On Jan 30, 2006, at 7:52 PM, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> There is a reason that even Oracle has a graphical installer on
> Linux, because most people installing
> the software:
>
> A. Don't know how to use it
> B. Probably don't know how to use Linux
> C. Don't want to.
Except that the Oracle "graphical installer" usually requires a non-
trivial amount of command line kung-fu that alone is more complex
than the entirety of the command line installation of PostgreSQL.
Oracle installation is an unpleasant and painful process even under
the best of circumstances, and I've never had one that required less
effort than Postgres for a vanilla install. And I always install
postgres from source. If "./configure; make; make install" scares
away people, sorting out the dependency hell getting the Oracle
installer to even run on nominally supported platforms will
definitely scare them away.
A graphical installer for Unix is fine, but please, do not make it
anything like Oracle's graphical installer. Oracle's graphical
install process gives command line installs a good name for ease of use.
J. Andrew Rogers