I’m with you in spirit, but the ship is sinking, man. Your arguments were already made in the 90s when the first puff of smoke from all this was on the horizon. Thirty years of chicken little later, I’ve moved past being upset about this and am trying instead to persuade the Linux community to step up before the window of opportunity closes on GP computing altogether. Do something, act, if you want a better future; or do nothing if you don’t. What actions do you suggest people take in support of your viewpoint?

Make the installer KISS. Linux installation still host the realm of complex verbose jargon.

"Starting anaconda", "Enable Kdump", on anything RedHat.

Debian spews an ancient terminal window of options upon options and who knows how to install Arch.

Linux installations has never been click, click go. Installation wizards are still designed for the tech enabled and not the common user.

We have a helicopter on Mars yet they still can't master a installation wizard.

> We have a helicopter on Mars yet they still can't master a installation wizard.

Unexpectedly, the 'bootable thumb drive' models are actually pretty great — not the installers, but the ones that boot straight into a GUI that works and is usable. I haven't used one as my personal Linux uses predated thumb drives, but I have always (mistakenly?) assumed that once you're booted into a liveCD, you can click 'Install on a drive partition' and it will actually do something coherent and GUI and reasonable. Have I been too optimistic? Probably, yeah :(

Not really, that is essentially the experience I've always had installing different distros from a live USB; it's mostly just seamless if you're not doing anything weird.

I'm not sure that is even possible with Secure Boot