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Why isn't there a GUI installer?

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Roisen

Member
Joined
Feb 13, 2007
Location
Folding in Ames, IA
The only problem I've ever had with folding was getting it started. After that I have had to touch it maybe 3 or 4 times, and I think many people here have shared the same experience.

With that said, is there some barrier that prevents a GUI installer from being made? IIRC the installation consisted of running some files and answering some questions, both of which are things that could be handled by a third-party program.
 
I believe the barrier is that they're involved in a scientific endeavor, and don't have the experience of writing a Windows GUI installer.

Kasson and others, are scientists first, and their programming reflects that. When you read their posts about some confusing or wrong message that is being written to the terminal window, as a "cosmetic issue" - well, it's pretty clear that they're not regular user-friendly commercial programmers.

Their priority has been to create the types of folding clients that can best get the folding done, even if the client is not easy to work with, or especially reliable. The list of clients we have today, reflects that.

Now, they're working to make each client more reliable, and expand them into any niche's that arise - like the Extra Large WU's for 8 or more cores. Clearly, the 6.23/6.24 clients are the most reliable smp clients we've ever had, across all the major OS's: Linux, Windows, OSX, BSD.

Have you looked at the systray client for Windows? I used it for a few months with WinXP, and I thought it was as close to being a user-friendly, finished product, as anything I've seen from FAH.

If you want a more polished product, that would be the folding client to try out, imo.
 
For windows there's maxFAH. Used it a while back and it worked nicely for me :thup:

For OSX there's InCrease. I have no experience with it.

As for linux, people who use that aren't afraid of the command line anyhow :p
 
I believe the barrier is that they're involved in a scientific endeavor, and don't have the experience of writing a Windows GUI installer.

What I meant to ask was why hasn't the community made a GUI installer? I understand why Stanford hasn't made a GUI installer a priority, but if we made one it would inarguably help our recruiting efforts. That could help get some more people folding for us that otherwise couldn't figure out the command line installers or the stickies.

Anyway back to the important question, has this already been discussed and deemed infeasible? Even if there isn't a problem coding the software, if Stanford doesn't like the idea then there's not much we can do
.

edit: Oh, there already is one... Carry on!
 
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What I meant to ask was why hasn't the community made a GUI installer? I understand why Stanford hasn't made a GUI installer a priority, but if we made one it would inarguably help our recruiting efforts. That could help get some more people folding for us that otherwise couldn't figure out the command line installers or the stickies.

Anyway back to the important question, has this already been discussed and deemed infeasible? Even if there isn't a problem coding the software, if Stanford doesn't like the idea then there's not much we can do.
Sneakysnowman linked one that seems to work well:

For windows there's maxFAH. Used it a while back and it worked nicely for me :thup:

For OSX there's InCrease. I have no experience with it.

As for linux, people who use that aren't afraid of the command line anyhow :p
 
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