Quote from dcraig:
You clearly aren't aware of the Linux software packaging systems such as employed by Debian, RedHat, Fedora, Suse etc etc. Linux software packaging is not perfect and neither is Windows with the abomination that is called the Registry being mangled by all sorts of malware at will.
There are some very good reasons why a lot of open source software is distrubted as source. One is portability ie the ability to run on different operating systems and processors. Installation of most software distributed as source requires the mind bogglingly difficult sequence of commands
# ./configure
# make
# make install
Most humans believe it or not can manage this.
Wiith Gentoo linux (my favorite) all you do is:
# emerge program_name
It's actually much, much easier than installing something in Windows.
--opm8
I know because I used to work as an computer administrator in a company. Everyday, employees rang and asked me to do the simpliest tasks for them.
I hope there is such a distro I can recommend it to my friends. Hey, there are a lot of people here who need free OS.