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For people who have little / no experience with Linux, an easy low-expertise required install makes all the difference.

• freehunter 8y ago
  Yup. If you can't get it installed, you can never try it, which means you can never be wowed and never switch to it full time. Installing Linux used to be a huge problem, and that's why Ubuntu became popular. Other distros caught up, but it was really Ubuntu that pushed it.
  • collyw 8y ago
    To be fair there were other distros with good installers, where Ubuntu shone was with drivers and non free packages. Though I seem to remember installing scripts to install mp3 decoders, dvd readers and flash plugins all in one go.
• Jedd 8y ago
  This may be the case, but I expect it applies for a tiny percentage of (potential) users. For a long time, anyone interested in dipping their toe into GNU/Linux would either use a live CD (Knoppix was huge) or they'd be encouraged by someone that would assist them. At the risk of sounding dismissive, I'd suggest if someone couldn't summon the patience to follow a fairly straightforward keyboard/location/pick-a-host-name/yeah-use-my-whole-disk sequence of steps, then actually using a GNU/Linux operating system for more than a few days was probably not on the cards. I'm not suggesting it was ever an intentional gating process, but it probably did help to save some people from being even more frustrated.