Dear Community, where are you?

Community
62

Hi all,

as me being part of the youngest generation within this thread, I want to share my opinion on this too.

I think using Social Media in any form is first of all beneficial for IPFire, because it’s just free promo. Of course someone or even better -thing (automated feed) needs to post stuff on the various platforms - that @jon mentioned - IPFire already has. That is done right now, eventhough Mr. Musk decided to shut down the API for people not willing to buy verification.

But as @ms already said above, I too think that maintaining the Twitter & Facebook account is a “no-brainer”, because the project has the most followers on these platforms and it wouldn’t be really smart, to just throw that away.

Somehow getting access to the subreddit r/ipfire would be good. Reddit is good for short exchanges and acquiring new users for ipfire and this forum.
Also, I think that some of the people who could/would use IPFire also use Reddit, as you can find other pretty much tech-related stuff there too.

Mastodon doesn’t seem to be a very popular platform here, as only 3 people follow the official @news@social.ipfire.org account, but it works fine for automating posts to all other platforms so far.

A Discord isn’t an extremely bad idea in general, but this takes effort to set up, so that it works well and functions correctly. However, a vanity URL would be necessary for something like IPFire though, which adds a cost aspect to the whole thing that is unwanted.
(14 boosts cost ~70€ without Nitro)
I do not really see a purpose in an IPFire-Discord, because we have this forum for questions and other Socials plus the Blog for Announcements etc.

Instagram, which has not yet been mentioned, is not purposeful, as you always have to post pictures or create a story manually.

I personally think, that trying to get users from Facebook & Twitter to use other platforms too would be the easiest first step, to get more followers on these other platforms.

I also think it would be useful to promote the social media channels a bit more, to always keep them visible for everyone. One could do this through the emails you get from time to time, on ipfire.org on the blog, etc. Just like cross-platform-promotion.

2 Likes
63

So as mentioned I am a member of a FB group that discuss anything home lab or home office and right now there is a topic about firewalls, they pop from time to time.

I try to advocate IPFire there, but, as I already talked about, I am not very versed in vlans, vpns or many other related more advanced configs, so it would be nice seeing someone speaking up for IPFire as so many speak up for OPNSense, PFSense, Firewalla and other solutions.

64

2 posts were split to a new topic: Unfortunately i also have made the observation that tech/knowledge/thinking for people is to demanding

66

Dear Community, where are you? Michael asked.
We got a lot of answers, most of the people who answered are hidden to “modern social media”.
I may suggest to change the question to:
“where are the decision makers who decide to implement ipfire”
o segment private use (that’s for me)
o segment business users
and how can the two channels be addressed with most impact and most less effort.

67

I preach IPFire to all my friends. IPFire ain’t perfect, it’s a “work in progress”. tI’s a good distro, and improves with each iteration. I’ve sent some funds, and made small contributions. Limited resources on my side… I try to encourage and help where I can.

3 Likes
68

o segment private use (that’s for me)
o segment business users

Bit of both, but the business side is 35000 people organisation which is hard to influence, and those decisions are outsourced technically speaking, my consultancy is way less, but at the moment they/we are not needing any infrastructure yet. At all. 365 Cloud is a nuisance that way.

69

3 posts were split to a new topic: Is that the company behind IPFire?

72

To make ipfire more public,… do you think is there a chance to get some reviews/tests/news/interviews about IPFire on heise.de / golem.de / tarnkappe.info ?

1 Like
76

This thread is not intended for rants about non IPFire things that people dislike.

It is intended to elicit input on how a small software development group can get the message about IPFire out to a wider audience.

Please bring the conversation back onto topic.

10 Likes
78

We stopped being interested in that, because of a large number of reasons. This has been discussed occasionally in public, too. The biggest reasons are that people who read c’t usually know about IPFire; we were asked to write those articles ourselves (not profitable at all) but were always asked to keep strong support for Raspberry Pi and as soon as we said something “good” about IPFire that was removed as advertising; and finally: we never had any feedback. Those magazines and dead and nobody reads them any more.

We are also regularly told that “firewall” is too complicated and not interesting for their readers. Based on all the stuff they are putting in focus their readership has massively changed and I indeed agree that this won’t fit.

Or put simply: It is not worth the time for reaching very few people.

79

All,

I cleaned-up this thread as best I could.

I apologize if I deleted something relevant to this topic.

Jon

3 Likes
80

I am not really into social media, except Reddit. Maybe a IPFire Reddit?

81

Cha ching to you :slight_smile: for bringing the kids back in line

82

How about a review request on sites like STH? I have been a member there for quite a while now and it seems Patrick is open to ideas and suggestions from the community.

83

You may find a more detailed answer to your question in this post:

1 Like
84

The only social that I connect to sometimes is FB :wink:.
I have a YouTube channel where I posted a few children’s songs that I rearranged :blush:. I also like to do that.
On linkedin and twitter I’m only registered, but I haven’t logged in there anymore. Other socials I don’t have any.

85

i heard ipfire from michael (mimugmail) in Opnsense forums ,by the way when product is good people just come.

Twitter for me

1 Like
86

Do you do much with https://distrowatch.com/ ?

I searched IPFire on there and the last update for IPFire was July 16 2023. Whenever a new version is released, could you send them that info and perhaps you get to be at the top of their page for a day? More updates equals more exposure.

I’m not familiar with the process of getting them to display your new distro update though. Do they play favorites? Do they ignore smaller userbases? I don’t have the answers, but I thought I’d mention it in case it can give IPFire some more exposure in some way.

edit: another thought is someone on the developers team start doing HOW TO Youtube videos. Post the links here and the current userbase will get the views and likes up, which should get the videos suggested to more viewers…

edit 2: Distrowatch allows you to review distros. Only 8 reviews there so far. Anyone in this thread want to add to that? Link:

87

hello everyone reading this post I believe that the community is there and is present but everyone goes on their own independent of all the others
maybe if we concentrated things and activities we could give greater visibility to the project

88

To do that well enough you really need users who can do videos well. Certainly for myself I know that is not one of my skills or capabilities. Also doing them requires a lot of time commitment which would have to be taken from other activities, which are already under-resourced.

However, as this is an open source project that all users can contribute to, if there are any users who are good you-tubers and would be willing to put some time in on making some good quality IPFire How to videos that would be welcomed.

4 Likes