[GNUz] GNU/Linux ...

[Nick Rout]

On Mon, 05 Jul 2004 09:42:41 +1200
InfoHelp <ask@infohelp.co.nz> wrote:

> Sentimentality is insufficient support for a misnomer.

No, but brand name recognition and brand name appeal are!

Its a modern rend to have short punchy recogniasble names.

Frankly enough people glaze over ast the mention of "alternative operating
systems" and "administrative tools" and "compilers". I think that the
word "linux" is becoming very well regarded and recognised. Even people
who glaze over a thte question "what browser is giving you this trouble?"
know the name linux, albeit sometimes not much more than the name and a
coupe of inches of newspaper column they read on the john one tuesday
morning. Lets keep the brand recognition alive and get people asking
about it and trying it out. Once they are hooked they can read about the
histiry and who wrote all the important stuff if they like.

So my point? "GNU" is not a hook. "GNU/Linux" is definitely not a hook,
it is difficult to say and has no punch. "Linux" is a hook. The average
semi-uneducated (in computer OS terms) punter is starting to know about
linux, Grab that hook and pull them into the fold. Don't make them glaze
over with talk of compilers and command line tools like sed, awk, grep -
they might think they need to compile to run linux.


-- 
Nick Rout <nick@rout.co.nz>