Debian-Red Hat- yadda yadda yadda
Consider this:
According to at least two different surveys ... a slashdot web poll and
the WebCMO marketing survey (
http://www.WebCMO.com/linux/report/report3.htm ) Debian is the #2
distribution. I will use the WebCMO numbers beause they are PROBABLY a
little better audited though I have no way of knowing this for sure.
Red Hat 54.6%
Debian 21.5%
Slackware 13.9%
All others 9.9%
What this PROBABLY means is that as new distributions appear ... things
like Stampede and Corel, they are PROBABLY going to take more market share
from Red Hat and Slackware than from Debian. Think of the reasons why. Red
Hat is mainly a newbie distro. It is designed to be easy to install but
Red Hat is attempting to keep users longer by offering support. This would
be particularly true with enterprise customers. Red Hat is designed to be
the entry point into Linux.
I think a large number of Debian users are former Red Hat users. I don't
think very many Debian users go back to Red Hat. I will bet that the vast
majority of the rest of the users are former Slackware users that found
Red Hat to be somewhat "Mickey Mouse". The balance that are first time
Linux / first time Debian or migrated to Debian from other distributions
would be negligable. In other words, Slackware users PROBABLY tried Red
Hat then discovered Debian and settled here. This means that the
targeting of Debian campaigns to get any new users might be aimed at
existing Slackware and Red Hat users rather than first-time users.
The pitch to Slackware users might be "package management without loosing
control". Debian allows you to maintain control of your system ... config
files where you can find them and a good, predictable filesystem layout.
The pitch to Red Hat users might be along the lines of "take off those
training wheels!". You have been using Red Hat long enough to discover the
limitations. No quality control over contrib packages, not enough
packages, things scattered all over the place, a GUI that keeps you at
arm's length from the system. Are you still compiling popular software
from sources? Debian probably has it packaged. Chances are good it will
install in a running configuration by default.
Bottom line is ... rather than try to attract new linux users to Debian,
maybe the pitch could be ... move up to the big leagues.
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