ModeratelyTechAware™

Kudos to Jerkface for finding this one.

We celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Linux this month, and it’s amazing how the target market changes. Almost daily.

It started off on comp.os.minix … just a laugh for like-minded friends.

By the late ’90s, Linux was a Colossus. It challenged paradigms. Also, it proved that you were a He Man and a Professional.

The post dot-com boom was a warmer, more inclusive time, however, and Linux became the Future of the Desktop. Also, it gave your grandma warm fuzzies.

Except … no, that’s not the target market! The target market is SMEs, 100% of whom will adopt a LAMP stack Just Because!

Or, failing that, it’s Supercomputers. And if you don’t own one of those, you probably own a toaster.

And even if none of the above makes sense to you (trust me, it doesn’t), Linux is all around you. Even when you can’t see it. It’s like the 19th century concept of the Ether, except that the Ether explained things, up to a point. (That point being Einstein’s first Nobel-prize winning paper, which oddly enough was not about relativity.)

Well, all that is water under the bridge. The loons are running out of convincing excuses. Ubuntu is finally down to this —

We think it’s people who are moderately tech-aware, who – presented with an alternative – are likely to use an Android phone rather than an iPhone, [who are] more likely to use the challenger brand rather than the main brand.

So, not the fact that it’s cheaper (it isn’t by much). Not the fact that it’s more functional. Not even the fact that being an iHipster is mildly embarrassing.

Nope. It’s all down to being “moderately tech-aware.”

As opposed to “fully tech-aware,” which Ubuntu apparently admits would put you off the damn thing.

Or “not at all tech-aware,” which Ubuntu presumably allows means that you will go with the iPhone/iPad every time based on that cute logo. Or even, horrors, for the Microsoft alternative.

It’s a bit of a narrow market segment, isn’t it?