This is part 4 of a 4 part series that goes into various ways of promoting a live security distribution. Many of the topics discussed can be used for promoting any linux distribution.

Promoting a Live Security Distribution: Supporting the Community: Article 4/4

Even though most security distributions are free it takes a lot of work to keep your community of users happy. The majority of users enjoy a constant flow of updates, quick turnaround or workarounds on problems, and tutorials that can help them along. Working with the community to provide all of these helpful services ensures their future dependence on and allegiance to your distribution. Just like any other Web destination, when it comes to your distributions website and ISO, content is king. The website must help users get through the various tasks and problems that will likely arise. Content on the ISO is paramount. Currently the top security distributions have upwards of 250 tools all built into one 700+ MB ISO.

Support is key to the success of most products and software. The quality of support helps to ensure that users stay around, and if they stray to another distribution, your outstanding support will likely bring them back into the fold. Like all software there should be sub-versions or patches. These are versions/patches that help fix problems that multiple users are currently having. A forum is one of the most common ways to provide support. It also gives the community a way to voice opinions and volunteer help. Some distribution writers use wikis in conjunction with a forum. A wiki is perfect because users can discuss their problems and provide documentation and files in the interest of helping each other. This sharing in the community helps keep some of the stress off of distro writers and keeps them from having to solve every problem that might arise.

Tutorials are another key aspect that can allow users to get familiar with a distribution. Videos on the Web are hot right now. Users want to have high-quality videos at their fingertips to walk them through the different aspects of your distribution. Once they finish the first one they will most likely want more so that they can continue to enhance their knowledge at a rapid pace. The best route is to have videos that apply to every level of knowledge. Videos can be very time-consuming to download and to watch, and so many users might still prefer standard text tutorials. Text tutorials are a quick and easy reference and can be printed to be read anywhere. A text tutorial is comparatively very easy to construct, especially if you used a script for your video. The script or rough draft puts you half-way through having a completed text version of every video tutorial.

Keeping a distribution current, though a huge task, is absolutely necessary. There are many distributions that have been released but were never updated. Users may enjoy everything it has to offer when it is released, but if it is not updated then they will slowly lose interest. This is the case with many distributions that are currently available.

In the end, promoting a live security distribution comes down to time and dedication. How excited do you get about thousands or even millions of users across the globe depending on what you have developed? Putting in countless hours in online and offline promotion, and supporting the community through all phases, will get the distribution noticed.

Hopefully this series has been helpful, and given you even more ideas for promoting your pride and joy. After all the work you put into your development, your security distribution deserves nothing less than the best possible promotion to get the word out to your user community.