[thelist] Is a super-slick installation necessary?

David Bindel dbindel at austin.rr.com
Tue Jul 6 22:14:15 CDT 2004


On Tue, 2004-07-06 at 16:06, Joshua Olson wrote:
> In your opinion, is a super-slick installation process necessary or even
> appreciated by hard-core system administrators?

In my experience, most sysadmins I know like to compile and install
their own software for customization, speed and/or size optimization,
and security auditing.  (Of course, this doesn't normally apply to
people with administrator accounts in Windows XP.)

So my advice is this:

If it is a Windows program you are distributing, make an installer.  I
don't think many Windows administrators (even "hard-core Windows
sysadmins") are into compiling or manually installing software they
download -- unless they're the developers of the software, of course! :P

OTOH, if you're talking about distributing to sysadmins who are NOT used
to point-and-click installation (for example, most Linux sysadmins),
give them the source or whatever other technical installation procedure
you use.

Convenience doesn't often take precedence over power in the world of
truly hard-core sysadmins.

HTH,
David Bindel

-- 
David I. Bindel, Website Developer
San Marcos, TX    512-557-3040
http://www.davidbindel.com



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