Promotion of Linux and FLOSS - brainstorm

(FLOSS - free liberal open source software)

(Please help to improve.)

First become more clear about your intentions, target, and (kind of) users you'd like to reach.

• Which are your main points of interest, which applications, technics, …
• Do you want to promote politics (free software model) additional to technical matters ?
• Do you intend to reach non-political users (“mainstream”) too ?
• Where and how promote it ?
• What are your personal capabilities, what is possible with the community, with support only, what is impossible ?
• Why promote at all ?

• You want to spread the idea of the open software model.
• You want to increase the userbase, because that means more support for both, users and developers.
• More (professional) users means more digital products are produced with FLOSS (music, software, graphics, …) thus increasing general acceptance and proving quality.

• Social platforms (twitter, facebook, ..)
• Forums, web-pages, blogs, IRC, Chat, Messenger-Public-Rooms
• Linux Magazines, Print media
• Web-Video (make tutorials, introductions, explain, ..)
• Radio and Podcast
• “Mouth-to-mouth” propaganda, conversation
• Flyer (spread in studios, universities, restaurants, bars, clubs, township administration …)

• It works for the things you need / like to do and is stable.
• You consider freedom and independence as important
• You like the community
• FLOSS permits better decision, how much and what to support financially
• You're able to add and contribute in many ways
• You can't bear the “enter your 16 digit serial number”, registration and copy protection stuff anymore
• You want to be sure, that the application does not disappear, that the file formats are known/open, that your data stays accessible

• make the software intuitive for new users (logical GUI and configuration)
• add pop-up hints, explain things in context, make keyboard-shortcuts obvious
• have a good web-page pointing to (community-) support and giving important hints
• listen to the users and their difficulties, try to improve their experience

Graphic tools

• Inkscape (svg, vector graphics)
• Gimp (image processing, pixel graphics)
• Scribus (DTP)
• Quanta Plus (web-page editor)
• KompoZer (web-page editor)
• CSSed (CSS style-sheet editor)