Haiku marketing windows 10EOL

Marketing
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This is a perennial MARKETING question. As a Haiku Noob I just started (part switched) because I had a reason to search for file systems that would properly support my files in a way I can never get to work on other OS. My point is that Haiku was not even on my radar, so I expect most potential users do not even know Haiku exists (I guess readers here know that).

The prompt for my posting however, was that I had cause to reinstate Zorin on my wife’s Laptop because somehow the EFI boot corrupted. Wow what a smick looking Release18 that their marketing department is clearly targeting at Windows 10 users because Micro$oft is cutting them free on Oct25. (I know because this old 32bit Machine I am typing on keeps telling me “Unloved by MircoSoft” and inundating me with bloating updates and nagging).

Zorin has made Ubuntu better than Win10, but it is also boated and similar to Windows in the other respects. They are like driving a fully automated car that wallows down the road telling you to fasten seatbelts, doing everything for you and stopping to do what it wants when it wants. Actually Zorin is much better than Windows in that respect.

The Point: Zorin will capture Windows 10 users that have had enough of Microsoft and forced upgrades, just as many jumped ship to Linux when Win7 was abandoned. There will be some users who originated in Win 7 and earlier that just want something like Haiku that is like that, only MUCH BETTER.

Does the Haiku Team have marketing and marketing strategies. I do not imagine it does, but just putting the claims out for Google bots to crawl and regurge when someone Googles “Alternatives to Win11” etc could get a heap more users even if it is just 0.0001% or Windows users.

Given Haiku Release 1 is hopefully soon, that may be a perfect opportunity, or just too early and backfire. Posting “Haiku Release One is perfect for Windows 10 users who enjoyed Windows 7 as their personal computer while hating its limitations. A genuine case of Back to the Future”. No that isn’t good :grin: , but the point is to get search hits to feature what Haiku provides linked to Windows 10 and Windows 10 EOL.
I am not criticising anyone promoting Haiku as there are many singing about Haiku’s brilliance (does not seem coordinated/centralised from my hits). I am simply asking about whether there is any coordinated strategy relating promotion to technical developments, and identifying the Windows opportunity requiring minimal effort, if it is not already engaged.

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I’m not part of the marketing team, but I think at this point we’re mostly targeting the small world of computer enthusiasts. I don’t think we could handle tons of more users gracefully, especially those with “normal” level support needs. And then, I think we consider Haiku as not yet ready for the masses from a technical point, too.

In any case, I had never heard of Zorin before, not that this would mean much :blush:

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We do not have the developer willing to take this chance!

There is still lot to do!

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Fair calls, mainly because of the lack of hardware support that most Windows users take for granted IMHO. Software wise, now that IceWeasel and Falkon are basically operational Haiku is more that enough for what most Windows users use their PCs for. :slightly_smiling_face: Obviously you would not target the average Windows user, but the ones like myself that understand the limitations of community developed OS that will otherwise go to Linux.

Zorin is Ubuntu made to look like Windows aimed squarely at being better for Windows type users, hence my niche positioning Haiku as the .0001% that may find Haiku attractive without false advertising. No way would you compare to Zorin, in fact you would say that is the best route for “normal” Windows users. I imagine that for the small effort of posting some web content like I suggested you may get that .0001% (meaning 100 more Haiku Users/testers/Contributors) :slight_smile: Most will either throw their none Win11 compliant PC, but some will load something that will run on it, and that was the niche I was thinking of.

Zorin charges $50 for a “supported” instal!

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Sorry, but I can’t see W10EOL as a big deal.

In the long run, Windows users will upgrade to compatible hardware. They always do. Great, more Haiku-capable machines for us on the used market.

In the short run, Windows 10 isn’t magically going to stop working. It won’t get security updates, but the average private user is pretty slack about updating their system anyway and institutions are not much better. Before I retired I worked at a university, where only the IT department could apply security patches, and our windows boxes were years behind in security fixes.

0.6 % of windows installations are still using Windows XP. Other sources put it as high as 1.5%. Doesn’t sound like much, until you realize that the installed base of 5 billion means that there are still millions of Windows XP installations out there.

So all of this is to say that we shouldn’t expect there to be five billion users desperately looking for a new operating system. There will be some, and they will be welcomed. 0.0001% sounds about right.

On my Haiku-related YouTube channel, I’ve recently starting putting up shorts (after apologising profusely to the Haiku faithful) and I am shocked by the views I am getting. A regular episode might get 100 or 200 views over a month, but the shorts get 1000 views within days.

Still, promoting Haiku needs to be a long-term proposition, selling Haiku on its merits, not just responding to Microsoft’s shenanigans.

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Don’t expect much. The vast majority of Window$ users will do as M$ says. They won’t shake off their shackles. For most of their users, Window$ is all they know. Many even like it, and even more just don’t care.
It doesn’t matter requirements for Win 11 are deliberately higher - in the name of “security”, of course. It doesn’t matter it is an even worse spyware galore. It doesn’t matter M$ is pushing having an account you want it or not. It doesn’t even matter perfectly capable computers are now “obsolete” and you “need” to buy a new one, just because M$ says so. The “average Joe” will do as they are told.
Sure, some will finally say enough is enough and will look for something else. But it will be a small minority - and even most of those will look for something that looks like Window$ as much as possible. In the end, a minority of that minority may end up trying Haiku.
How do I know all that? Because we have seen a very similar theater play in the past.

But you know what? Personally, I don’t care. Most of Window$ users are sadly a lost cause anyway. I don’t like it, but it is what it is, and I don’t see it changing anytime soon - unless you believe in miracles. So, if they want to sell their “obsolete” computers just to “upgrade” to 11, be my guest. If nothing else, the price of nice used machines will probably drop, so that plebs like me will get a new toy cheaper.

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Thank you for your channel link. I watched your first from 2 years ago (saying “almost daily driver”and subscribed. I will find your videos useful in whittling down the 80 Apps I have installed to decide if I can use Haiku as my ONLY daily driver :slight_smile:

On my bare metal dual boot install, I watched your Videos on Iceweasle, I am replying on Iceweasle and check my emails on Iceweasle and do my shopping on Iceweasle and access many other cloud SAS on Iceweasle.:grinning_face: My point is that Windoze has made most people into Alt”ChromeBook” users (when Google offers its application suite online anywhere from any device free, why would anyone but corporates and power users use Window Office?), so even my wife uses a live Haiku Instal to do most of what she needs. With a little polish and a few outstanding bug fixes Haiku can easily fulfill that function.

I get that developers and advanced Haiku souls expect a lot from their OS, but a stripped down Alt”ChromeBook” configuration with Iceweasle, Libre Office and a few other end user packages like a media player and photo store are enough for average people.

With software flooding into HaikuDepot, my perception is that it is hardware drivers that are the big limitation, and that requires a user-base to justify their provision/development. Most users now only come to their PC to scan, print, MIDI interface or other functionality that you cannot now do wirelessly from your phone. Lack of hardware support is now the biggest obstacle to wide Haiku acceptance IMHO. That is why we were stuck using Windows or Apple, until Linux got big so some drivers arrived.

Marketing and managing/guiding the end-user base are still issues for when Haiku 1.0 is released. Marketing must be symbiotic and in parallel and subordinate to the Haiku Development Plan. Lots of new demanding end users overloading everything, with current systems being more geared to programing developers working nicely together, is not appealing! I can see why many don’t want these halcyon day to end and the community could decide they won’t :grinning_face: That is the no decision option :wink:

Maybe the strategy is for Haiku to remain a development OS!? I am in no way saying how Haiku should develop, just observing as a Noob that it is unclear what the mission statement/development plan/strategy is and so it is hard to know if Haiku is an ongoing option for me (as a user not a developer) in the longer term. I have searched around for mission statements and where development is heading, with Dr Google AI giving me the “best” short answer! I did find indirect discussions and commentary about direction including this interesting paper from 2010 which concludes https://www.haiku-os.org/files/Text-Haiku_has_No_Future-BeGeistert_022.pdf

– we are a ‘queer’ project that is developing a queer operating system. This is what we should keep in mind. Our work will not ever define the future of operating systems, but what it does do is undermine the monotone machinery of the competition. It is in this
niche that we can operate best.
… The knowledge that we do not have access to the mainstream the way we are now is in no way a disappointment, instead it allows us for a playful approach to the goals of the project.

I will conclude by observing that contrary to the above https://www.haiku-os.org/ first thing says

Haiku is an open-source operating system that specifically targets personal computing. Inspired by the BeOS, Haiku is fast, simple to use, easy to learn and yet very powerful.

As a user, that seems to be mainly so, but the current development paradigm appears to be that the above is a design goal for Haiku Developers, rather than what the existing Haiku community thinks noobs will expect (It does front page publicly claim that after all)! Yes it is a Beta release etc etc, but the issue is how will Haiku navigate the transition, if it ever does. This is not about the wonderful band of code developers and code porters. It is about all the boring ongoing support services associated with an OS that is actually used by users, not developers, and the age old ugly question of how that is all paid for etc etc, that most developers rightly have little interest in. It will need a clever organizational shift, to avoid repeating the past. Plans are essential (maybe starting with the Haiku community defining its mission statement clearly and directly).

It is all about managing expectations and the right amount of caffeine :grinning_face: . A disappointed user is a lost supporter.

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Hi again @michel

Just proof reading saw this at the end of your post

Agree, but Marketing is all about positioning, and positioning requires responding to opportunities in the market. It seems W10EOL is not an opportunity Haiku is in a position to exploit for Haiku’s and the Haiku’s communities benefit. I am an engineer not a marketer, but I have been in business and marketing is what it is and must be recognized in your business model unless minimal funding is needed. Yep: ugly $s

Haiku is passion and love based at the moment it seems (it is wonderful), but Release 1 will change all that, as demanding consumer users demand and criticize and don’t understand, and supporting them costs rise, unless clever planing and organizational changes are put in place IMHO. We, of advanced years, have all seen what happens. My engineering designs that are fun and I love the most would not make it in “the market”!

Of course Haiku may be the miracle OS that just lives on love forever, but that will need a plan to get young people into the project! That is a whole other discussion :wink: .

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even Chinese government are taking all function into web-mode.

locale software application, yep, it be abandon.

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This is quite reckless. You can lose a lot of data in one go… Just like when computers were being actively installed everywhere (in our country), they advertised that there would be almost no need to use paper, but in reality, paper is used no less.

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For me, Haiku is more like an alternative to Linux, rather than alternative to Windows. And it’s an alternative that is going to be viable in the future, rather than being viable right now.

Despite being somewhat a mess, Linux is a major improvement over Windows 11. So let people move to Linux first, and then if they are not satisfied with where Linux is going, they take a look at Haiku.

So, consider Windows → Linux → Haiku pipeline instead of Windows → Haiku leap.

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Hello,

I think this debates comes up with every new Windows or Mac OS release. Each of these also brings us a few new users, at least for a little while.

But if I look at my own situation: my current laptop has no sound, touchpad isn’t working, there are no drivers for the webcam. And then more “advanced” stuff like dual displays.

So, I wouldn’t recommend it even to close friends and family in this state, let alone the general public. Yes, it is the ultimate and very ambitious goal, one that we may never reach. But it doesn’t matter. Until then, it is a nice OS for my own use, and for other people with a similar mindset: a little bit of computer experience, ready to accept a few limitations in exchange of a simpler system and a nice community. I would say this requires slow growth, trying to balance the grand vision and the quirky needs and desires of the current users and developers.

And yes, at the moment all of this is funded by love, fun, and also donations from users. We’ll see how far we can go this way, which somewhat protects the project from outside influences. Like a secret garden in a large city, maybe?

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Plan? What plan?

Haiku development is pretty much the old “lone developer with an itch to scratch” model. There’s a little bit of gatekeeping to ensure that nobody strays too far from the standards set by Be, Inc far back at the dawn of recorded history. Note that I didn’t say “excessive” gatekeeping. There are some who would like to see more: periodically, we see demands that we roll back package management.

But we’ll get webcam support when a dev decides that “enough is enough”, buys a bunch of webcams with their own money, and starts tinkering. Same for multiple monitors.

I actually enjoy it that way. But I have no delusions that Haiku is going to dethrone Windows or even Linux. Haiku is fun. It is the computer hobbyist’s last stand. If you can stand some NSFW language, this video says it very well.

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That’s how GNU/Linux got webcam support, after all. I’m sure at least some of the Haikuers here have heard of the webcam driver man (the original article is now lost, maybe some archeologist can find it in Internet Archive). Linux had basically non-existent webcam support until a man with an epic beard decided that enough is enough and rolled up his sleeves. The drivers are now obsolete because the bloated Linux kernel includes them, but back in the day it was those drivers or no webcam.

All we need is people with plenty of time and the motivation (the epic beard is optional). They will do way better work than corporations.

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Yep. That video pretty much sums it up. Linux from the 90s, only Haiku is way ahead of where Linux was in the 1990s! I have gotten sound to work easily (and a $2 ANKO (KMart Aust) USB sound stick if the internal card isn’t detected), touch screen, WIFI, web camera etc all to work, without any real skill on my part, so although Haiku is lacking drivers everything else is getting very easy to use and very useful without any coding or terminal commands. Not expecting much, I loaded it on my wife’s old HP Pavilion Laptop and everything worked. Touch screen, sound, touchpad, WIFI etc, and she loves it, especially when I animated our son as an animated MOE window sitter (Mascot).

You have made Haiku so good and capable, that more than flocks of nostalgic Linux developers will start using it seriously. Linux history shows what to avoid, so by planning Haiku progression into the future, you may avoid the situation Linux is in. All the proceeding is of course IMHO and Linux already exists in the market, so it isn’t the same.

With all the applications being ported from Linux (though inferior to to natively developed Be Apps) means that Haiku capability is increasing far more rapidly than Linux did, meaning the future will come faster. Hell, even when Haiku crashes it is so well behaved and polite it is pleasant :grinning_face: You have all done such a brilliant job.

One marketing strategy would be to say “Fun for developers”, but the current marketing just says

Haiku is fast, simple to use, easy to learn and yet very powerful.

and it is, and that gives an expectation and downloads by individuals that maybe won’t fit your plan. Its all about managing expectations.

PS: I have tried Haiku on other PCs where it won’t detect the internal drive (the new NVME m.2 cards ), and only one of my WIFI USB sticks works with it, so I am aware there are lots of issues and bugs still to be faced.

Also my suggestions are nothing about forming corporations or marketing departments etc. I get that Haiku is nice the way it is. And Haiku Inc already exists. My basic thought was more users, more support and more donations that will ensure Haiku is sustained well into the future.

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yes. We must avoid the same mistakes as linux. I would suggest not to rely heavily on wine or ported linux apps, as it creates fragmentation that is seen in linux (the only really bad thing about it)

but on the original topic of the post, i heavily disagree. Haiku does not have as much support for linux in many many areas, and may be best suited for a 10 years old laptop.

although one good feature is that there is much less fragmentation of software, making everything more windows-like instead of the thousands of linux distributions and window managers

However still, i doubt anyone would actually try haiku. People like us are probably one in a million pc users, while the rest are reluctant to learn anything new, and just dont care about anything

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Not since we have banned the two users that were still rambling about it from these forums.

The situation for these two is that we are already 90% there. In fact there is already multi monitor support on some early Radeon cards, for example. But the modern drivers somehow don’t implement it.

As for webcams, there is an almost complete driver as well, it reads all parameters from the webcam and everything, but, you just get a black image with nothing in it.

We got quite far, and some day one person will finally put in the missing bit. But don’t be mistaken, it is very much not a “lone developer” effort. It is years of discussions, identifying and fixing problems one at a time on several layers (in the case of webcams, that would be the USB stack as well as the media kit for example).

And you don’t get through these things without a plan and without discussing it and making sure you’re going the right direction. Otherwise, all you get is a prototype implementation that never gets merged, because it just doesn’t fit with everything else.

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But that’s an excellent selling point! “Haiku can bring back that computer you thought was too old to keep, and make it better than new!” Not in competition with modern Linux, but beyond it: where even Linux doesn’t bother anymore.

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Okay, I was exaggerating slightly for effect. The point is that we are all volunteers, working on what we can within the limits of our abilities. There is no Master Plan, no benevolent dictator enforcing compliance (no matter how much Lunduke wants there to be one).

Prediction: There will be a new one within a year or two :smiley:

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I would like to have the option to install packages, including system packages, in an extracted variant to the filesystem. Will you ban me for this? :upside_down_face:

… option to “off” virtual filesystem in Haiku, during system installation or later, let’s say.