hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0573.txt

Episode: 573
Title: HPR0573: Linux in a Ham Shack
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0573/hpr0573.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 23:24:34

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Alright everybody, thanks for tuning in to another episode, this is number 39 of Linux
in the handshake.
I am Russ, K5TUX, I am broadcasting from the pine forest between the peaks in North
Central Arkansas.
Can Richard is not here this week?
Certainly circumstances have been conspiring to keep Richard away from all kinds of things
lately.
And we're sorry that he's not able to be with us here tonight, but we do have a special
guest host who is going to try and quasi adequately fill the shoes that Richard so hugely
wears.
Anyway, from the IRC and from various other podcasts and a new addition as co-host
to Linux Basement, we have Claudio M, so welcome to the show, Claudio.
Oh, thanks, thanks Russ, glad to be here.
Well, it's good to have you, especially since you're willing to come on short notice,
like real short notice, since I said, hey Claudio, I want to do this in a couple hours
and you said, sure, as long as I can put my kids in the bath and get them to bed before
I have to talk to you, then that's fine.
So thankfully I managed to do that, cut it real close, but I managed to do it.
That's excellent.
So they're all snug in their beds and not going to worry about having them wake up in the
middle and come say, hey, Teddy, can I get a glass of milk or anything like that in the
middle of the show?
Well, I can guarantee they're asleep.
I can't guarantee that they'll stay that way for very long.
No, they're pretty good.
I can't complain.
Well, okay, so if we have him prop to additional co-hosts, we'll get them in on the round table
and we'll ask how they feel about Linux on the desktop.
How's that?
Well, I'm sure they'd be fine with it.
I mean, they run Ubuntu on their PC, so.
So not big gamers yet.
Not a lot of first-person shooters, no.
My eldest and I sometimes play a few games like we'll play with the World of Padmen and
that one's kind of a first-person shooter, but there's no gore, there's nothing like
that.
It's all like, you shoot paintballs and all this kind of weird stuff, but it's a pretty
cool game.
I think it's based off of the same engine that Open Arena is, so we play that, but we
also play Battle for Wessonaut.
So we do get some gaming in.
Well, that's pretty good.
Give them away from those games that involve, like, drugs and hookers and all that kind of
thing.
Yeah, no, that's for everybody else in the RC.
All right, well, excellent.
Okay, so before we get into a couple of topics, let's get a little of your qualifications
down.
So you can tell us all about why you think your qualifies to be here and to talk about
Linux and all of those kind of things.
I know there's kind of a loaded question and it encompasses a lot of area, but I'm sure
you'll handle it just fine.
Well, you did ask me to come on, so I think in that respect, I guess I was qualified.
Well, I've been a Linux user for quite a long time, actually was originally a big-time
Apple user.
It had been an Apple user since the Apple2C that I got when I was a kid, and I've been
pretty much a Mac fan since up until I would say mid-90s, I was introduced to Linux by
my boss because I was working at a, I started working at a, and a local ISP, and he pretty
much told me about Linux and the whole idea behind it and free software and open source.
And it really intrigued me, and so I figured, let me give this a try and let me start messing
with it.
So, he had some, I think a copy of Red Hat somewhere, and he set it up for me on a PC
Out work, and I started messing around with it.
And it was a far cry from what I was used to on the Mac side, but I just was so intrigued
by the whole Unix-like environment, and the fact that it was free software in the sense
that it was free, as in Libra, as in being free for freedom, I just thought that was
a really awesome concept, and you could do whatever you want with it.
You could modify it, you could do anything that you want, you weren't limited by anything
in it.
So I kind of kept that, and eventually I got myself a copy of Red Hat 4.2, and I had
that installed in an OPC at home, and at the time I couldn't afford a Mac personally.
So I stuck around with a PC running Windows, and I do a booted between Red Hat and that.
And gradually I kind of built my skills with Linux, and I became more familiar with it.
I moved through various distributions, I moved through SUSE back when it was 6.3 days before
Novel took it over.
I was using Linux Mandrake before it became Mandrava, I played with Debian, and then the
momentous occasion for me was when I encountered Slackware, and I figured let me give Slackware
a try because I keep hearing great things about it, and when I tried version 8 it made me
cry, and then I was like well this might be too much for me, so I played with Debian
a bit, and I really like Debian, and then I figured let me give Slackware another try, and
so I went back with version 9, and I really said I'm going to stick with it, I'm going
to throw myself at it, I'm going to read the fine manual as they like to say, and I have
to be honest with you, I learned so much with Slackware.
And if anybody has ever heard the saying, give a person Red Hat, he learned Red Hat, give
a person, Debian, he learned Debian, but give a person Slackware and he learned Linux,
I will tell you it definitely applies, because I really a lot of what I learned through Slackware,
I applied on all the distributions that I've used, and it's helped me understand Linux
a whole lot and better.
So my main distribution is now, we're talking about since I started in 1996, I've been
with Linux, I went exclusively, I would say 2003, 2004 is when I finally just said forget
Windows, going exclusive to Linux, I was still using OS 10, and that was mainly my primary
OS at the time on the Mac, but currently, Linux has pretty much taken over that space,
so, you know, Linux is pretty much my primary OS, OS 10, I would say is my secondary,
Windows is, you know, if I got to do it, I got to do it and have no other choice, but
right now my, the distributions I usually run are Slackware, Ubuntu, which may be switching,
Debian, and I've been, I've been playing around with Fedora with this new version 13 they
have, and it's pretty good, I'm liking it, so, so there you go, and, you know, I've been
involved as much as I can in spreading, you know, in spreading the, you know, the word
about free software and open source, especially at work, I work as a computer tech for
two elementary schools, and, you know, it's a very Microsoft-centric environment, and
at first, you know, when I, when I, you know, I started getting involved in the community
of techs that we have in our district, it was a bit tough because a lot of them were like,
oh, this Linux, oh, you know, whatever, they kind of blew it off, but, you know, I kind
of kept that, and I shared, we have, there's a forum that we visit called Miami Techs,
we kind of share information through there, kind of like you would on any forum, but, you
know, I do my best to kind of provide information regarding to open source and free software, and
actually did one time I had done an install fast, and we had a good turn, we had decent turnout,
I would say maybe about 15 people showed up, so it's been pretty good, and a lot of,
a lot of people starting to use Linux and their environments for different things for, you know,
diagnostic, as a diagnostic tool, as a server, different things like that, so, you know, I'm
pretty happy with that, and thankfully there have been other people that have also been spreading
the word about free software and open source and Linux and whatnot, so, but yeah, it's been a lot
of fun, then I recently joined on as co-hosts for Linux basement, which Chad Wallenberg, who's
the founder of the podcast, he had asked me if I was interested, and I said, sure, why not?
And it was, you know, it was a little scary for me, because I had never considered doing a podcast,
I kind of figured, you know, if I was going to, now I had been asked before if I wanted to do
something like that, and I was like, well, you know what, I don't want to reinvent the wheels
already, ton of podcasts out there, but I figured, you know what, I might as well, you know, let me give
this a try, it sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun, and I was right, it's been a blast
so far, and Chad has been awesome to do the podcast with, and I'm thankful, Dan, for giving me the
opportunity. So, there you have it. Well, excellent, and I know that I've been listening to Linux
basement, and a couple of things have happened to it since you've been on the show, the first of
which is that it comes out more regularly, which is a great thing for a podcast.
Yes. We wanted to make sure we could do it, because we both have families, and we both have,
you know, they take up a lot of our time, and that's not a bad thing, but it sometimes makes
it a little tough to stick with a podcast regularly. So, we had debated us to, you know,
do we want to do this weekly, do we want to do this biweekly, or a fortnight, as they say, and
over at Colonel Panics, but I figured doing it every other week would be easier for us,
so that may change, we don't know yet, but for right now, that's pretty much working for us.
Yeah, fortnightly works out for us as well, and I think it works out for a lot of podcasts,
I know a lot of them do it, for those who aren't dedicated to it, for, you know,
for those whom a podcast is not their primary effort, every fortnight or every month seems to be
about right. Once you get into doing it every week, it's pretty much what you do.
Right, right, absolutely. It's possible, man, to doing something like that, because I kind of
been thinking about it, but you know, I got to go through it with my approval process over here,
aka the wife, and make sure that everyone's cool with it, but for right now, doing it fortnightly
seems to be the best. Right, and the other thing that's happened since Linux Basement has taken
you on, interestingly, is the quality has gone up considerably, not the chat had a bad podcast
before, but when you have two people discussing a topic as opposed to one person evangelizing,
it always tends to be a little more interesting, and I'm sure you've seen that from the inside as
well as heard about it from the outside. Almost definitely, most definitely. I've noticed it myself,
sometimes we don't, you know, Chad and I don't always agree. So, you know, it's nice to be able to
have that interaction, you know, back and forth between between two people, especially when they
don't agree, because you get two different perspectives of a particular topic, and some say,
you know, I'll get aside from Chad that maybe I hadn't thought about with regards to particular
topic and vice versa. So, it's nice to have that back and forth, you know, and we usually agree
on a lot of things, but if we would always agree, it'd be kind of boring. It wouldn't be, it
would probably be no better than having just one person there, but I do agree. I mean, even before
I started on, I always enjoyed Linux Basement, Chad has always had some great topics on there,
and tutorials as well. I mean, he was always, his tutorials have always been very good and very
thorough, so I definitely give him props for that. And it probably doesn't hurt to both of you come
from an educational background. Yeah, we do kind of have, we do kind of have that, that common bond
there, you know, and we look at things from that perspective, so I know recently we had discussed
or at least Chad had mentioned having to purchase licenses for Photoshop CS5 and how much that came
to be, that came to cost. And yeah, I kind of understood where he was coming from because we have
a very similar situation with software like that, where, you know, for some reason or other,
they decided to go on a license, you know, per license purchase as opposed to a, you know, a blanket
kind of license for their software. And, you know, like Chad, I've always been one to push, you know,
free and open source software over proprietary software, and that makes sure I even talk to my
administration about it and everything. You know, sometimes it doesn't go over well, but you know,
I keep, keep finding a good fight. Well, that's excellent. That's kind of what we do over here,
as a matter of fact, I'm thinking about, as I've been, as I went through school, when computers really
came into the picture, which was in high school, or late junior high, and into, into high school,
we started out with, with Apple, of course, that, that seemed to be the way to go because Apple
kind of, not that they started everything, but they, they were the big market early in the days
of the personal computer. So, educators went with Apple, and then, for some reason, in my college
days, we were still using Apple's, and then switched over to, believe it or not, Nobel and Netwear.
So, oh wow, yeah. And Microsoft was in there a little bit, you know, on the desktop somewhat.
It was in the real early days. In fact, I'm not even sure when I started out if Windows for
Workgroups had been released yet. I think it was still the 3-1 version. Linux really wasn't around.
We were using Unix. BSD Unix was around. We had, also, CMS running on Vax hardware and stuff
like that. But Linux was nowhere in that picture, nowhere at all. And it was nice when it finally
came around, at least for me. It was pretty much like that with, with me. I mean, I, I had always
been surrounded with Apple's and, and I'm, I'm talking like Apple twos and stuff. I had learned
basic on the Apple II. So, actually, I learned basic way before that on, on a Commodore pet.
So, there was when I was in elementary and then, as I went to the higher grade levels
about middle school, they had Apple twos and I learned basic there. But yeah, there was this
kind of transition. When I started college, I had already moved to Miami, which is where I reside now.
And I was attending the college here. And I was studying town engineering, actually. And
most of the computers that they had there, of course, they were max. So Apple was big time there
in that respect. But as far as any other labs, they always had the PCs there. And yeah, Linux never
really caught on until, at least for me in an educational environment, I would say, well, I'm
still, I'm still really waiting for at least in the K312 area. You know, it's, I think it's mainly
the, the texts that are at their respective schools that kind of make it apparent to everyone
that there is something called Linux out there. But at least that's been my experience. And that's
what I try to do anyways. But yeah, it's, it's been, it's still rather nation and it's, in
its spread, at least in the K312. But I do believe it's been, it's, it's kind of spread a little
more in the, in the university space, I'm not mistaken. It depends on the university space you're at.
I know we have some friends who are Swiss admins at Ohio State. And a lot of their stuff is Linux,
but a lot of their stuff is still Windows as well. And I know in our area, which is Southwestern
Missouri, things tend to be Windows centric as well. And so, you know, I've heard of, I've heard of
universities and colleges that embrace open source and Linux. And I know lots of corporations and
lots of educational institutions that don't. And that actually is going to lead to one of the
topics. And you actually brought up, brought up both of the topics that we're going to kick around
here in your little introduction to yourself. I don't even know if you realize it, but you did,
which was kind of cool. Awesome. So, and I was wondering if you were actually going to get to
your qualifications because you, you rammed on for a little bit and then right at the end, you said,
oh, and I'm in the elementary school computer space. Well, you know what, a lot of what I've done
has been self-taught. I would say the only certifications that I really have had are my A-plus
that I took a while ago, which is probably extremely out of date at this point. And my CCNA
that I had gotten, I didn't, I hadn't renewed it only because at the time, really the
where I'm currently working, the dish I'm currently working at apparently is not honoring it.
So, you know, I didn't really have the financial ability to go and pay every three years
to retake a test. So, at that point, I had just kind of let it go. I am looking to see about
probably some sort of Linux certification. I mean, just to kind of, you know, say that I really
do know what I'm doing with Linux. But most of, most of my stuff has been self-taught just, you know,
on my own. And as far as my qualifications, they've been, you know, I've worked at an ISP.
And then from there, I started working, I had, you know, landed a position in the school district,
working as a tech and just kind of built from there. But most of what I learned was really on my own.
Yeah, in that respect, you and I are quite a bit alike. I learned almost everything that I know
by myself. I taught myself, basically, on a TRS-80 color computer model one, the 16K version.
Back in 1980? I think.
Right. Yeah. There was either a high seven or a low eight in there somewhere. But,
and then, like I said, when I went to school, the first thing I learned on was the early max
two, two plus, two E. And my friend had a two C, which he liked. But I thought the two plus was
kind of cool because it had the color display and all that. If I remember right, I think you could
get a color display for the two C, but he didn't have one. Yeah, I had actually did have a color
display for my two C. The only thing about the two C is that it was very a closed nature device,
which kind of was, I guess, the harbinger for the way the max were designed.
Because I had actually used Apple IIE's before, and I always thought those were really nice.
I mean, it wasn't as portable as the two C, but it was very open, and you could do whatever you
wanted in there. So, which was kind of neat. And ironically, the Apple II's were more
of the Steve Watson act design. So, he's always been known for more of the openness of computing,
which is something I've always admired about him. Yeah, I've always been a huge fan of Steve
Watson act. That being said, when I was at the Dayton Himvention a couple of weeks ago, or I guess
at three weeks ago now, something like that, there were many, many people who came up to the booth
and had lots of great stuff to talk to us about. We met a lot of great people and a lot of fun and
interesting Ham Radio operators who had lots of interesting perspectives on Linux and open source
and Windows and a lot of other things. But a couple of things kind of stood out to me. A lot of
the people who came up to the booth were interested in what we were selling. We were, of course,
there to promote the podcast, and thanks to the folks at Ohio Linux Fest who gave us about 100
Ubuntu 1004 CDs to give away. We were also promoting them and giving out discs of Ubuntu.
We did that for two and a half days, and I consider the whole thing a huge success.
But when folks came up and asked us what we were selling and when we told them nothing and that we
were giving stuff away, at least half of them were a little bit taken aback. And I found that
extremely interesting. When we told them that there was software like Windows, but was free,
both as a thought experiment and as cashless, they were incredulous. And when they came up and
said, you know, how much do you want for these CDs? And we said, we're giving them away. It took
them, you know, a few seconds to register it. Now that brings up some thoughts that have come to
me in the past where people have said, well, the reason why corporations and educational institutions
and big business, for example, deal with Windows or Mac OS is because they pay for it.
And because they pay for it, they feel secure in it. They know they've got, you know, support, I
guess. What I've heard in a lot of cases is if it's free, it must not be any good. Ideas along
those lines. At the Dayton Hanvention, that thought process was reinforced rather strongly.
And so hopefully I'm going to throw that over to Claudio and he's going to say something
interesting. And then we're going to have a dialogue about is the fact that open source software,
in most cases, is free, a good thing or a bad thing for the software itself.
Personally, and I just recently went through something like this and it wasn't specifically
with Linux, but it was specifically, it was mainly with just the free software. I think the
biggest problem that there is is the fact that people misconstrued what is meant by the word free.
What makes it harder is that in the English language, free has two meanings. If you take
any of the other languages like Spanish, for example, free as in beer or free as in having to deal
with price, in Spanish you would say is gratis, is gratis. Now when you're talking about free as in
freedom in Spanish, that's called libre or libertad. So there's a distinction right there in
Spanish because there's two separate words to describe two different ideas. Unfortunately,
in the English language we have one word to describe the two. So the misconception is that when
people hear about free software, just in my opinion, and I'm sure others share this too,
especially those that support free software. They hear free software, you tell anybody about
free software and they think instantly it has something to do with price. Of course, people seem
to have this jaded view of things that are free because they always think that where's the catch?
There's always some sort of string attached or something. It always sounds like it's too good
to be true. Unfortunately, there have been a lot of people that have been taken by this thing.
So I guess it's just kind of a gradual thing that people tend to think, if it's free, there's
supposedly nothing, there's no catch, whatever. I'm not very trustworthy here. Maybe there's
something I'm not seeing. It's not very evident to them, but it's mainly, in my opinion, a misunderstanding
of what's meant by the word free. Just case in point, I had a friend who was asking about
antivirus for who Windows computer, and I told her, well, you can look at these. Now this
granted, these are free as in just price. So it's not that they were free as in freedom.
This was a solution by Microsoft itself. They have an antivirus package called Microsoft Security
Essentials. I told her, well, you can look at this. It's free. It doesn't cost anything.
Well, she wasn't very trustworthy or anything free. Another friend of hers had actually told
her about a pay for antivirus software called NOD32. I've heard good things about that too
and everything, but what her point was that eventually she decided to go with the actual pay for
software as opposed to the free as in price software, the gratis software, provided by the same
company that makes the operating system that she uses. Granted, I had given her proof of the
fact that this was actually as good if not better than the software that she was going with,
or probably another software that was recommended to her. But she said straight out, I don't do
free software, which was kind of funny because I responded back to her and I was like, you know,
I'm kind of disappointed that you think that way because I use free software and not just free
as in price, but in both meanings. I have a very hard time viewing free software as something
that is cheap or less quality than the pay for stuff. So it just seems like a common thing.
And of course, like you said, the corporations and educational institutions look to pay for
software because they feel they are paying for something for the support. And what was funny is
that I actually was given a reason as to why companies instead of going with free software,
or opens for software, they decide to go with the proprietary software that costs so much more
money. And it's because it gives them the ability, it gives them somebody that they can sue if
something goes wrong. Which kind of, you know, it really surprised me. I was like, is this really
why you're paying for the software so that you have somewhat of blame when something goes wrong?
You know, and I just thought it was insane. It really didn't make any sense to me. And so you
have a solution here that's free. The respects your freedoms that lets you do whatever you want with
it. The only thing you would have to pay for is the service behind it, which they do. A lot of
companies like Red Hat and Canonical, they provide services for a lot of the free software we use,
like the Linux distributions or whatever other free and open source software is out there.
They don't want to see it. They just, they don't see that aspect of it that, you know, they can still,
if they want to pay for the support, they can get the same support. But they're free to do anything
they want with that particular software. No, they just, a lot of them look at it and it's like,
well, we need someone to point the finger at when something goes wrong. So, I mean, it's just,
it's strange. And I have a very hard time sometimes understanding, especially in the educational
system where money tends to be very tight. Why there's the choice to go with very expensive
proprietary solutions, which in the end may end up being a waste of money as opposed to something
that is free and open and allows them to do whatever they want and fix whatever they want in
case something goes wrong and tailor to their needs. I just have a hard time comprehending that.
But I think there is that misconception of free being tied solely to price and not necessarily
to the freedom that one can do with the particular software. Well, let's, let's address the issue
of free as in beer specifically. I think in a lot of cases people don't understand the, the free
as in liberate free anyway. They buy a piece of software because they wanted to do a specific
thing and they wanted to work. They assume that because they're paying for the product that
there has been something behind it, there has been a team of developers, a corporate structure
and, you know, a testing arrangement and so on and so forth. And that's what they're paying for
when they buy a piece of software. And therefore, if they get something that's free as in without cost,
that none of that supporting infrastructure exists underneath the software. They don't realize
that it's still there. They, they it's just being done by volunteers or by companies who are
willing to give up the cost of the software in order to recover revenue in some other way.
I want to get down sort of to just a yes or no maybe or maybe it's not that black and white,
but would selling would selling Linux as something inexpensive as opposed to giving it away for
free the beneficial do you think? I mean, okay, Windows on average costs, you know, 99 to $299
say for whatever version of Windows 7 you want to pick up these days, whether it's an OEM copy
or an upgrade from whatever you've got. And, you know, you can go to a Linux distribution
and with the exception of Red Hat Enterprise and I think Novel has some sort of paid desktop
version too, do they not? Yeah, I believe they do. I believe they do. Well, you know what the
funny thing is that you you can still even with most distributions out there, you can actually pay
for a a box set of actual press disks like I know for example, Slackware, they have a box set of
disks that they press and you can purchase those disks and the money for that's used from the
purchase is used to support the distribution. I think it has more to do with maybe a marketing
strategy, you look at Apple and you look at Microsoft, they throw so much money into
marketing their products and making it appealing to the general public that they gain the trust
of the actual general public enough to believe, to have them believe that, okay, I'm actually,
I'm really paying for this stuff. This was really my idea, this is things that I'd like to see on
running on my computer. That's something that I believe that is sorely lacking as far as
the Linux space is concerned. You know, and the thing is that most people look for information
like that through TV, through you know, just through the mainstream media and the problem is that
a lot of us and we all know that Linux is so wonderful and it's a very good piece of software.
I've shown so many people my network running Linux and some of them can't even believe they
asked me, what is that you're running? I tell them I'm running Linux, I'm running and at the time
was Ubuntu and they're shocked. I thought that was Windows or something. I was like, no, that's
not Windows, this is Ubuntu I'm running here and they look at it, it's got Windows, it's got
icons and they kind of get shocked at it and like, wow, is this what you're running and it's free?
And I think that's something that needs to be shown to them and so that they can understand it
because if we tell them, look, hey, you can use this free operating system and you don't have to
pay a single dime, it's all free for you to use, you can change for it, you don't have to pay for
any upgrades, people tend to be a more, you know, unless I can see it, I won't believe it,
kind of attitude and so all this marketing that Microsoft NAPL are doing, they try to make
the general public see it so that they can believe it, the problem is that we all know better.
And we understand that there's a lot of marketing, you know, is marketing.
So I think that's something that we really need to focus on without, of course, without compromising
the core beliefs of, you know, what the Linux distributions have and as far as free software is
concerned. Yeah, and a couple of comments on that as far as those who think that the Microsoft
monopoly on like Dell and other big box computer names, putting their software out, it basically
not no cost but a hidden cost to the consumer, those who don't think that's a problem are insane
because that is a huge problem. There were a large number of people who came up to our booth
who didn't know that there was something other than Windows. I mean, you know, they assume that
computers run Windows, you know, that was the limit of their knowledge of operating systems.
Basically, if it had a keyboard, a screen and powered up, that Windows was all there was,
which is scary, really scary. But it brings me to another issue, which you sort of addressed
a minute ago, which was, and this is something I thought about to myself over and over again,
the fact that the software is free and there aren't that many companies who are making money off
of said free software, I mean, obviously canonical is and red hat is and I think Novel isn't
since they're up for sale. When you think about what you know about operating systems,
look at, for example, TV advertising, there are two people who advertise, there are two companies
that advertise computer software. There's Microsoft and there's Apple and the reason they do
is because they have money and the reason they have money is because they charge for their operating
systems and they charge for their support and so on and so forth. So the fact that Linux operating
systems rely on the community and word of mouth may be its own worst enemy and I don't want to
bring that up in the sense of, oh, we have to start charging $100 for every piece of Linux software
that goes out there for every disk that has a Linux kernel on it because obviously that's not
what we want to do. But the fact that there is no budget for marketing is a huge detriment and I
think it's a real wall to the progression of Linux in the operating system space.
I don't know how to address that without fundamentally changing open source and Linux and the way
things are. You know, I don't think marketing is a bad thing. I mean, we always, as geeks, we always
kind of tend to look at marketing as something that's kind of, you know, a little slimy, you know,
because you always look at marketing people as people you can't really trust for some reason.
When you market something, you're highlighting the best things that you can of whatever it is
that you're marketing. You know, personally, I'm far of this example from, as a marketing expert
that I can be, but I do see that there is a definite benefit in marketing a product.
Just like one-one market, you know, or put out the word for their own podcast and things like that.
That was something that was brought up recently, I think, in one of the podcasts I was listening to.
And, you know, it's very important to put that information out there so that people can know about
it because you may have the most wonderful product, most wonderful piece of software available,
but unless people know about it and can, you know, you can highlight the positives about it,
it's not going to do anybody any good. I do believe, and I do think that their
distributions are kind of starting to come around, at least the more major distributions
that are gearing towards the desktop. It's also, you also got to look at who you're targeting as well.
I know there have been some issues with the way canonical has gone about it, and I personally
have some issues with that, but there are people that maybe open to something like that, you know,
and but I do believe that something like Fedoro or something like Debbie or any other
distributions out there were just Linux in general. The fact that people can have the choice to
pick something that would fit them best and not have to adjust themselves to one particular system.
Like you said, all people pretty much see when they look at a PC is Windows.
All the commercials that you see from Microsoft and from Apple when they refer to a PC,
right off the bat, assume that it's a Windows PC. Never thought that, oh, it's a PC that maybe
is running something else. And again, people have been asking me, they asked me if I run
any antivirus from IPCs. No, I tell them I don't run Windows, I run Linux. And sometimes I'll
get the question, what's that? And it kind of, I mean, that's a way of kind of marketing it,
you know, kind of evangelizing it. That was actually one of the things that in the Mac world,
a lot of people would do was they would evangelize the Mac platform, and that was one way to market
platform. And I kind of, I'm starting to see that a lot in the Linux environment with a lot
of the users. And I think, as I said earlier, a lot of the distributions are looking to
go in that direction. It's still, I think, in the early stages, but I think that most distributions
are starting to put something together like that. One example, if you look at it, is the Fedora
Ambassador program. 330, who is, he's actually one of the, one of the guys on the
kernel panics. He's a Fedora Ambassador. And a lot of what he does has to do with
marketing the platform and spreading the word about the platform. I think this is a great start
because you're getting everyday people that are out there pretty much spreading the word.
Now it would be nice if as a community we could come together and do something that would be
easily consumed by the general public through mainstream media. But I think that's going to take
a while. But it is something that I think that may need to be addressed. It seems to be,
it's, at Linux, personally, I think, seems to be making some inroads. Like I know that,
you know, people watch The Big Bang Theory, which is a sitcom having to do with bunch of geeks
and whatnot. And there have been some, recently there was Ubuntu got highlighted on the show,
where Sheldon, one of the characters, had claimed that Ubuntu was his favorite Linux operating
system. So things like that, it's kind of throwing those ideas to people during prime time.
And it gets fantastic. What is this? What is this Ubuntu? And they'll search online or whatever,
and they'll find out about it. But I think we need to go maybe a little deeper. Maybe who knows?
Maybe a commercial. But I do think it's very important to market it though. And because the general
public really isn't going to get that from anybody else other than the Linux community itself.
So we need to find different ways to go ahead and spread that word to people and show them.
You know, there are other options than what are presently given to you.
Yeah, and as far as commercials are concerned, I just thought about it while you were talking
about it. And I was thinking the same thing. And wow, we really need to have some commercials.
But if you recall back three or four years ago, there were commercials. IBM had several
commercials for Linux. Yes, they were geared towards Linux in the enterprise space,
not Linux on the desktop. And the big problem with those commercials is they were
a pretty forgettable and be extremely esoteric. And I think if we want to market Linux,
we have to do it in the way, you know, I don't want to come up with retarded commercials like
the Windows, you know, Windows 7 was my idea kind of thing because those are like the worst
commercials ever. And the Apple commercials are extremely witty and get the point across. But
honestly, marketing has to be like a sledgehammer. I mean, you really have to hit people over the head
when you're trying to bring something into the spotlight. No, absolutely. I mean, I personally
think that the Windows commercials are a disaster. This whole Windows 7 was my idea. I don't know
who they're fooling, but I have to say even with the Apple commercials, you know, early on,
they were very vague. They didn't really highlight a lot of what the products, you know,
what their products did. Yeah, and even the Mac and the PC thing was kind of cute and everything,
but it didn't really highlight the products that they had. Now, you compare that with the commercials
they have now for the iPad. And the I, you see these commercials for the iPad and it shows you,
they show you what this product does. Mind you, they don't highlight, they don't show you what
what the product cannot do, which is something you don't ever want to do and you know,
when you're marketing a product. But, you know, all of us know that it's a lockdown environment,
it's a limited device. They, I mean, they do a fantastic job in showing people,
this is what you want to do. This is what you can do with this product. Those Linux commercials,
I thought they were that kind of cool, but they didn't highlight anything for the general public.
All the people kept asking, it was, it was probably as bad as the Mac and PC commercials.
All you had was a kid that was representing what Linux was supposed to be and that,
and that was pretty much it. It was just, it was very, it wasn't a concrete, it was a very abstract,
it was very abstract and you know, a lot of people don't get that kind of stuff. Again,
compare that with like the commercial, it just came out for the iPad. iPad is this, iPad is what
not. You know, those are things people get. They can see what they can do with it and it peaks
their interest. That is something that we need to focus on as a community, at least it may be
not in a commercial, whatever, but just some form of advertising or marketing that will get people
to, you know, think about what they can really do with their computers and the freedom that's
given to them by something like Linux and just any kind of free and open-source software.
Now, let's take Firefox, for example. You remember that they took out, I think it was a full-page
ad with it in the New York Times. I don't remember exactly, but I know they took, they had put out ads
on a, on a particular publication and that put Firefox in the minds of so many people in a time
where Internet Explorer was king and look at where Firefox is today compared to Internet Explorer.
I mean, I personally believe that that kind of marketing that took place even just for Firefox
itself from, and from Mozilla, that was really pretty effective, in my opinion, and the word
about Firefox spread like WallFar. And, you know, recently we had some commercials from Google
about Chrome. This was before it was completely, you know, it was out there for everybody to use.
That still hasn't taken up too much, and again, those commercials about Google Chrome were very
abstract, you know. It didn't really highlight what people could do with it or what it was.
It wasn't anything that would really draw anybody's attention. We need to highlight the
the strengths of Linux, make it apparent why people would want something like this,
and just put the word out there, and I know that as a community we can do that.
Yeah, and I think you're right about that. Unfortunately, without the, without the money behind it,
you have to be really creative about the ways to get that out there, but it also brings up a
couple of things. When you're talking about Firefox, Firefox has an advantage all by itself,
because I think the average user, when they think of a computer and they think of the internet,
if you give them a web browser and an email client, that's all they need. So,
when you put out a full page ad for Firefox as a fast, you know, alternative to Internet Explorer,
you probably will get some converts because A, it's free, but you know, when you're talking about
Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer is also free. 99% of the average user out there couldn't
care less that Mozilla Firefox is open source. Yeah, so they got a boost, but you're talking about
a product that 90% of the average user is going to use. If you want to talk to, you know,
if you want to tell the differences between CS5 and the GIMP, for example, you're going to have
a much harder time about that, and adding the New York Times is not going to do it, because you've
got a much smaller market share of people who are, you know, graphic designers, for example.
And yeah, they might be enticed by the fact that the GIMP is free, but they may be less enticed when
they find out that they have to learn a whole new, you know, a whole new way of doing things,
or it has a feature that CS5 doesn't have, or vice versa, and so on and so forth.
People who have already been exposed to Windows and Windows software, you know, it's hard to
make that switch, I guess, which is kind of leading into the other topic, and I do want to get to
that so we don't go, you know, for hours and hours and hours about this one thing. But I guess
we'd like to pin down a couple of thoughts in a few sentences that we can say about whether software
being free, and I think we should probably just stick to free as in cost, is helpful or hurtful
to software in general. And I think the idea is that most people have a problem with something
being free, because when they see free, they assume it's cheap, or they assume that there's a catch,
but putting a price tag on something doesn't necessarily erase that feeling. The problem with
out having revenue is that marketing becomes problematic, and then I guess we get to the point
where we have to decide whether we want Linux to even have market share, or we want it to be our
dirty little secret. Do we want to take over the world, or do we want to be hidden elite? Do we
want to be the maze? See, that one's a tough one, because if you look at a modern Linux
distribution, and you compare with something like Windows, or even macOS, the interface is pretty
much employed at the same concepts. You have windows that you open and close, you have icons that
you click on, you have menus that you access for different commands, and you have a pointer
that you use to click to access those different items. I have had people use my systems that
were familiar with Windows. They may say that they don't like it because of the fact that they're
so used to doing things a certain way, but in the end, they end up being able to do what they
need to do, be it open a browser, access information, or whatever it is, anything that they would
normally do on their computer. I think this is more of a perception thing, people perceive,
because of it's something that it's not something they're used to using, that it's different,
or harder. I mean, it's going to be different, obviously, but they think because it's different,
that it's harder for them. And I'll be honest with you, in most cases, it only takes maybe 10
minutes of readjustment to finally be to a point where you can say, okay, I can start using this
right now. You know what I mean? Yeah, and thank you for segueing nicely and smoothly into the
second topic, which was the general idea that there's a preconceived notion out there that Linux
as an operating system, if people happen to know about it, which a lot of people don't,
is that it's immediately harder to use, harder to adopt, harder to install, harder to adapt to,
than Windows or Mac OS. And I guess we can leave Mac OS out of the picture because
when I went to the ham mentioned and talked to most people, very, very few of them,
if they didn't know Linux, they didn't know Mac OS either. For those people who have come to the
podcast, since we were promoting ourselves there, and for those of you know, this is the first
episode that's come out since then. So I don't want people to feel like we're picking on the people
who came to the booth because that's not the idea here. Our purpose was to promote Linux and to
get the word out there, and I think we did that. But it was interesting to hear people's
trepidations about adopting Linux, those of who had actually heard about it, and for those who
hadn't heard about it, because there were several comments made like, well, we're giving away
this CD, and the first thing out of their mouth was, well, are there any viruses on it? So on
so forth, I just assumed because it was free, that it was full of malware or something like that,
I reiterated time and time again, and it's like, not only is this piece of software free
and virus free, but you can actually go ahead, throw it in your system, run it, play around with
the system, since it's a live CD, without altering your computer in any way, decide whether you're
like it or not, and if you don't, you just go ahead and throw it in the trash, or hopefully give it
to your friends and have them try it or something, and then go back to whatever Windows proprietary software
you happen to like. That seemed to alleviate many fears about the software. You know, that's one
way to do it, I suppose, is literally making it easier and getting that word out that it is easier,
and I think installing Linux these days, particularly Ubuntu and Linux Mint and the other devian
variants, is actually easier than installing Windows. Now, most people don't have to install Windows
because it comes pre-installed on their PC when they buy it, but for those people who have
problems with Windows and those people are many, they either have to do a recovery or they have
to do a reinstall. If you take the average Linux install currently and the average Windows install
currently and put them side by side and ask the, you know, if you do a double blind test and ask
users which one they think is easier, I can't say for sure because I haven't done this double blind
study, but I'd be willing to bet that most people would find an Ubuntu install easier than installing
Windows 7. It's really easy for one good way to get people involved is to show them how they can
run open-source software that's cross-platform on the operating system they already use, take away
the fear factor, and then show how they can migrate to the open-source operating system later.
However, another problem with that is since they've already paid for Windows or whatever operating
system they are using, whether they paid for it by buying a PC with Windows already on it or whether
they went to Best Buy and bought an OEM copy or bought a retail copy rather and put it on their
machine, since they've already shelled out the money, they're not necessarily interested in
changing to address the second issue of the initial fear factor. For those people who have already
been given the name Linux, kind of know what it is and have this built-in automatic fear that it's
somehow incredibly hard to use because once upon a time it really was, but now as Bob Dylan says
the times they are a change in and things have come so far, are we back again to the marketing issue
or are we at the point where we just have to say we will promote this by word or mouth, we will
be we will be what we will be we will take those people who come to the fold and will be content to
be you know third in the marketplace and that's where we belong. I personally am not really
satisfied with that, but again I'm at the place where I'm not sure how to go forward without
literally putting some money into it and where does that money come from. I mean I'm not sure
in this particular economic climate we're going to get a bunch of donations to market Linux
and we're certainly not going to get it through ads, so I'm stumped at this point.
Do you have any ideas? I understand you completely I understand you completely because I mean
you'd think they even through the recession that we've been through that you would you know
people would be more open to something that is free like Linux and but you know with the problem
is that something you mentioned is that most people when they go to a best buy and they go to
they go to some you know a brick and mortar retailer or even an online retailer and they buy a
PC unless they specifically ask for one that you know are bearable and sister anything like that
the PC is going to come pre-installed with Windows or if they go to buy a Mac it's got
obviously come with an OS 10 pre-installed the user never ever has to go through the experience
of reinstalling or installing initially an operating system that may have been true you know
about 20 years ago maybe maybe even less than that but in this day and age it's very rare to
find you know at least a brick and mortar like Best Buy or anything that's convenient for
the general public to go and buy a computer very very rare to to find one without an operating
system let alone it just being anything other than Windows I remember back in the day Gateway had
tried to get a deal going with be incorporated who were the people behind the B operating system
and Microsoft had actually threatened to pull their license agreement with Gateway if they
were going to pre-install these machines with BOS so the best they could really do was include a
box of the B operating system with the computer that came pre-installed with Windows now do you
really think that the average user who is buying this Gateway computer was going to take the time
to pre-install an operating system that they weren't familiar with on their computer I doubt it
highly I mean I'm sure they would have stuck with whatever was on there that had software they
would have probably been interested in and that's the situation that us as Linux users and people
that promote Linux have to fight against aside from the marketing these are computers that are
already coming with the OS installed granted there are companies that do sell computers with Linux
pre-installed and even that we used there was a time where even Dell and some of the big names
had computers with Linux installed the problem was that the marketing for such devices was
extremely poor and they just didn't know how to handle it they never once asked I mean look at
ASUS ASUS was the first to market with a Linux netbook people were buying these devices and
drawers because they realized they could buy a computer that was half if not more than half the
price of a laptop that would still allow them to do whatever they needed to do
so the problem was that people assumed that this was something that would also run their
Windows software ASUS and nobody at nobody not even ASUS
bothered to inform people that what they were buying was completely different than what they had
you know that even though it was useful to them a lot of the software that they had
wouldn't be able to run on that so then there were a lot of marketing blunders that unfortunately
Linux kind of suffered through aside from the fact that Microsoft decided to push XP for a lot
longer and it did you know and those are things that we really have to deal with I mean if you ask
me you put a user in front of any installation and the average user in front of any installation
they're going to have a problem no matter what I've gone through installations of Windows Windows
Vista Mac OS 10 and Linux of Ubuntu even though for you someone like you and me or most Linux
users out there wouldn't be a problem somebody like my father who is a Mac OS user he would never be
able to install the operating system on his own and mind you the install on a Mac is brain
dead simple but even still the average user going to have a hard time performing an installation
I've come across people that even with the restore disks they ask me if I can do it for them
because they're scared that they might break something because they don't know they figure they
don't know what they're doing so they might end up breaking it and that's one of the biggest
things that we as Linux users and promoters as I said have to fight with is the fact that because
of the fact that most of these computers come pre-installed Windows is being thrown in their face
and that is the only option that they're given I think there needs to be in that sense more
marketing towards getting something like Linux pushed out pre-installed and ready to go for the end
user and the more we see that we may see some gradual changes in perception again how long have we
been have have PC's been shipping with Windows how long have people been using Microsoft products
I mean that's a it's a long time to you know a lot of you know a long period of perception to
to to fight yeah I know we could go forever and ever and ever about this but it's probably about
to achieve some kind of closure to the topics of hand and it may be that we we come around to
marketing and I guess what we need to figure out is how to market Linux how to do it cost
effectively and efficiently and let people know what's out there because right now honestly Linux
does best when people don't know it's Linux I mean if you look at every device the people think
is cool if you and this includes things like the iPhone all the new smartphones web OS the
iPhone the Rock you 90% of cool embedded systems that do multimedia that do Wi-Fi connectivity
that do 3G networking they all run Linux but no one knows it and that's why I think Linux is
is sort of like everybody's dirty little secret right now everybody uses Linux every day well
and maybe not everybody but lots of people who don't realize it are using Linux every day
and just don't realize and and of course even macOS under the hood you know it's not Linux but
it's BSD which you know you say tomato I say what yeah exactly so I don't know I mean obviously
we've we've thrown around a lot of ideas I think there's been a really interesting dialogue here
and we have come to no conclusion whatsoever I think we have to we have to decide what we want
to do for ourselves as a community we have to decide if we're content if we're content with
the market share and the interest level we're at we have to decide if that's not good enough if
we want to get ourselves out there and then if we want to become a player we have to decide
where the money is going to come from and how the marketing is going to happen because grassroots
is great open source philosophy is wonderful thing but if we want to sway minds and if we want to
own the hearts of the people you and I talking on a podcast and going around to trade shows and
preaching to the converted is not going to do it and and this is you know part of the thing that
I think is a little a little tougher as at least we're Linux and concerns because you have
a diverse Linux distribution community that are geared towards different types of users
it's very hard to say that we as a Linux community should go and you know if we want to get
there aren't not all Linux districts are looking to get the end user I mean slackware for one
my opinion I don't think they're looking to track the end user if they manage to do so great
you know and that's probably one end user that they do want to have as part of as a slackware
community it all depends on what the distributions goals are and who their target audience is
in that respect I think maybe something like Ubuntu or Mint or various others that are kind of
geared for the end user would open the door to a lot of other alternatives so I would I guess
that those distributions would kind of be like a foot in the door for the end user and those
would have those would be the ones I would assume that would have to find ways to focus on
getting to the end user and grabbing the appeal of the end user to say oh this intrigues me enough
that I want to use it and no more about it as opposed to anything else that's out there
that I'm already familiar with once that user is familiar with something like that I think at
that point is when they see the door really open wide for them and all of the different choices
and solutions that they have open to them but until they get they get that foot in the door or
until that you know if you think about it's like a light starting to shine in a very dark place
once that small bit of light comes in the more you see the more you're able to see the more you
can see what's around you is that light continues to you know as you're aware of your surroundings
so I think that's kind of how I perceive it would have to be for the end user those that are
focused towards the end user really need to see what it is that that appeals to the user and
kind of go for that again without compromising what are the core values of the community itself
I do think it's possible it's not an easy battle but I do think it's possible and it's not
something that I would say would have to be world domination because I think there should be
choice but people should be free to choose whatever they want if they want to go with right
there software that's their choice if they choose to go with free software that's great they
choose to go with open software that's not gpl that's great too you know for me choice is being
able to choose what you want to do if you want to be shackled to close software that's your choice
entirely but people should be made aware of the fact that there are other options and
once those particular distributions open the door for them or shed that light in that darkness
then as they start to see the surrounding community they start to get more of an idea of what's
really out there and they can make an informed choice all right so well I think what we've laid down
is the idea that as far as we're concerned red hat canonical whatever becomes of novelle and
oracle had best start promoting Linux in every way possible and those of you know the rest of
the community including the other distributions like arch and gen2 and fedora and slagware will
benefit by proxy of having been exposed by the more user centric Linux distributions and once
people are interested in that they might try and delve deeper and get with the distributions that
don't necessarily care but are focused on the power user or the developer so canonical and red
hat get out there spread the word you've got all the money you know in proprietary software sure
it's a choice but when you think about it if you think about Dell and gateway if gateway is even
still in business I'm not really sure and whatever whatever online shops that the average user
might know about when they sell a PC you don't have a choice and the reason you don't have a choice
is because that proprietary software company is showing it's you know it's basically showing
its corporate biceps and it's muscling the PC manufacturers into excluding every option except
simple marketing is not going to overcome that it's going to take a real push to create the
ability to have choice and I'm not really sure where that's going to come from and I don't think
we're going to solve that question tonight but I'd like to see some progress and you know I'm not
going to be the one who as the answer you know where that progress is going to come from better
minds than mine we'll have to figure that out but hopefully it will happen yeah I hope so too
I think it's going to take a while but I personally I do see Linux having some
mind share in the general user as opposed to maybe even the last three years compared to that
so I do think there is that hope people there's more exposure to it people have to deal with
more technically inclined people that have been exposed to it who in turn may expose them to it
so it's it's a slow thing but it seems to me at least my opinion a gradual thing maybe an
eventual thing you know an inevitable thing at least even if slow one can only hope one can
only hope well I will hope along with you well thank you everybody for sticking around with us for
this much longer than I thought was going to be discussion I have a couple of interesting Linux
topics and thank you very much for your valuable insight Claudio and it's been really nice having
here oh it's been it's my pleasure I've had a lot of fun thank you for having me all right that's
great well I'll tell you what why don't you get in a plug for anything you're interested in
plugging including Linux basement if you'd like to do that and then I will put in a few words
and we will get on with life absolutely well you can find Chad and I Chad me over at
Linux Basement.com you'll find the link to the the feeds there we're also on Identica as at
Claudio M and at Chad Wallenberg on Identica I don't have a Twitter account but Chad Wallenberg is
on Twitter same username on the Twitter and you can also find us on the irc on free node.net
under hash Linux faith so hopefully you can check out the podcast and you know be sure to send
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with us be sure to get in touch with us my email is Claudio at Linux Basement.com and Chad is Chad
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