Petreley On Simplifying Software Installation for Linux

markcappel writes "RAM, bandwidth, and disk space are cheap while system administrator time is expensive. That's the basis for Nicholas Petreley's 3,250-word outline for making Linux software installation painless and cross-distro." The summary paragraph gives some hint as to why this isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

Comments

General bad attitude towards anything easy

[Microlith]

The first obstacle to overcome is the bad attitude many linux users have that if something is easy to install, or easy to use, it is therefore bad.

As I see it, many would like to keep the learning curve very, very steep and high to maintain their exclusivity and "leetness" if you will.

For instance, the post above mine displays the ignorant attitude that "easy to install" by definition equals "unstable software" and has only a jab at MS to cite as a reference.

That's truly sad (though that may just be a symptom of being a slashdot reader.)

As I see it, not everyone finds: ./configure
make
make install

to be intuitive, much less easy, never mind what happens if you get compiler errors, or your build environment isn't the one the package wants *cough*mplayer*cough*, or if you even have said development environment.

Nor does it mean the software is any more stable. Could be just as shitty. _That_ is a matter of the developer of the program, not the install process.

No, please

[Yag]

Thats the reason windows servers are more vulnerable to attacks, because they give you the idea that its easy to mantain them... Its the same thing saying that you dont need any pilot on an airplane (and that you can put there anyone) if you make a good autopilot engine... We need more knowledge in system administration, not more automatisms.

It is not just the ease but the language...

[terraformer]

It is not just the ease of installation but also the language used during that installation that is foreign to many users. Having a nice point and click interface on linux installs is a major leap forward but these still reference things like firewalls, kernels, services, protocols etc. Most people, when faced with new terms become disoriented and their frustration level rises. These setup routines have to ask users what they are looking to accomplish with their brand spanking new linux install.

• Would you like to serve web pages? (Yes or No where the answer installs and configures Apache)
• Would you like to share files with other users in your home/office/school? (Yes or No where the answer installs and configures Samba)

Etc...