On 2018-12-20 6:00 p.m., Steve Litt wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Dec 2018 14:07:11 -0800
> Rick Moen <rick@???> wrote:
>
>> Quoting Simon Hobson (linux@???):
>>
>>> In part, Linux adoption is held back by its perceived
>>> difficulty....
>> Just a brief comment about this in passing, as this is an antique
>> debate point ages ago stomped into the ground on comp.os.*.advocacy
>> and other places: An operating system one must install (not
>> preloaded) will always be perceived as 'difficult' compared to one
>> already furnished as a point'n'drool preload.
> Ubuntu installs as easily as Windows' first boot nonsense. Devuan isn't
> far behind, on most hardware.
>
> What Eric objected to, and I agreed, was lack of proper handling of
> proprietary blobs, firmware and drivers, when absolutely necessary,
> makes Devuan installation as hard or harder than Arch, Gentoo or Funtoo.
>
> By the way, I disagree with Eric about the degree of badness in leaving
> his video cards with non-proprietary software that doesn't handle
> resolution as well. Once you can boot your system and run it, the
> installer has done its job. If user friendliness is desired, a separate
> program can be used to select the right proprietary drivers, blobs and
> firmwares.
>
The blobs can get you, but I cannot imagine the Devuan installation
getting harder than Arch, Gentoo or Funtoo.
With a couple of my systems I have to load proprietary firmware after
the install, but it is no big deal.

I can see if one was a "newbie" and ended up with no X it could be daunting.

Perhaps your final paragraph may provide a key to an approach to use, in
the form of text post-install/first run script that provides a list of
potential firmware installs one might need and them provides a script
driven install or at least instruction for the installation of the
particular blob.   This gets around

I remember running into such a method a few times on otherwise
relatively basic Linux distro installs.
I think the purpose was to avoid tainting the initial installation with
proprietary firmware, but not have the lack of it it ruin the party.  Of
course if you have to download network firmware to download network
firmware you may have a problem.

Clarke