In my opinion, you're solving the wrong problem with the wrong solution.

The user base for Canonical, Red Hat and SUSE is not the general public watching traditional TV to decide that they want to install Linux across their enterprise data centre, it's ICT professionals who talk to other ICT professionals and read white papers and implementation guidelines, then pay installation, management and subscription fees to get ongoing support across their shiny new data centre.

Growing the user base with mums and dads is not something that Linux vendors are interested in, since it only costs money instead of generating an income stream.

Linux as a commodity comes from rolling out Android phones and tablets, from deploying embedded Linux on network routers, security cameras, in-car entertainment systems, set top boxes, etc.

The final hurdle for general desktop Linux is not resolved by getting more users through advertising, it's through having a product that can be purchased. Chromebooks were promising, but missed the mark.

System76 are trying, but the scale is too small and Linux isn't ready as a general computing platform yet. I say that having been a Linux user for 25 years.

If you don't agree with that last statement, consider what all computer manufacturers would do at the drop of a hat if they thought it would be cheaper, they'd drop Windows like the hot mess it is.

Unfortunately, it's still cheaper to pay the Microsoft tax because the associated support network is already in place for the general public.

That's not there, yet, for Linux.

It remains to be seen if ever will be.

Canonical and the others don’t make money from individual users. They get money from companies so there isn’t really any incentive to make tv ads. What would be more likely would be hardware manufacturers like tuxedo to do this. I know tuxedo does magazine ads but not sure if they have the budget for tv.

Imo it doesn't make much sense to advertise an OS while it's still required to install it manually. Last time I was looking for a laptop I couldn't find a store selling anything with Linux or even without Windows pre-installed. How many people will be convinced by an ad to look up instructions online and actually go through the process?

Tbh, I'd rather they use the money to make Linux distros better. Valve made the Steam deck a winner not through advertising, but through making a good quality product and supporting the ecosystem.

I have no interest in people making Linux popular beyond the minimum required to get companies to support it. If it's good, people will naturally learn about it through word of mouth.

Also, directly attacking Microsoft feels like they could get sued for libel or something like that.

They did this in the 90's. From a server perspective they won big time. Everyone and there NAS runs Linux. From a desktop perspective it doesn't much sense to push Linux. There isn't any money involved

The effect of that would be next to none. It's all about OEM preinstalls. >95% of people never install an OS on their devices themselves. They use whatever is on it. iPhones come with iOS, Samsung phones come with their specific version of Android, and in >99.9% of cases it stays that way. You wouldn't even see the tiny amount of people installing, say, GrapheneOS on their Google Pixel.

It's similar with laptops or desktops: Windows is preinstalled on most of them, so that's what people use. The only other relevant OS in terms of OEM preinstalls is macOS. Heck, most people don't even know the manufacturer of their laptop unless it's a MacBook. It's either a MacBook or an "Apple" or it's simply a "laptop".

There are some OEMs (Lenovo and Dell come to mind) offering Ubuntu or maybe Fedora preinstalled on some of their models, but I never saw it listed as the default option.

The best way to get people to use Linux is to preinstall it on a device people want to use. A very recent example of this is the Steam Deck. Most users don't care or probably don't even know it runs Linux, it just does what they want it to do. Most people likely don't know their Chromebook runs Linux, or their Android phone (that they call a "Samsung phone", not an "Android phone").

I doubt anyone that still watches ads in some format is the target demographic.

I wouldn't advertise on the premise that Windows is a horrible, privacy invasive OS. Even though it's true that would easily be grounds for Windows to claim defamation and pummel the entire thing into the ground with legal fees

People who are capable of installing Linux are probably already aware of it. Most people when they buy a laptop is to have something that just works out of the box. Just open the laptop lid and it’s welcoming you with the setup process. Telling them how to install a live USB is already too much information.

They used to advertise Linux.

I don't think it's "Linux" that should be advertised, but Desktop OS distributions in this case.

What's going to catch people's eye is going to be the desktop experience, the killer apps that come with it, and why it's better than Windows or Mac, in which case, it isn't yet.

It's getting close, but it's not there yet.

Advertising costs money to produce, and the vast majority of paid Linux distro users, such as Red Hat, SUSE, etc., are business/enterprise users, who usually wouldn't rely on advertising through TV, YouTube, and so on to find enterprise computing solutions. It would be a disconnect between the ad platform and the primary target market.

I think the widespread adoption of Linux is only going to happen from the bottom up. Corporations aren't going to widely adopt Linux until Microsoft becomes a costly liability to them.

It will probably be the result of CoPilot. Will it be a huge data breach of bank or healthcare records? Will other governments flat-out refuse to run an OS with built-in spyware? Who knows? But it will be something awful that might even get our "mainstream media" to sit up and take notice.