End of 10 campaign troubles..

[no at srpl.com]

Dear Madames/Sirs,

I'm a long-time private and commercial user of Linux,
having started meddling with it in 1993. Never looked
back.

But I've worked in some massive corporates, dominated
by Microsoft, blipping away with my Linux at home and
in work privately. In my time at the BBC in London,
everything was/is Microsoft. The entire back-end of
news and web is all Linux; I know both well, and also
of the woes of convincing the great fearful that Linux
*is* a far better environment. Incomparable really.

In regards my contact here, from a massive corporate
and consumer knowledgebase, and from a design and branding
background at one point, I often feel there's one mean
underlying problem in efforts like yours to present
Linux to the literally ignorant consumer: Brand identity.

Linux still has a shitty Brand. I could care less myself,
as I use it for everything, but to others none the wiser,
it looks:

-Dangerous
-Like a toy (lousy amateur Logotype everywhere)
-Like it can't handle REAL business (LibreOffice!!)
-To be a product of the DaRk WeB! oohhh there be harm!
-Difficult to use and klunky
-To not support my gadgets
-FOSS. Drop the acronyms, look at how MS/Apple do it.
  that's just more confusion.

And the list slithers on, as lured-in enthusiasts in
trenchcoats just keep the magic to themselves. Most of
my old colleagues in the Beeb didn't even use Linux at
home, out of habit!

I won't tell many there how to run their lives or campaign,
but coming from massively stuck, screwed-into Microsoft
structures, you have to play them at their own game; The
branding, simplicity, ELEGANCE game. Not "FOSS" clubs of
algorithm-driven predictions on reach to nowhere, but real
tangible destinations. "Where do you want to go today" is
such a trivial trademark, but it works.

For Linux to be acceptable to the Microsoft fearful, it
needs to do something they didn't know before. It's a
stupid feature game. "The new IOS, with over 2000 new
features." -Utter nonsense, but it sells. Going down the
cheezey route however, you then get bogged down in just
making features - a need to differentiate is hidden in
that niche. This is different. "It's a new approach to
personal computing that puts the user in control." For
example.

A logo that is friendly, safe looking, strong, without
any animals or indication of preference or alignment
with anything but itself. (IBM, HP, Dell, Apple, the
christian church even with their simple cross!)

FOSS - awkward, and instills uncertainty and wasted
time in the consumer. "Free Open-Source Software" ?
Whu? I have to "com-pile? uhh" Free? how do I trust
it? (the reverse psychology of that is blinding, if
you consider Meta/Google/Microsoft's mail platforms)

You 'gotta' cover-up the nonsense, Think BeOs and the
clean presentation, but the power of Linux.

"Linux. Once the choice of only the biggest globally
  trusted corporations in processing your private and
  beloved information, used on 85% of smart phones the
  world over, is now available to the consumer in an
  easy to install, safe, customisable, and fully loaded
  highly-efficient computing experience that makes your
  dated Windows feel like a throwback to 1984 as it
  siphons your every move off for inspection, wasting
  *your* paid-for computing power. Time for change."

"Linux. The choice of professionals now, for the future."

Linux *is* a power platform, run with that. It's used
bare-metal on IBM's old S390 mainframe for massssive
computing, AI anyone? (hate it, but consumers think it
is sexy..) "Supercomputing!" - why is that not aligned
in this? The software most used by hollywood and other
films for VFx runs *only* on Linux. (Flame) (Consumers
can associate with that?)

This is a compettition I'm afraid, despite disliking
the thought.

Perhaps decide on the nicest, least-bloated distro that
has a wide base already, (Sorry KDE, may be Ubuntu? I
use Devuan, but it's *not* sexy.) find someone to really
get stuck-in to a new appearance and icon set that is
appealing to the Windows non-skuemorphic new graphic
style, without looking windowsy, and push that! Just
that, and underline that the window dressings don't
matter - you can change them, but that there's an initial
unified first impression.

"Install is complete" ("wow, that's IT?!")
"Please eject the CD and hit return to restart to Linux."

And it boots with the fancy grub splash that is unified,
and aligned with the end of 10's goals; Windows is GONE.
This is a whole new experience, and bloody fast.

I am sorry to TLDR this to you folks, but someone needs
to get out of the 128 character bag and speak up about
some of this, even get a discussion started.

Best of luck all, and I am trying my best in the south
east of England.


Sincerely,

Jason