OSNews

First off, installing software on Windows is pretty damn consistent, in most cases, if you are installing off a removable device autorun will take care of running setup for you, if that isn't the case then all you have to do is browse for the setup.exe or install.exe, run it and boom...the majority of the time you'll have functioning software with icons in the appropriate places.
In GNU/Linux you could install from compiling...which could take ages depending on the size of the program and the speed of the computer, there could be a script that installs a binary, you might have a binary package (i.e. rpm), you could have a packaging system such as apt-get, or you may have this new autoinstall (?), which does look promising. Regardless it's much less consistent than the Windows option. Also there's the whole problem with getting new software, packaging systems like apt-get use repositories which need to be kept updated, you can't simply go to site xyz on the internet and download a program without having to take into account your packaging system and distribution...this is much harder for the average user to deal with then double clicking on install.exe or setup.exe, no if ands or buts about it, sorry. There's way too many different ways of installing all software on linux, if there was just one way, and I don't mean compiling, to install every piece of software imaginable on linux that was as easy as a double click on a setup.exe there would not be a problem, this is not to say that users should be able to have the choice of whether they want to compile or whatnot...however this is not the issue, the issue is making it easy for the masses.