I'm not going to say its difficult because it isn't.

I will say it is a paradigm shift for most and this makes it "difficult".

I know the reason why it is the way it is.

I also know that once debian is on the box it has no rival for ease of maintenance.

All that said, the installer (while effective and utilitarian) is not as "simple" as the other major distros. I told you the same thing when I went through the installs. Got into the same flamewar IIRC.

With practice, it becomes less complex and you get to see the benefit of it being the way it is.

But compared to Mandrake, for example, it is more painful a process.

Still, after the first box...once I understood the real benefits...I quickly decided that a samll amount of unease, even pain, at the beginning was well worth it in the end.

My daughter has accomplished some incredible feats on computers as well. They're wonderful creatures.