“For anyone who’s had their head in the sand for the last ten
years or so, InstallShield is the application of choice for most
Windows software vendors to create the “setup.exe” program, which
in turn is used to install other applications. Linux and Unix users
have toiled with shell scripts, shar archives, RPM, dpkg, pkg on
Suns, PTFs on IBM AIX boxes, depots on HP systems and even learned
how to use “patch,” while Mac and Windows users just clicked on
icons and software magically installed. However, thanks to the
wizardry of Java, InstallShield is now available for some Linux and
Unix platforms, as well as for its origin, Windows….”
“Finally, pulse racing, I tested it in a scratch directory, and
it really “just worked!”
“I’ve used InstallShield on Windows to package up some
applications, and it did a great job of hiding the complexity of
doing magic, such as editing the registry. Linux is different.
While InstallShield Java Edition supports installing RPM archives,
it doesn’t have its own hooks into the RPM database. It has no
support for other software installation systems, like dpkg, which
isn’t really surprising since it only runs on Red Hat 6.2 systems
at the moment.”