Today I decided to try Linux for the first time and installed Linux Mint 16 Mate on an old eeepc which I don't use anymore. So everything went fine and I quickly found my marks (I guess even my retired parents could get used to it). But then I wanted to install some games and I went to my humble store library and what a mess between the .deb .zip .tar.gz .sh .bin .rpm and mojo installers. After trying to run some games, I found out the .deb were the most intuitive for total noobs like me and the potential gog customers who want to try linux out. For some games I didn't figured out how to run them (I guess I should compile them but screw the game devs if they don't even bother to do that). I also installed the linux version of Steam and it's a more "user-friendly" experience.

I've seen some debates over the packages/installers in the "Linux on gog" news comments but maybe it would be better to centralize all that info in one thread so the staff knows where they should aim to and take some suggestions.

My 2 newbie cents: I want a "click 'n' play" file so .deb installer is my first choice.

Yeah, .deb files would be nice and convenient (especially since I run Debian on my systems).

.tar.gz archives would be good too, and could be as simple as placing the contents into /opt/ and run. The only drawback on that would be the need to manually hunt and install dependencies if they were not included.

Many HumbleBundes games is packaged with Mojo installer, which is kind of "like windows installers" - all its do is autounpack game in folder in userhome. Uninstaller is created too, .desktop files handled handled too.
DEPENDENCIES IS NOT HANDLED.
Its pretty nice distro-agnostic solution.

Debian and Ubuntu's .deb package management is indeed a good solution for installing from for example sites like GOG.com, as you found out it's very straight forward and easy.

I'm an Arch Linux user myself so installing third-party packages is not as straight forward because they're generally only pre-packaged to .deb and .rpm, however, if they were packaged for Arch it'd be just as straight forward as with the other distros.

My suggestion is switching to Linux Mint Debian Edition, which will bring you closer to Steam OS and farther from Ubuntu, Ubuntu just has too much crap that can and probably at some point will break your system to some degree.

Yeah, the trouble with novices and downloading installers on Linux is that self-extracting files have to be made executable.

*.run, *.bin, *.sh and mojo are self-installing and as such need to be set as executable in order to run (closest comparison would be *.exe files in Windows, but Windows doesn't have the executable bit and tries to run anything as long as the file has the correct filename extension). Open a terminal to the file's folder and run "chmod +x filename", replacing "filename" with the actual name, and removing the quotation marks, then you can run the file (there are graphical ways to do it as well, but if and how depends on your environment).

*.rpm and *.deb are handled by the distribution's own package manager/installer, and can as such simply be double-clicked - in Mint's case (well, Ubuntu, Debian, and derivatives of them) *.deb would be the correct one to use (closest comparison would likely be *.pkg on OS X or *.msi on Windows - neither is executable in itself, but are instead run through another application that's already installed).

*.zip, *.tar.gz, *.tgz and *.bz2 are simply archives and aren't strictly installed, just extracted where you wish, most likely you already have an application installed to open archives. *.zip is common on both Windows and OS X as well, so you might already be familiar with that.

You can set the executable bit from a GUI just fine. right-click on the thing and check the properties window. In nautilus (file manager on Gnome and Unity desktops) the checkbox is called "Allow executing file as program" under the "Permissions" tab.

Stuff not having the executable bit set upon download is a sane and secure thing.

...depending on the gui. Completely agreed, but it makes distro-agnostic installers confusing/difficult for novices. Perhaps one could do what I've seen a lot of in Windows; shove an executable installer in an archive and distribute that - I believe tar and bzip2 preserve the executable bit.