Krita stand-alone installer for Windows?

[silvio grosso]

Hi everyone,

Lately, in my spare time, I have googled a bit the Krita's web-site.
At this regard, I didn't find any updated information regarding any plan to have a stand-alone installer for Windows. 
Needless to say, in my opinion, this installer might concern the future versions of Krita (not the 2.2 or 2.3 ones).

At present, you can try Krita on Windows thanks the Kde 4 installer but, in my honest opinion, it would be better to have a stand-alone installer such as other softwares provide (e.g. Gimp or MyPaint).
For instance, at work I can't try Krita on Windows because I don't have any privileges as administrator to run the Kde 4 installer :-)
On top of that, to use the Kde 4 installer, it is necessary to have an Internet connection which, in some circumstances, is not available :-(
In our Science Laboratory, for example, all computers are not connected to Internet in order to avoid Pc Viruses (and not to waste time on Internet:-)).
With Gimp it is really easy to work on Windows because you can use a portable version [1]. 
Your computer administrator will never know about this :-)

I have tried to think about the pros and cons concerning such an installer :-)
These points are based on my very limited experience based on the Italian situation. 
As a consequence, probably, in other countries the situation is much better (or at least, I hope so).

Here they are:
PROS:
- As everybody knows, most Pc users work on Windows and Mac. Like it or not, this is unlikely to change in the immediate future :-(
On top of that, the great majority of artists (that is, Krita target) work on these platforms.
Generally speaking, at least to my Italian knowledge, most artists don't have a great knowledge about programming.
The easier is to install a software, the better will be for them to use it.
At this regard, the Durian project is really an outstanding novelty :-)
More precisely, most artist don't know how to program in Python or Script-fu and they don't care about this option. 
Otherwise, they would opt for Gimp instead of Photoshop :-)
Men like Rolf Steinort, the German creator of the excellent video tutorials on Gimp [2] are, to my view, an exception. Rolf even studied Python to modify his pictures with Gimp :-)

CONS:
- Most Krita's developers work on Linux (e.g. Fedora, Kubuntu, OpenSuse and so on). As a consequence, they don't have any motivation to create such an installer :-)
- Most importantly, currently, there are other MUCH important things to do: crash to fix, update the documentation, work on the Google Summer of code projects.

To sum up, in my opinion, at least this year, it is probably A LOT better to concentrate all efforts on Linux :-)
At home I use Windows xp and thanks to Virtualbox I use currently many Linux distributions (these days I am trying the second beta of Ubuntu, named Lucid Lynx).
For painting, on Windows you have Gimp and MyPaint which have a nice stand-alone installer.
I must confess I would appreciate the same option for Krita as well :-)
I am aware it is not "nice" to say so but, in the end, on Windows, Gimp and MyPaint might be preferred thanks to their "easiest" way to install them.

What do you think about my rant? :-)

Best regards,

Silvio

[1] http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/gimp_portable
[2] http://meetthegimp.org/