Oh, so you are kidding, kidding about overlooking the GUI, ease-of-use, rate of block-chain synchronization, Linux binaries, and so on. Funny man.
No, LiteCoin wasn't a winner because of "minor changes", it was a winner because of scrypt, a relatively major change compared to Bitmonoronorono, along with the fact that "altcoin" was a practically a new concept. And, don't forget booming popularity causing an influx of new users wanting a piece of the cake on an already proven, mostly stable platform. Unlike Bytecoin, Bitcoin is actually big and can take a hit.
It's as simple as installing Ubuntu 13.10, extracting a zip to a folder, and typing "make" into a terminal. It's literally that easy. Then you run the daemon and the wallet and type "start_mining". How could it be any easier?
There's instructions for Windows too:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=544715Litecoin was a simple fork of Tenebrix with 4x Bitcoin parameters. Tenebrix introduced scrypt. Coblee made Litecoin in three hours (I would know, I talked to him at the conference last week).
When Litecoin came out, alt coins were not a new concept -- there were plenty of scam/useless coins (SolidCoin, Tenebrix, Ixcoin, I0coin) then too.
About the binaries, you forgot "install dev packages", but yes it's easy. Is it Necessary? Nah. My issue regarding this is that the release isn't very polished.
As for altcoins, no, it wasn't a "new" concept, but it practically was. Tenebrix came afterwards. Solidcoin was a scam and I0Coin, Ixcoin and Litecoin all came out within a month of each other.
Scrypt and litecoin was indeed simple, but it was still major in comparison to this, it stood well resisting ASICs, and for a while, GPUs.
I'd just like to see things mature a bit first, the BCN blockchain's already 2 years old, it can wait another few months. To each his own, though.