Zero Effort Installs

I blogged earlier about how I really liked the "Mac way" of installing software, just drag and drop into your Applications. How simple! Well, it looks like the Linux world is catching up to this concept. The Java world has Java WebStart which is very similar. Why should you have to run an install wizard/setup program and answer a bunch of questions, the Windows way? How archaic.

Hence, Zero Install. This is a new product that works on Linux packages your applications into a container very similar to the .app package in Mac OS X. There is no installation step with Zero Install. Rather than install and run, you just run. Zero Install handles everything else. Wow! Like I said, it is very much like the "Mac way" of doing things. Intuitive, simple and it just works. Nothing to read, figure out, configure or waste time 'working through' the encountered issues.

You can do something similar to how Zero Install works on the Mac OS X by just running your application from within a .dmg file (disk image file) but it adds additional overhead and you take a slight performance hit. At least, in my experience running Mac applications directly from within .dmg files.

Anyway, it looks like Mac OS X, Java and Linux are leading the way to the future of computing in yet another area, application installation/execution, with Windows is far behind. At least, Java WebStart is cross platform. Have fun!