Linked by Paul Hankes Drielsma on Tue 15th Apr 2003 06:40 UTC
I can't take anymore comments like "Debian/Gentoo/OpenBSD/etc. are not good/user-friendly because they lack a graphical installer." Searching the web, I couldn't find a comprehensive site describing the good and the bad about graphical installers for various OSes throughout the years, so in this article I hope to debunk a few of the myths on the basis of my own personal and professional experience.
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" Of course, end-users would prefer a GUI based one, but I don't think end users should be installing nor maintaining an OS in the first place."
You must be kidding! For many of us, installing is the only way we can try Linux, since we either can't afford or see no reason to shell out the money for a new system when the one we have is perfectly capable. By your reasoning, if we aren't already a system administrator, aren't willing to buy a new system, or aren't willing to pay someone to perform the installation, we must use Windows.
There is at least one other erroneous argument floating around that states distributions with text-based installers are not for newbies. Libranet uses a text-based installation yet bills itself as "a system for people to use which is easy to install and requires little, if any, support."
I am still a bit of a newbie when it comes to Linux. I've installed a few distributions (Mandrake 8.0 and 8.2, Libranet 2.0 and 2.7, ELX BizDesktop 1.0, and now Vector Linux SOHO 3.2), but I still don't know everything that is going on under the hood, nor do I want to. I have used both GUI and text-based installers. Even though I use a GUI when I use my computer, if the installer is easy to follow and straight-forward, I don't care if it is GUI-based or text-based. And, if they think it will get them to the Linux promised land, I don't think most new users will really care, either.