're talking about, not the drill.
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Re:And that so sums up Linux... (Score:5, Insightful)
Another great way of putting the same idea. And while I agree I think that there is a bit more to the idea than even the previous poster says.
Small % of people - Those in the know about a product and want all the 'nerd pron'. (Or to put it another way they know all about their needs.) To such people ads that show all the flash over substance are meh at best. However...that's kind of the whole point. The mass scale marketing can't be tailored for this very small set of people.
Slightly larger % of people - These people are not the techs who are in the above category but rather the managers of those techs. Or the 'enthusiast' part of the market. The kind of people, for example, who do dual-phase cooling on chips that were designed for simple HSF setups. Still however this is not the target that mass scale marketing has to aim for.
Nearly every other bit of the % of people - The masses who want that hole not the bit. This is the target audience that when thinking about mass marketing your looking at. For example when I think about a fan belt for my car I sure as hell don't fall into either of the above two categories. I'm just looking for a part that will get the job done and not cost me an arm and a leg.
And mind you there are those to whom fan belts are important things that they want to know all sorts of details about when they think about them. But much like when I think about my OSs don't fall into that 3rd category.
And therein lies the rub. Most of us who have been involved in FOSS fall directly into the 1st or 2nd category in my list. And as such we make very poor advocates for it at times. Because the majority of people don't really care about FEATURE X that to us is really really cool and important.
This is getting way too long winded so I'll just close in saying whenever any of the great FOSS conversion stores are shared, most of the best ones include users who just want something that works. Not the other 99% of the nerd pron that we like to go on about.
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Re:And that so sums up Linux... (Score:4, Insightful)
Handyman's rule: all tools are hammers except chisels which are screwdrivers. What you buy something for may not be what it gets used to do.
Then explain the number of pristine, never to be used and decidedly overpowered tools sitting in many 'crasftsman' garages? I always felt Levitt was missing the mark. A lot of purchase decisions are about having the rights quarter-inch drill, regardless of its utility for making holes.
People will buy a car to drive on a road, but what car they buy and why may have nothing at all to do with driving. Operating Systems today are not a choice about practicality or functionality, but of style and ethos. The hobbyist feel and methods of Linux are not that far removed from the home mechanic tinkering with his hot rod that never leaves the driveway.
Linux won't garner marketshare based on being the quarter-inch hole maker of Personal Computers. We have Macs and corporate-desktop Windows for that.
Linux.com has to differentiate Linux from its competitors and show that it's the sexiest drill in the cabinet. Pasty nerds arguing over the last donut doesn't do either of these. Honestly, Ubuntu's graphics artists and Novell's XGL efforts did more to make people say "I want that on my computer" than 5 years of making Office 20XD6 work a little better on crappy hardware.
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Re:And that so sums up Linux... (Score:5, Insightful)
I was going to reply to him, but you seem to actually understand.
He has no clue about advertising. It has absolutely NOTHING (none, nada, nil, zip, zero, nuthin') to do with the product. It has everything to do with getting the viewer's attention, and keeping it for the 15 to 30 seconds that the ad runs, *AND* mixed in somewhere show the product.
Like, this would make a killer ad..
Show a jet fighter buzzing the surface of the ocean. It fires a missile. WOOSH! People like jet fighters. They like big explosions. The flash and the noise will get (or keep) them looking.
The camera follows the missile. You see the girls on the beach. It flys down a road with flashy cars. it buzzes some other flashy thing. Then you see it going straight into a building with a big Linux sign on it.
Big explosion. Dust settles (quickly, we're at like 20 seconds already), and the sign is still standing.
No words. No dialogue. Just music (optionally, but suggested), jet engine noise, rocket noise, and explosion noise.
People who want to sell their product always want to include all kinds of crap about their product. Consumers don't care. 99% of the people driving cars (like in your example) don't know anything about them. They can't tell you what engine it has. Half of them can't even tell you the model without going outside to look. Everyone can say if it's pretty or ugly. There are some people who are really into their cars (like me) who can run down every part in it accurately. Ads for my car had nothing to do with the features of the car.
Here was the short version (30 sec) [youtube.com]. It doesn't even say the name until the end. Lots of noise and effects.
This was the long promo video [youtube.com]. Only the first 45 seconds showed up on TV, as I recall. Again, lots of noise and effects. Even I, a TransAm owner, didn't care to watch it past 1 minute, when they started babbling about the features.
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Re:And that so sums up Linux... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, exactly!
I use Ubuntu, I went cold turkey from Windows eleven years ago with Red Hat 5... and I'm *still* just deeply frustrated at how many silly little things aren't on anyone's priority list to get fixed.
Not only that, most of the big projects (KDE, GNOME, OpenOffice) seem to have a definite philosophy of 'that's NOT broken and we WON'T fix it!' for things which quite patently ARE broken.
Let's pass over with all decent haste the absolutely insane affair of 'spatial windows' in Nautilus (wtf? Windows 95 Explorer had a 'spatial' mode, it was just smart enough to *also* offer a tree browsing view for people who wanted to do serious file management) and give thanks that the Ubuntu people at least had the insight to override the GNOME people and turn *that* craziness off.
Let's ignore for now the equally insane rush to *remove* copy-pastable file path text fields from dialog boxes and replace them with un-automatable candy-bar strips of buttons. Because, um, nobody uses keyboards anymore? I guess that's a step 'forward'. (Oh, yes, there's a magic hidden alt-key to bring up the real text field... but you'll never know what it is, because we don't talk about that.)
Let's also be thankful that *finally* some 'fully packaged' applications *now* start putting in menu entries.
No, let's talk about the more serious issues: how there are about five separate, incompatible 'official' object systems (GObject, CORBA/Bonobo, D-BUS, KParts, Firefox's XPCom, OpenOffice's UNO) before we even think about .NET/Mono or Java integration.
How there's still no sensible shared configuration system - after a zillion false starts, we still have gconf (two versions of) for GNOME, and the horde of weird formats in /etc for everyone else. Different /etc layout for each distribution, of course, despite what FHS tried to do.
How although we have X, which is fully networkable, if your X Server crashes - by definition a component which could be *on another machine entirely* - then ALL YOUR RUNNING X APPLICATIONS have to be restarted! The best feature of X, completely subverted just by bad 'standard' configuration.
And yes, how every 'desktop environment' insists on reinventing the API wheel and building 'virtual filesystems' ON TOP OF its own API rather than making them available to the Posix level with something like FUSE.
And then there's the pain of device management, like webcams. If it autodetects at startup, it'll probably work. If not.... good luck.
I love Linux, but... we seem to be settling for far less than we had in the 80s, even. At least then we had dreams of what a desktop *could* be.
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Re:And that so sums up Linux... (Score:5, Funny)
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Already Slashdotted (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Already Slashdotted (Score:5, Funny)
1237394160000
I know it was a joke, but I really couldn't help myself.
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Didn't Novell already do this? (Score:5, Informative)
Two years ago? [wired.com]
Re:Didn't Novell already do this? (Score:5, Funny)
Shhhh!! It's just a talent contest for the geeks who didn't get to be in one in high school. Don't spoil their chance to wear a nice gown and walk down the aisle just once.
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I am Linux (Score:5, Funny)
Oops (Score:5, Funny)
Linux marketing = epic win.
Very fitting (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Very fitting (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually it be more along the lines of someone suggesting to the Linux guys that they should do something and the Linux guys telling the person "go make the commercial yourself".
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Re:Very fitting (Score:4, Insightful)
Well as usual with Linux, they show up late to the game
Not quite -- the "he's linux" commercial preceeded either the Mac or PC ad series. Perhaps the only usual thing is that Apple and MS take undeserved credit.
and produce a half ass working team that people find unbearable to watch while the hardcore crowd yells at them for being peons.
I found http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwL0G9wK8j4 [youtube.com] to be a fully working team, coached by Wooden no less.
But hey we can criticize MS/Apple all day, but when it comes to Linux we have to treat them with special care because they 'do it for free'.
No, we can criticize MS because we've proven in court they illegally use their monopoly to extinguish competition in other areas, and Apple because they lock down both their hardware and software. Linux is the best open source OS there is, and anyone who cares about software freedom ought to care about it.
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Since the server already melted.... (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately the server already melted so here are a few videos Novell produced to market Linux.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3AXo5i_XYI [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjJePMwEMWg [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8WNPvjtjQg [youtube.com]
Samuel L Jackson.... (Score:5, Funny)
Reprising his role as Jules from Pulp Fiction:
Jules: [Jules shoots the man on the couch, who turns out to be Steve Jobs, turns to talk to Bill Gates] I'm sorry, did I break your concentration? I didn't mean to do that. Please, continue, you were saying something about best intentions. What's the matter? Oh, you were finished! Well, allow me to retort. What does Linus Torvalds look like?
Bill: What?
Jules: What OS do you run?
Bill: What? What? Wh - ?
Jules: "What" ain't no OS I've ever heard of. They have a usable command line in What?
Bill: What?
Jules: Usable command line, mother fucker, do you have one?
Bill: Yes! Yes!
Jules: Then you know what I'm sayin'!
Bill: Yes!
Jules: Describe what Linus Torvalds looks like!
Bill: What?
Jules: Say 'what' again. Say 'what' again, I dare you, I double dare you motherfucker, say what one more Goddamn time!
[end scene, fade out with Linux, Operating System of Bad Mother Fuckers everywhere]
What a second... (Score:5, Insightful)
Aren't linux machines still Personal Computers?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
At some point, PC became synonymous with Microsoft Windows. I am not sure when that happened. All I know is that I didn't get a memo.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
PC became largely synonymous with "something running one of Microsoft's current set of operating system offerings" at about the time IBM licensed MS-DOS as PC-DOS and distribtued it as the standard OS for the IBM PC, and it was cemented when the Mac became the main hardware competitor to the PC and its clones, and so comparisons tended to be PC vs. Mac whether or not they were hardware comparisons, OS comparisons, or, comparisons of the combination
Re:What a second... (Score:5, Funny)
Mac: "I'm a Mac."
Linux: "I'm a PC. Because you see Linux actually runs on PC hardware, so it's a fallacy to refer to only Windoze machines a PCs.
Mac: "ummm..."
Linux (standing up, and brushing cheeto dust from beard): "In fact, to be pedantic, Mac's are PCs too in the more general sense of the term since PC stands for personal computer, and Mac's are certainly computers designed for personal use. Really we are all PCs. I really hate how M$ has appropriated that term for it's own platforms when the term is equally applicable to linux machines as well..."
Mac: "please...kill me now."
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Re:What a second... (Score:5, Funny)
Linux: "And that's another thing. 'kill' is a UNIX command, and as we all know, Macs are UNIX machines underneath (technically BSD UNIX), so, yeah, you could invoke 'kill' once you know your PID. Really, you're not a Mac, you're a UNIX machine, derived via a NextStep machine and tweaked to look like a Mac. You're a prettied-up UNIX-like machine just like me! We're practically brothers!" [Big, kind of scary-looking, cheetoes-laden smile at the end as he tries to hug Mac]
Mac: [Slowly starts stepping sideways out of the picture]
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Re:What a second... (Score:5, Funny)
God, I can just see RMS doing that commercial. Only the commercial would be about 15 minutes long, and would contain multiple instances when he exclaimed "GNU stands for GNU's not UNIX! It's a HACK!!!"
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Re:What a second... (Score:4, Funny)
Mac: "I'm a PC"
PC: "And I'm a P - whaa? Goddamnit Mac, have you been talking to Linux again?."
* PC bitchslaps Mac upside the head
Mac (hurt): "Aww, Pee Cee."
* Linux jumps up and down laughing maniacally
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facepalm (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't part of the point of linux that there isn't a face to it?
Linux is my mailserver
Linux runs my mythtv
Linux runs on my access point
Linux runs on my sister's laptop.
Linux runs on our company's DVR.
Linux is not an operating system for the desktop or for the server, or for the embedded device. Linux is an operating system for EVERYTHING.
Its like a ball of clay, endless potential and totally at the hands of the artist.
mac vs pc: stallman vs. torvalds (Score:5, Funny)
Torvalds: "Hello, I'm linux."
Stallman: "You should really refer to him as GNU/linux, and me too."
Torvalds: "We reliably operate huge numbers of servers, embedded devices and personal computers and have support for a a huge array of hardware devices."
Stallman: "But most importantly, we allow you to have the freedom share your ideas with others and be able to use other's ideas enriching all of us simultaneously."
Torvalds: "...and making big bank."
Stallman: "uhh, what?"
Hi, I'm Linux (Score:5, Funny)
Hi, I'm linux and the load on my server is getting very h
404 file not found
Script (Score:5, Funny)
[Cut to suburban home basement. Room contains boxspring mattress, cinderblock and plank bookshelf, and cable spool table. On the floor is indoor/outdoor kitchen-print carpet. On the walls are a selection of tattered scifi movie posters, including Natalie Portman in torn jumpsuit poster from Episode II. Glow in the dark stars dot the ceiling, from which dangle several hand painted styrofoam "planets". There is a stack of obsolete game consoles in the corner. Computer in aluminum and plexiglass supertower case with purple lighting is next to table, on which are two unmatched LCD monitors. Pale overweight adolescent enters from stage left. He is wearing black jeans, and black tee-shirt with penguin and wildebeest motif. The hair is short spiked dyed pink, but black roots are prominent.]
Adolescent: "I am Linux! Ph3&r me!"
[Cue jingle. Wipe to series logo.]
Tux is the perfect face (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if it's been done (links are dead to me), but why not make Tux the face of Linux in an ad?
Get a bunch of Tuxes made in various sizes (or digitally modelled) and show people doing things in their daily routine, with the penguins replacing phones, laptops, servers, embedded devices, etc.
And at the end of the ad, the simple text:
Linux, you're already using it.
Re:I'm Debian (Score:4, Informative)
Really? I thought for sure slackware would be it.
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Re:Slackware (Score:5, Funny)
Like the God Amen, Slackware created himself.
I thought that was Gentoo.
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Re:Slackware (Score:5, Funny)
No, Gentoo is the future incarnation, which is yet to finish creating itself.
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Re:Slackware (Score:5, Funny)
"And Lo! The Lord did sayeth 'emerge earth' and he did wait five days and five nights. Verily he did then adjust his holy USE flags, and then did emerge again!"
Spoiler alert, he eventually created the world after spending a lot of time compiling from source. Later, on the forums, he bragged he did it in seven days and that everybody who couldn't do it that was either a noob or needed a faster computer.
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Re:Slackware (Score:5, Funny)
"And Lo! The Lord did sayeth 'emerge earth' and he did wait five days and five nights. Verily he did then adjust his holy USE flags, and then did emerge again!"
Spoiler alert, he eventually created the world after spending a lot of time compiling from source. Later, on the forums, he bragged he did it in seven days and that everybody who couldn't do it that was either a noob or needed a faster computer.
That came back to bite him when he had to do a zero write flood and clean install from a huge arkive (sounds like Ubu' to me).
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Re:Slackware (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine His surprise upon learning that one of His angels had the evil bit set...
And thus was the first daemon spawned.
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Re:Slackware (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I'm Debian (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I'm Debian (Score:4, Funny)
Slackware ended up being a good system too, and much earlier.
p.s. Debian 1.0 would have been released a year earlier, but they were still arguing whether the DFSG was in violation of the DFSG.
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Re:I'm Debian (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I'm Debian (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Link to youtube videos (Score:5, Informative)
Here's one (the one the submitter called one of the better ones):
Challenges at the Office [youtube.com]
Some of the other ones are under the related videos.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This [youtube.com] is the "hilarious but inappropriate" one. The other two are NOT on Youtube, acually, but as far as I can tell, they're here [linux-foundation.org] and here [linux-foundation.org], respectively, in wget-able FLV glory.
Re:Any Comerical like this would be fitting. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, then that's your angle, right?
Mac: Hi, I'm a Mac ... er ... nevermind!
Linux: Well, you're not really a Mac, right?
Mac: Of course I am.
Linux: "Macs" [using air-quotes, here] now use PC processors and an operating system that's based on Unix and a user-interface that's derived from NeXT. They have about as much connection to the Mac that Apple introduced in 1984 as MTV has to music on television.
PC: Heh
Linux: And what are you laughing at?
PC: Well, I'm a PC, so that just seemed sort of funny.
Linux: You're not a PC.
PC: OK, that's just not funny. I'm *the* PC
Linux: A PC is a hardware platform. In fact, it's the same hardware platform that your friend, here, runs on. You're just Windows.
PC: Alright smart guy; what are you then?
Linux: I'm Linux
PC/Mac: [unison] What's a Linux?
Linux: I'm a clone of the Unix operating system that Mac is based on, but I run on just about anything more powerful than a calculator, including some of the most powerful supercomputers on Earth.
Mac: Sounds like you're spread sort of thin.
Linux: I wouldn't talk. You have versions that run on music players and cell-phones these days.
[Mac shuffles feet]
PC: Aren't you written by a bunch of college kids?
Linux: I suppose the employees of IBM, the NSA, Oracle and Google were in college once, yeah. Weren't you the product of a college drop out?
PC: No, he just stole the
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