Quote Originally Posted by Epy View Post
I was referring more to the time it takes to open the browser, find the exe, download, run, jump through hoops. Granted there are many applications that take a while to build, the ones I have built lately (gtk-gnutella, DOSBox) have taken under a minute after the download.
You assume that the user already has knowledge of how to install a program, but let's for a minute forget that assumption.
Less than 4 hours ago i was trying to install Code::Blocks on OpenSUSE in a VM. I have _no_ knowledge of Linux other than knowing how to use the most basic CLI commands such as cd and mkdir.
Fortunately for me there is a precompiled Code::Blocks binary for OpenSUSE: "Yay, double click, next next next finish" methinks.

But i only got to the double click, before i get hit in the face with a missing dependency list with close to 100 entries. I manage to scrape in most of it with the package manager, took about half an hour, it was a 650MB download (Mostly due to my inability to sort what i needed and didn't need, i could probably have gotten away with 5 minutes download if i had taken the time.) Now i'm only left with one dependency: wx-gtk+ or something similar to that. The package manager can't help me, so i'm off to google.
I find a mirror to a .tar with the source, so now i have to compile it myself. But how does one go about that? Google told me something about ./configure and make install, but to be honest i didn't get far, the guide i found wasn't accurate, and with zero knowledge on compiling applications in Linux, i was stuck.

On Windows, there is also a precompiled Code::Blocks binary, it isn't even compressed like the OpenSUSE one. It is a mirror to an exe, you double click, press next when prompted, and it finishes up itself, no dependencies, no makefiles, no compiling, no package managing, it just sort of works...

If i decide one day to learn Pascal, depending on which platform i'm on, i either install a compiler and start with the actual task of learning, or i spend 3½ hours installing a compiler only to have lost interest when i finally succeed.

To me, Linux is a hassle. I wish more work would be put into the usability of it because i honestly think it can be a great alternative to a proprietary platform like Windows and Mac, who doesn't love the idea of a free OS?
But at the moment, it just doesn't cut it for everyday users imo, unless the user is well versed and experienced with Linux already.