Advertising
There is a whole other world (read community) where ubuntu people and FOSS programmers like to hang out and do their work to the one you buy your groceries and borrow books from the library.
If some smart arsed advertising executive was to come into our community to give us advice on spreading the good book… er I mean cd. Then what kinds of things would he say?
Demographics, that’s the key, you’ve got the techs, geeks and a good mind share of the nerd market. There’s also a lot of managers, top brass in big firms that have some idea that you exist and it’s possible they may even know something about why.
Getting out from these narrow demographics and getting into peoples lives will require focused efforts and a tailoring of the pros and cons that make sense to that world. I teach a great deal of under classed people (minorities, the poor, etc) and the whole political under dog message of Free Software works well, even though best advice for those who serve their middle class neighbours is to never mention it for fear of looking like your trying to have an political opinion about software.
Branding, is most important, the Linux brand is tarnished and outside of the existing tech geek demographics, is not worthwhile. It’s MUCH easier to get people to try Ubuntu when they don’t know it’s got Linux in it, then if it has. Just ask those Microsoft folks, Vista and Windows brands are tarnished too. They’re going to power on with ‘Windows’ because they can change the whole look and version of the thing and make it look like something shiny and new and it already has great mind share and an ever persistent link between people who think PC means Windows PC.
So how do you make a brand that can cover the great available software in advertisements. The driver software availability for hardware OEMs (think tux on the mouse box) and the one you use on the distro it’s self? All those linux adverts currently being created in the Linux Foundations competition can’t be that useful, because they’re all going to be trying to push ‘Linux’ when that concept makes no logical sense and it’s difficult enough to explain what it means.
Excitement, It’s true, we can get techies excited about a new release. Even though FOSS moves at a glacial speed, if we can still get people excited, then we can still get them to try it. If we’re too slow, then they’ll try Debian Woody, figure it’s too hard and never return.