Closing the Gap for Linux

------------------------

Product -------------------------------- Customer

The above picture describes the Gap between the GNU\Linux desktop Operating System and a patricularily jolly customer off the street. For a sale to take place, this gap must be closed. Eric Sink says that the gap represents

all of the issues and obstacles that are preventing the customer from making the purchase:

So lets have a look at some of these obstacles to the potential customer

1. The customer has never heard of your product This is not so much of a problem for Linux nowadays, people are starting to hear about Linux regularly, you can find it mentioned in newspapers, technical tv shows, radio stations and the like. Some economic theory that I learned back in 1999 and can't remember spoke of the marginal increase that leads to an exponential one. At some point a successful product will start to advertise itself. Lets have a look at that...
   
   
   
   Think of that great song you heard one night on MTV (back when they played > 2 songs per day), and for a while no one heard of it, then maybe a week later you hated the song just because it was everywhere. That's when a marginal rate leads to an exponential rate. The figures above are representative of my opinion of where Linux stands today. I would say that 1 out of 10 people who use computers have heard of Linux at the moment.
   
2. The customer doesn't know enough about your product
   This is definitely a problem for Linux. Most people have extremely fragile knowledge of Linux. Every week or so I hear serious misconceptions e.g. "Linux is a program that gets rid of viruses", "Linux is what they use in The Matrix" , "Linux can't run I.E and can't connect to the net", "Linux is illegal" etc..
   As Linux grows, this fragile knowledge will grow too.
3. Your product is too expensive
   Fan: No It's not, Its FREE!!!
   Me: Yeah, free as in price maybe!
   Fan: No, Free as in Freedom , Read this.
   Me: Yeah that doesn't change the fact that it'll take an hour or so to install, and a few days to get it going the way you want it. Common wisdom says that "Time is Money", so Linux isn't really free in that sense.
   But all that said, Linux is far far cheaper than it has been. Live CDs and ready made distributions have made the difference.
4. The customer needs two levels of management approval for the purchase
   You can interpret this as corporate speak, but look at the home pc sense of the word. Many potential Linux users use a family computer. They can't just change the operating system without asking/telling someone. They are also afraid of breaking it, as that's where all their parents work files are. This is a confidence issue with the product, Most parents haven't heard of Linux, so they'll play it safe and say No. As time goes by this will hopefully change. Ditto for the corporate level in my opinion.
5. Your product lacks a feature the customer needs
   Linux can't play games well in my opinion. Linux can't run Microsoft Word, and it can't run Adobe Photoshop. On some laptops it won't hibernate, and you may have trouble with the Wireless card. These are all obstacles to it replacing Windows, but not obstacles to people adopting it as a second operating system in a dual boot set up. I realise that Winex and Cedega make it possible to run certain applications, and Crossover office certainly does a good job with the office suite. These all cost money, Try explaining to someone why they should change operating system, then buy a few products, just to get back to where they already were
   
6. Your product doesn't interoperate with the customer's other stuff
   As I said in the previous points there are ways to get just about anything interoperable with Linux, its just that sometimes they are expensive ways. Things like iPods and digital cameras etc. are pretty much universally supported, so this isn't a major issue for customers in my opinion. The challenge here is assuring the user that everything will work okay.
7. Your product isn't mature enough to meet the customer's expectations
   This one could be contentious. Linux has been around for ages, but has been unknown for most of that time. When it comes to trusting someone, which is more important, their age, or how long you have known them?
   The large gap between XP and LongHorn has meant that Linux has caught up on the usability/desktop side of things. USB pen drives now auto mount read/write in general Linux does a better job of this than Windows. Outlook is matched pretty much with Evolution, Firefox works on both, for the most part Linux applications (when they exist) are equivalent or better. I doubt maturity will be an issue for Linux.

So back to that gap that you saw at the top, how do we close that. There are two method for shrinking it

• Move the product to the right. -->
  This equates to advertising, which has been a problem in Open Source Software for a long time. It also means making your product better. Great products are very close to the customer, think of the iPod. Everyone knows what it is, everyone has one or wants one. Everyone sees white headphones and gets jealous. This is a result of the iPod advertisements, the iPod advertising itself (as explained above) and the iPod being a Really Good Product(tm).
• Move the customer to the left. <--
  This is when you find people who might use your product and persuade them to do so. Its basically hunting. Apple know that their computers and operating systems will sell to people who like pretty things with no corners. They use the iPod as their pimp to attract people in. Chances are someone who is in love with an iPod will soon fall in love with a Mac too. The iPod is effectively picking the customers who would be impressed with a Macintosh. (The iShuffle is just there to pick out the customers with too much money)

So what can Linux do to help itself, well it should look at how Firefox claimed 25 million users (8% of the market) in the space of two years and see what did it for them. Asa Dotzler says its down to 4 things.

• Migration - Its easy to switch to Firefox, its not easy to switch to Linux
• Stability - Stability isn't a problem with Linux as long as you stay within your distribution. If you install extras, then you enter dependency hell, where Eclipse wants libstdio 3.2.1 where as Nautilus was 3.3.1. If all distributions were as good as Ubuntu, as large as Debian, and as "out of the box" as Fedora then this would not be a problem.
  
• Simplicity - Firefox looks like its rivals, it just does things better. Linux looks and behaves differently to Windows, some things are easier, some things are harder, but most things are different which basically throws away years of muscle memory.
• Comfort - This is the confidence problem that I spoke of earlier. People don't feel at ease in foreign areas. They will press the Windows key and wonder why nothing happens.

How many "Use Firefox" logos do you see around the net? Hundreds/Thousands The simple reason for this is that its an easy switch that makes sense. At the moment I can't say the same about Linux, that's why I don't have a logo on my site yet

(For the record I am a full-time user of Ubuntu Linux, Fedora Core Linux, and Windows XP)

Please leave me some comments.