"I read a lot of reviews comparing GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows, and inevitably the topic of installing software comes up. Most reviews indicate that installing software in Windows is much easier than that of the desktop GNU/Linux world. I decided to do my own comparison based on my desktop usage to see the difference. The following are my results. Those of you that come from the Windows world may be a tad bit surprised at the ease in which software can be installed."

Just found this article in of the Mepis forums, but I thought I share it with you guys. Read more.

That's provided the GNU/Linux user uses APT-GET or YUM. Installing RPMs manually is still pretty troublesome esp. with dependency hell. Hope the autopackage project will bear fruit and replace the RPM system with a standardized packaging system.

I've used apt-get Debian and apt-get RPM for RedHat/Fedora, and both make package management much easier than installing RPM's or Deb packages without them. Slapt-get for Slackware does essentially the same thing, only with .tgz packages. It's really so simple, you can't mess it up. Just go:

slapt-get --install gaim

And it does it all for you.
Also, I've used Gentoo. Even though I can appreciate their philosophy, I for one just don't have the time necessary to get a Gentoo system up and running. Yet, when it is up and running emerge works well, but again, takes forever to build the apps. Yast in SuSE is pretty easy, and urpmi for Mandrake is easy too.

All in all, I'd say Linux beats the pants off of Microsoft for ease of installing packages.