Ask HN: How did RedHat Linux get it's first users?

5 points by benjamaan 1 year ago | 8 comments

I'm helping a friend with their distribution strategy for a product similar to Redhat Linux and we were wondering how they got their first users/customers. Was it just a build it and they will come story or was there some more early stage growth hacking going on? It's hard to find much on the early stage.

themerone 1 year ago |

If you want to follow RedHats path to success, you are going to need to build a time machine. It's foolish to think that whatever RedHat was doing 30 years ago is relevant today.

jonahbenton 1 year ago |

Should look for modern analogs.

RedHat, like all other distros, was initially a boxed product- CD ROMs- and support, consulting and custom work was available, arranged via email and phone call. Eventually RHEL was set up as a subscription- not SAAS- with stable releases (of CD-ROMs) and enterprise tier (phone) support. Sure, people shared links and experiences over USENET but there was no "growth hacking" in 1993, not in anything like its present form.

The world is completely different now. There are zillions of more modern examples of open source/open core/saas/support business models, free vs enterprise pricing, etc etc.

RedHat was a 1 of 1, and that ecosystem is gone. Find another exemplar.

brudgers 1 year ago |

I bought a book about Redhat. I bought it in a bookstore on a weekend. The book had a CD-ROM in the back. There was a distribution on it. I recall that Redhat Linux was already enough of a thing I had been reading of it for a few years. In printed magazines.

But that's not what Redhat actually was. Redhat was a support company. Corporations buying per seat and per server support contracts is what made Redhat a business. Having a Linux distribution was a way of productizing Linux support. There was a clear value proposition to an enterprise customer base. Redhat wasn't a guerilla operation.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redhat#Business_model

foobarbaz33 1 year ago | |

ditto this. I bought a random linux book with a redhat CD. My first linux experience. I went through college with that distro on my desktop PC.

toast0 1 year ago |

Sell a box[1] at computer stores with a bundle of a linux distribution, apache, ssleay and a license for it, and a coupon for $25 off a certificate from thawte.

And/or talk to Walnut Creek CDROM, inc about getting in their monthly linux cd bundles. These are the people that ran ftp.cdrom.com.

Actually, that's not really early users; that's 3 years in. In the early days, just kind of work on what Yggdrasil users are complaining about, and advertise in their news groups maybe?

[1] like this one https://www.ebay.com/itm/225617084070

shivc 1 year ago |

Most of what they did is irrelevant in 2024 however you can think along those lines imo. I heard about them long long ago when I was in high school and for a while all I could hear about was red hat.

They were here very early on, had a great initial onboarding experience and features packed.

A modern equivalent in their own space today maybe would be Notion - created a category of their own, dominated it and branded themselves really really hard

runjake 1 year ago |

Red Hat was a well-documented Linux distribution with a far more approachable installation process than most of the few other distros available.

IMHO, their reasons are irrelevant today and you shouldn't use their path as a guide.

constantlm 1 year ago |

I got it from a Linux magazine bundled CD, along with Mandrake and others. Not sure how early of a user I was though.