GhostSBH
For Windows users, the bootable USB can be created using Rufus rather than the command line, and indeed that's how the official instructions recommend to do it:
https://www.ghostbsd.org/download
However, a non-technical Windows user is likely to have some struggles once they have installed GhostBSD! Thinking about people I know personally or colleagues I worked with other than those employed in technical roles, I suspect the vast majority of Windows users have never used the command line. (Indeed, that's what the famous "tech support" telephone scams are relying on.)
This may be even more acute with people whose experience with tech growing up is centred around iPads and smartphones rather than the traditional desktop paradigm. As one example, lots of college professors complain they have to teach incoming students how to save their work as files within a directory structure because even that has become something of an alien concept. So while more technical users think of ls
and cd
as the very basics of the command line, even this relies on underlying knowledge of file system hierarchies that you can't assume all users possess!
Obviously I think it would be great if more people were empowered to take control over their own tech by developing their understanding of how stuff works and ways they can tinker with it. But not all users are either able or willing to take this route. On the other hand, I don't think any "user-friendly BSD" is likely to reach the same ease of use for the non-technical masses as has been achieved by mainstream smartphones and tablets. Partly because that relies on locking stuff down, which isn't the BSD way.
It's perhaps worth considering what "user-friendly" really means for a given project. One option is to think about user stories. Realistically, is the aim to make it "granny friendly"? Or is it pitched at someone more like a college student or working professional, who is assumed to have a certain literacy and curiosity about tech and who needs to use software suites on their system to perform productive work, albeit someone who is not a tech specialist and is not assumed to be able to code or be fluent on the command line?
Another way of thinking about it is to consider who are this product's competitors? If the aim of GhostBSD is to produce a system that a "typical" Windows, Mac or Ubuntu user can use comfortably after a period of familiarisation, then realistically it's not quite there yet. And getting there probably does involve being "more opinionated". If the aim is to be "more usable out of the box than other BSDs while retaining the flexibility and power of FreeBSD" then GhostBSD is doing very well, and becoming more opinionated might endanger some of the other goals.