Research collaboration opportunity – Open source software

Project Discussion
1

Hi.

My name is Thibaut LARUE, I am a 12th grade student at high-school Frédéric Faÿs, Villeurbanne, in France. I am a member of the International French Baccalaureate (IFB) program. As such, I have to take part in a partnership project that I will present in my final exam. I thought you could help me realize that project.

As the topic of my partnership project, I decided to focus on the marketing of desktop Linux distributions. More specifically, the way linux distributions differenciate themselves from one another to be chosen by the end users. As such, I thought that you could give me the insight I am looking for.

I would like you to answer some of my questions.

In return, if it is of interest to you, I could pay you back by :

  • producing a survey, focusing on the 1300 students of Frédéric Faÿs about their knowledge and/or use of Open Source software.

  • create a promotional poster about Linux distributions and your project.

This exchange would have to be completed before the end of January if possible.

Would you be available for a call or exchange of emails in the coming days or weeks ?

I look forward to exchanging with you.

Best regards.

Thibaut LARUE

1 Like
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Could you please elaborate on the purpose of the said survey? Is the survey directed towards the Fedora Project community or the 1300 students from your institute? If it is the latter, then (assuming that you do not mind sharing the results), the insights from the results would be helpful. Since you expressed your interest in creating a promotional poster (which I know next to nothing about), I would loop in the design-team here for their thoughts on this.

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Hi @thib025, welcome to the Fedora community! I am familiar with the IB program, but more on the American side of things. It sounds like a really interesting project idea that you have here. Is it your first time participating in an open source community? It sounds like you have probably been using Linux for a while already.

Why not? But you don’t need to ask for permission actually. You can go ahead and put your questions here. This way, by putting them in public, the entire community will have an opportunity to see your posts and give answers too. We don’t have a “Fedora Marketing Leader” or anything like that. We have several people who volunteer with the Fedora Marketing Team. So, you will likely get different answers from lots of different people too. This is more how a community like Fedora works!

All of this sounds interesting to me. I assume as part of your academic work, you would take the feedback you receive here and incorporate it into your survey as part of the project work. I assume you are working with the support of an academic advisor or teacher as well. If you have guidance on doing those parts, I think it is reasonable to ask us your Linux-specific questions and we can do our best to answer them.

My understanding of the survey and the poster ideas are that @thib025 will likely do those tasks as part of the academic project in their institute. I am guessing that the questions they ask will help shape the survey and poster that they make for academic credit in their institute.

1 Like
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Hi @jflory7 and @t0xic0der,

Thanks for your prompt reply and understanding.

You guessed right! I have been using fedora as my desktop since 2021 and have interested myself at desktop linux distributions and their marketing as a hobby. When I learned that I had to accomplish a parternship project for my IFB, I thought it would be a great topic to study in more detail.

It is however my first time participating in an open source community.

I didn’t know how to approach the community, but this seems perfect. If I understand correctly, I should ask my questions in this same thread, is that right ?

Also I see that I wasn’t clear about the survey and poster, so let me clarify :

  • The survey would gather information about the 1300 (if I manage the organization needed) students of Lycée Frédéric Faÿs (students of age 15 to 20) on their usage of computers. I will then make this information public for the linux community. I will soon send you a draft of my survey form so that you can provide me with feedback about its relevancy.

  • The poster would be a summary of linux distributions marketing and fedora’s advantages and inconvenients. It is meant both to be made public as an easy way to understand linux distros but also as material for my final exam.

I am eager to hear your answers and feedback.

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Nice. Welcome to the community, then! :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

There is not a universal way to do it. :slightly_smiling_face: But yes, you are on the right track. Please proceed with asking your questions. We can then work on finding the right people who may be able to answer.

This sounds really interesting to me. Once upon a time, I was a Linux user in this age range too :smile: But it would be interesting to me to know more about how young people are using computers, in a general sense, in an academic perspective :nerd_face:

I am not sure how large your survey will be, but we can do our best to give you feedback on the relevancy. If it is a very big survey, it might take more time for people to review and read it. Especially since we are getting near the year-end holidays, and lots of people tend to log off for the year, if they have not already.

This sounds useful and interesting to me. It would also probably be interesting for other Linux communities too, not only Fedora.

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Hi Justin.

Thanks for the quick answer again and apologies for the late followup.

I hope I don’t bother you during the holidays. I still have a few months before finalizing my patnership project so I am fine with the wait.

Here are my first three questions (they are each multiple questions).

  1. In your opinion, why should people use Fedora as their desktop instead of other distributions ? What are your main objectives when making Fedora ? What makes it unique ?

  2. How much work does fedora’s package manager rpm demand to mantain and upgrade ? What does Fedora gain in having its own package manager compared to other Debian or Ubuntu-based distributions ? What does it change for the end user ?

  3. How popular are Fedora’s atomic desktops and immutable package managers as a whole ? Was rpm-ostree worth investing a lot of work into ?

The survey is destined towards my fellow high-school students so I believe making it short is necessary if for the maximum amount of them to fill it.

It should also be focused on how they use computers in a general sense. The amount of teenagers and young adults who use computers is already surprisingly low, so there is a near zero chance that they know about linux.

My idea was to ask questions that would inform us over how many people could replace their Windows computer with a linux computer.

I would love it to be interesting for all the linux communities.

Tell me what you think could be improved.

Do you or your family own a computer ? Yes / No

How often do you use that computer ? often / rarely / never

Is your computer a “…” ? Windows (PC) / Mac / Other

Is your PC slow ? Yes / No

Do you use the following applications…

Chrome – often / rarely / never

Firefox – often / rarely / never

Microsoft Office 360 – often / rarely / never

Libre Office – often / rarely / never

Steam – often / rarely / never

Epic Games – often / rarely / never

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Oh and I forgot to mention it but the survey will be translated in french for its publication.

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Here are my answers to your questions, written from my perspective as the Fedora Community Architect:

Why use Fedora?

People generally choose Fedora because they want to be close to the “source” of innovation. Fedora’s main objective is to lead the advancement of free and open source software. We have a philosophy we call “Upstream First.” This means when we find a bug or want a new feature, we don’t just patch it in Fedora; we go to the original creators (like the GNOME desktop team or the Linux Kernel team) and fix it there.

What makes it unique?

Because of that “Upstream First” philosophy, Fedora is often a preview of what the rest of the Linux world will look like in 2–5 years. If you want to use technology today that will become the industry standard tomorrow (like Systemd, Wayland, or Pipewire), you use Fedora.

Maintenance Demand:

Maintaining packages is a significant amount of work! We have thousands of volunteer maintainers who look after thousands of software packages. It requires constant vigilance to check for security updates, fix build errors, and ensure upgrades don’t break the system.

Why RPM?

Historically, RPM (Red Hat Package Manager) became a standard for enterprise Linux (like Red Hat Enterprise Linux). Having our own manager allows us to build specific features that enterprise users need, like strong cryptographic signing and rich metadata.

For the End User:

Honestly? For a new user, the difference between dnf (Fedora) and apt (Ubuntu) is mostly muscle memory. However, Fedora’s packaging guidelines are very strict about not modifying software too much from how the original developer intended. This means users get a “pure” experience of the software, whereas other distributions might heavily modify it.

They are rapidly growing! While our traditional desktop (Workstation) is still the most popular, our “Atomic” desktops are seeing big interest from developers and enthusiasts.

Was it worth the investment?

Absolutely. We believe this is the future of the Linux desktop. Traditional operating systems can “break” if an update goes wrong or if a user installs a conflicting package. Atomic Desktops work more like your smartphone: the system image is applied in the background, and you just reboot into the new version. If something breaks, you can “roll back” to yesterday’s version instantly. That reliability is definitely worth the work.

This is a great start. Since you are targeting teenagers/students who might not know Linux, focusing on usage is the right move. Here are a few quick suggestions to improve your data:

  1. “Is your PC slow?” is a bit subjective. You might get better data asking: “Does your computer struggle to run the programs you need?”
  2. Add a “Why?” question. If they aren’t using Linux, ask why. Is it because of games? School software (like lockdown browsers)? Or just because they don’t know how to install it?
  3. Privacy/Cost. Students often care about money. You might ask: “If you could get a free operating system that didn’t track your data, would you try it?”

I hope this helps with your assignment! Let us know how it goes.

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Hi !

Thanks for your answers. They will be helpful. Additionally, do you know a way to find some concrete numbers over the usage of linux distributions ?

Thank you also for the feedback over the survey. I will be working to get it done hopefully in the next month. I will contact you again then.

Have a good day !