New users tend to flock to distributions with easy to use installation programs, that is, to distributions with graphical installers. Some people will probably disagree with that statement, but most users feel more at home with a point-and-click interface, than with a terminal (console) program.

Fedora 16 is more than two months away from final, stable release, but pre-Alpha installation ISO images have been floating around. News from the Fedora camp have already indicated that btrfs will be the default file system on Fedora 16, joining the ranks of MeeGo, the first (Linux) distribution to use btrfs as the default file system.

I can't say Ubuntu's installer is bad compared to other installers (in fact, it is one of the better ones), but it could certainly be improved. Right now, it works and it works pretty well, but there are a fair number of unnessessary clicks and some unexplained features. Here is my list of important features for an installer...

Today we had the pleasure of playing a little with the new Ubuntu installer, present in the latest daily build of the upcoming Maverick Meerkat (Ubuntu 10.10) operating system, due for release in October 10th, 2010. The installer is completely revamped and accessible (by Linux beginners) installer.

I wrote an installer for KIWI-generated LiveCDs...It’s still in early development and has lots of hacks to make things work, but it does manage to install a working system onto your machine. The installation itself is really pretty simple.

"This HOWTO walks you through the installation of Debian GNU/Linux using the graphical installer ("installgui"). It covers some common scenarios - complete over-write of everything on an existing hard drive, dual-boot with another operating system (eg Windows) and installation from CD/DVD and network ("netinst"). This article is based on the Debian 4.0 Stable (Etch) i386 installer."

Debian-Installer Loader is a Debian Etch installer for Windows which adds an entry to the boot menu that allows you to start the Debian installation. Unlike the Ubuntu installation with Wubi, real Debian partitions are created during the installation. In the end, you have a dual-boot system (Windows/Debian).

No distribution’s installer makes setting up disk encryption as easy as Anaconda, the Fedora system installer. And that has not changed in Fedora 16, the latest stable release. On previous versions of Fedora, those released before Fedora 16, the only automated disk partitioning option was one based on LVM, the Linux Logical Volume Manager.

Anaconda, the Fedora system installer, is probably the best installation program available on any Linux or BSD distribution, and the version that comes with Fedora 16, version 16.25, has a couple of visible enhancements that make it even better. One of those enhancements is support for GPT disk partitions.