Tuesday, July 12, 2011

ALT Linux | Fame & Publicity Not their target

back in 2007 showing a desire for little needed publicity for ALT Linux because whenever I talk about this distribution anywhere I am told they have never heard about it . Michael Shigorin replied in these words 

" Some feel that's no problem with us: focusing on "the globe" would be very fuzzy and anyway demanding for English language resources which we're not very interested in -- that means that focusing on "ex-USSR" or Russian-speaking audience is much more sharp right now as a matter of fact. BTW that might help folks to get motivated to learn Russian in their preparation of flight to Syberia from globalism hounds. ;-) "

I have heard same kind of statements from the other ALT Linux development team members many times at #altlinux . I am told most of the times that ALT Linux is targeted towards Russians / Russian speaking people and though ALT Linux is supported in English and few other languages but their target audience are Russian speaking people mainly .

Since ALT Linux supports English along with Russian language they do offer an English mailing list at Community-en Info Page but it is not as active as compared to the Russian counterpart . There is an ALT Linux Bugzilla page with English language support at Bugzilla Main Page .

Though Russian is the main language at #altlinux but if an English speaking person drops there asking for help they do provide help depending upon the nature of the help requested and upon the mood of the people present in the channel .

In summary in all these years living with ALT Linux I have learned a clear lesson that ALT Linux is Russians only distro and they are not bothered if non Russian speaking people use it but they don`t worry if non-Russian speaking are not getting attracted towards this distro, they are all content with their native users completely .