Comment 165 for bug 1

First of all: it's most user-friendly to preinstall an OS. Installation is a very awful procedure. If you'd be forced to install Windows on your own it may lose at least 10 percent of its market share... Even installing Ubuntu takes time; BTW: a good OS installer would ask first for all settings among other things the root password, users and so on and then automatically installs with no more prompting.

Second: there are loads of software the people want to run; especially video games, but maybe even some mirror cabinet managment software bought at Wal-Mart... because there are descriptions how you can run Half-Life 2 with WINE, I assume that you can get most Windows applications working - but you might need some kind of scripts doing installation and execution; the best coming with a tool that serves, downloads and manages them in a unified format.