Simple Installs

[Jonathan Hutchins]

---- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Gilliland" <jegilliland at hotmail.com>

> I completely agree with his views on software installation.  I want linux
to
> gain more marked share as much as anyone.  However, this will NEVER happen
> until software installation is greatly simplified, IMHO.  For linux to
> become popular, there will have to be a simple, "a few mouse clicks" type
of
> software installation.  The RPM stuff is a good start, but does not go far
> enough.

If you read the IT news pages (which you indicate you don't), you'll see
articles about how one of the main contributors to security problems is
exactly that, the "few mouse clicks" dumbed down installation of complex,
crucial software.

It's essentially giving someone else complete responsibility for how your
computer is set up, and refusing all knowledge.  Linux still forces you to
learn something about the software in order to install it.  It doesn't do
this in a particularly deliberate, coherent, or effective way, but it does
it.  You may end up learning things about some obscure "C" library that are
more relevant to programming than to running the software, but eventually
the bits start to form a pattern, and you start to understand how it all
fits together.

I don't having Linux on every idiot's desktop is a valid goal for Linux
advocacy.  For the people who really don't want to know anything about their
systems there will always be Microsoft, and it will continue to thrive by
serving those interests.  Linux is, and should continue to be, for people
who want to become a little more involved in the system.

There's certainly a place for it on the unenlightened user's desktop in the
context of a managed site where someone, but not the end user, knows the
details of the installation.  In this kind of environment, you don't WANT
users installing software with a few mouse clicks - you want IT installing
the software through remote management tools, and the users keeping der
cotton-picken-fingers outen den springenwerks.

This brings up one of the problems with MS software - even well trained MS
Professionals often don't really know how the software can be configured
and/or controlled.  I'm an MCP, I've been a part of the MS Marketing System,
and there are configuration issues I still pull my hair out over - some
things that you just can't do, because someone in MS decided to bury it deep
in some binary file, and some other wag decided to delete the configuration
tool from the package.