First rule of writing (reviews): know thy audience
Posted by: Anonymous
[ip: 90.209.33.144]
on July 07, 2008 11:59 AM
This is all very well, providing you are writing a technical piece for a Linux-savvy target publication. Which is where the overwhelming number of Linux reviews end up. Provided your goal is to catalog a distro, so that people who already know all about Linux, can quickly get an idea of what it contains, then it does a good, if wordy, job
However, it fails spectacularly if the goal is to answer the question: "why should I use this distribution?". In this case just listing the features means nothing. The key points to address are the benefits and drawbacks of using the distro. In short, this boils down to telling the reader what functions they can perform, that they couldn't do with a different Linux version and possibly (depending if you're trying to sell it, or be independent) what doesn't work. Here, you have to know what sort of features the reader wants. Are they interested in playing games, office functions, running a server - what? Even then, it would be a mistake to just toss them a list of software versions, the value in a review is the information gleaned from the reviewer actually using the product, rather than distilling the datasheet that the supplier provides.
People buy (or download) benefits, not features.
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First rule of writing (reviews): know thy audience
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 90.209.33.144] on July 07, 2008 11:59 AMHowever, it fails spectacularly if the goal is to answer the question: "why should I use this distribution?". In this case just listing the features means nothing. The key points to address are the benefits and drawbacks of using the distro. In short, this boils down to telling the reader what functions they can perform, that they couldn't do with a different Linux version and possibly (depending if you're trying to sell it, or be independent) what doesn't work. Here, you have to know what sort of features the reader wants. Are they interested in playing games, office functions, running a server - what? Even then, it would be a mistake to just toss them a list of software versions, the value in a review is the information gleaned from the reviewer actually using the product, rather than distilling the datasheet that the supplier provides.
People buy (or download) benefits, not features.
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