Howto: Make Ubuntu popular in India

[dhruv_1884]

Howto: Make Ubuntu popular in India



Hi Dudes,
I've been using Ubuntu for 2 weeks now and i have thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

During these 2 weeks, i have been able to make some observations and based on these observations i enumerate points below on how to make Ubuntu popular in India.

1.Provide a simplified document on partition management for the Ubuntu Install. It should include the procedure to delete a partition from Windows so that Ubuntu installs in the available Free Space
2.Ubuntu should have the ability to mount all the partitions on the disc during boot up. Necessary warnings to be provided for NTFS and other types restricted partitions
3.The Install should contain the following programs
1.Xmms
2.Mplayer
3.RP-PPPOE
4.Firestarter
5.JRE
6.A wine version of Mozilla with the Real Player Plugin. Sites like raaga.com are very popular in India, but the native Mozilla on Ubuntu does not support audio streams from these sites. Either make the native Mozilla compatible or provide the wine version.
7.Make the default sound device ALSA
4.Most home users in India do not have a net connection , so installing extra softwares would be difficult for them. Provide a version of Synaptic that could install softwares from CD's or packages that are transported onto the hard disk. It should be able to figure out what to do in the event an RPM or Bin file is to be used. Basically just make the install process completely GUI, no need for ./configure etc.
5.Create awareness about your product by having Ubuntu installed at Cyber Cafe's ( a joint where an Indian goes to browse the web, there are millions of these), and by training computer hardware store staff on howto install Ubuntu
6.Have a CD distribution center in India. Shipit takes too long. Or at least provide computer stores with the CD's so that they may be able to distribute copies

I am pretty sure that there is a 7, 8, 9, 10.... but nothing else is going through my mind right now.

In India the word of mouth is enough to make a product popular. Ubuntu is a great product but it needs to be tuned to Indian needs.
One in every six on earth is an Indian. If you can be successful here then the rest of the world should not be a problem.

Hope you consider my observations.

Regards
-
Dhruv Chopra.
dhruv_1884

[hellmet]

Hmm...well you are absolutely rite Dhruv..
To make UBUNTU a hit in India, it still needs to get
more userfriendly...more like xandros or something..
but still remain free..

One more thing is that..the main problem of Linux is
its hardware incompatibility.
If once we have a PC manufacture who would
take up the task of sellin PCs with Pre-Installed Linux..
It wud work out to be great.
That Out-Of -The Box experience is lacking in Linux.
Again..anyday..u install something new and things screw
up for the novice PC user,
There is nothing more Novice friendly than the Windows.
Thats the only reason MS is still living in this world...

[browndog]

Dhruv,

You are quite right about your points, and allow me to add something that I feel strongly about...that is, the way to make Ubuntu popular EVERYWHERE. We all know that an operating system has two main purposes: 1) Run the computer hardware and 2) Provide a base for installing applications people want. Ubuntu is stuck in somewhat of a dilemma: to become more popular it has to continually strive to provide superior hardware support and have many helpful, productive, and fun applications available for it. However, to have that kind of hardware compatibility (i.e. major hardware manufacturers providing linux drivers) and that kind of software selection, it has to be popular. Companies won't create new software and drivers unless it's popular, and it won't become popular unless it has software and drivers.

I think the answer lies in the Ubuntu community diversifying and exploring new Vistas (pardon the pun). What we have to do is provide BOTH. To get our Ubuntu into the mainstream we need to organize and provide both superior hardware support and a superior range of quality software titles. No easy task, but I see these things as needing to happen concurrently and by the same entity, before Ubuntu will receive the widescale acceptance it so richly deserves.

In addition to these two things, increased specialization in local software support is the one other critical area of focus.

[quadomatic]

if Ubuntu became popular in India, maybe people wouldn't be stupid enough to pay for them. I saw some store while I was visiting family in India where they were selling Ubuntu for a profit.

[dhruv_1884]

Dude , you gotta give me the place or name or some landmark or address of that place, u can be sure that guy'll have a brusing on his nose 2day

[jan]

Good work folks india people are huge user base

[MrHorus]

Dude , you gotta give me the place or name or some landmark or address of that place, u can be sure that guy'll have a brusing on his nose 2day

Why?

It's in the GPL that you can sell open source software if you want - there is absolutely nothing to stop you.

If people are paying for something that they can get for free then that's simply down to ignorance rather than someone taking liberties...

[Carmel]

Why?

It's in the GPL that you can sell open source software if you want - there is absolutely nothing to stop you.

If people are paying for something that they can get for free then that's simply down to ignorance rather than someone taking liberties...

Not true that its ignorance.

As states, people in India don't really have connection to the internet, or the world for that matter. Therefore they might not know that Ubuntu is free/open source. Therefore they might just think of it as a (paid) cheaper alternative to windows. =)

[IYY]

As states, people in India don't really have connection to the internet, or the world for that matter. Therefore they might not know that Ubuntu is free/open source. Therefore they might just think of it as a (paid) cheaper alternative to windows. =)

Just like at the time when the concept of Free software was invented: people wrote software, and charged for the physical CD and the support.