Ubuntu market segmentation and analysis (Was: Mono required by ubuntu-desktop)

[Peter Whittaker]

On Tue, 2006-01-08 at 15:44 -0700, Micah J. Cowan wrote: 
> 2) The audience you are describing as being lucky to have 128MB or RAM
> on old Pentiums should really be using Xubuntu, not Ubuntu. It's really
> the wrong market...

Not to pick on Micah, but how exactly are the people in each target
market going to know what market they are in? Ubuntu claims to be Linux
for human beings. Which human beings get to be the default set served by
"basic Ubuntu", and which get to be special cases, served by special
Ubuntus, like edu-, k-, x-, etc.?

Read that again: Which people are in the default set, which are the
special cases, and how does each human being know if they are default or
a special case?

Many human beings, especially in North America, Western Europe, and
Australia/NZ, are relatively wealthy, have relatively recent computers
with relatively more memory and disk, use their computers at meetings to
take notes, and have digital cameras and music collections, and want
their notes, photos and music indexed. Bells and Whistles are a large
part of what it will take to convince them to install Ubuntu, allowing
us to make progress on bug #1.

These human beings are somewhat well represented by the most
frequent/active members of this list, BTW (at least in terms of the
amount of RAM and numbers of toys they have).

Many other human beings, especially in emerging/developing parts of the
world, are relatively constrained by their circumstances, and want/need
computers to improve their conditions, be these conditions of economy,
education, or political/social participation. A comprehensive yet
resource efficient OS and application suite capable of running on
relatively inexpensive and - from the perspective of many of the group
above - resource constrained systems will be a large part of what it
will take to convince them to install Ubuntu, allowing us to make
progress on bug #1.

There are likely other groups as well. These two will do for purposes of
this discussion.

For the first group, we have Ubuntu.

What do we have for everyone else?

Seriously. This is not as far-fetched or as dumb a question as it
sounds. When one visits the web site, gets enthused and decides to
download or try shipit, most people, not being as familiar with
computers and distros as all of you who have read this far, will take
the default. The default is Ubuntu. The one with the B&Ws that require a
relatively more powerful system. The one trending farther along the
power curve.

If I am a relatively computer illiterate person who wants to kick the
tires because he believes that having a computer will help him close an
economic gap, or because she believes that having a computer will allow
her access to more information than is locally available, etc., how I am
to know that I should be trying xubuntu?

Don't give that "read the wiki" stock reply: Reading the wiki implies a
level of familiarity with computers and the Internet model that may
simply not exist for those whose primary motivation isn't to try "this
Internet thing" or to try tech for the sake of tech, but is instead to
use technology as a tool to improving their circumstances.

Those fortunate enough to be associated with a service bureau may not
need to make this choice themselves. edubuntu comes to mind: My
impression is that it is targeted at a middle tier who will install it
for their users, that is, the downloaders and installers of edubuntu
will be the folks providing IT support for the students and teachers and
council and board members.

What are the service bureaus for members of the xubuntu community? And
how do they know they need one? And is this really how we see Ubuntu
spreading?

Maybe it is. Or maybe it needs to be. These are the sorts of market
segmentation, analysis and distribution questions that must be asked,
answered, and understood by all members of the Ubuntu design and
development community before we can write any sort of useful
specification for how various types of Ubuntu should be constituted,
especially with regard to CPU power, amount of RAM, disk, etc.

What should the default be? Easy to get started, or B&W? How do we
target each market segment? Do we expect individual downloading and
installation, service bureaus, or motivated friends?

Should be have Ubuntu Media edition, for those who want digital camera
support, music management, etc?

As an aside, bad enough now that we have ubuntu, xubuntu, and edubuntu
(kubuntu omitted because kubuntu targets a degree of computer literacy
sufficient to get past these barriers to entry, IMHO. I could be wrong,
let me know).

Matters will get worse when we have Ubuntu LTS (aka 6.06 aka Dapper) and
Ubuntu B&W (aka Edgy). Before anyone objects to that reasoning, bear in
mind that this distinction has already been proposed on ubuntu-devel in
the mono discussion: Edgy is the B&W release, people who don't need the
B&Ws can use LTS. That begs the question that people already know which
one they need, which begs the question of levels of computer literacy
greater than those found in the vast majority of the world, and I
include the relatively wealthy west (how computer literate are most NA
and European users? not, and they shouldn't need to be, their computers
should just work).

Distro literacy should not be a prerequisite to successful use of
Ubuntu, nor should "most users" have to install more than once to get
what they need on the machines they have.

pww

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/attachments/20060802/15dc311e/attachment-0001.pgp