Eh, now that I think about it, such a project would either need to take a lot of decisions for the user, or risk becoming too complex for giving the user options. I mean, I see partitioning, and I realise that’s something I hadn’t thought of. I assumed just an install, but what if the user wants dual boot? What distro to pick? How much space for each “boot”? Do we choose a specific DE or take the distro’s main or default? So many variables. I mean, it’s one thing to BAM! Ubuntu auto-installer .exe. Now, to allow for user choices… or not to? You either give options, which could be overwhelmimg to someone who might not even understand all that, or become simple and, in the process, heavily “opinionated”
Yup, now you touch one core problem why Linux in desktop cannot get to masses — too much fragmentation. Next to unlimited chain of options and preferences, many of which even lead to severe incompatibility issues.
Ubuntu some decade or two ago looked promising ”one distro to rule them all” but seems to have turned to shit since.
If you look at Windows or macOS, it’s basically just a version or two to choose from, and the most common one suits 90% or more.
The same should happen in Linux world too. If an ”easy install tool” like described above would offer just ~5 most common distros, in their most common variant, it would still be a tremendous step forward.
If someone is knowledgeable enough to have strong distro pref, or knows that they need a certain system component, they most likely are not the target audience anymore as they can handle a manual install too. The target user may not even know there are different distros, and will just pick the ”Linux version” based on a screenshot that looks familiar or interesting.
So IMO; no options other than the absolutely critical ones (like to dual boot or not). There shouldn’t be more than maybe 3 big things the user has to decide themselves, for everything else the Linux community as a whole MUST be able to take a hard look at themselves and decide what are the most viable, compatible and best supported branches, and unite behind those.
Eh, now that I think about it, such a project would either need to take a lot of decisions for the user, or risk becoming too complex for giving the user options. I mean, I see partitioning, and I realise that’s something I hadn’t thought of. I assumed just an install, but what if the user wants dual boot? What distro to pick? How much space for each “boot”? Do we choose a specific DE or take the distro’s main or default? So many variables. I mean, it’s one thing to BAM! Ubuntu auto-installer .exe. Now, to allow for user choices… or not to? You either give options, which could be overwhelmimg to someone who might not even understand all that, or become simple and, in the process, heavily “opinionated”
Yup, now you touch one core problem why Linux in desktop cannot get to masses — too much fragmentation. Next to unlimited chain of options and preferences, many of which even lead to severe incompatibility issues.
Ubuntu some decade or two ago looked promising ”one distro to rule them all” but seems to have turned to shit since.
If you look at Windows or macOS, it’s basically just a version or two to choose from, and the most common one suits 90% or more.
The same should happen in Linux world too. If an ”easy install tool” like described above would offer just ~5 most common distros, in their most common variant, it would still be a tremendous step forward.
If someone is knowledgeable enough to have strong distro pref, or knows that they need a certain system component, they most likely are not the target audience anymore as they can handle a manual install too. The target user may not even know there are different distros, and will just pick the ”Linux version” based on a screenshot that looks familiar or interesting.
So IMO; no options other than the absolutely critical ones (like to dual boot or not). There shouldn’t be more than maybe 3 big things the user has to decide themselves, for everything else the Linux community as a whole MUST be able to take a hard look at themselves and decide what are the most viable, compatible and best supported branches, and unite behind those.