Right running all versions at NetFirms (and potentially many other hosting providers) fails to show formatting.
It's traced by many disappointed potential users to the Style Sheets and then the Cache and ultimately permissions.
From what I can tell it's not the FTP but the fact that the files permissions for Other are closed and in some situations this is really bad.
Of course there's no good way to manually set them and it really doesn't matter because I think it's creating them wrong.
I wondered if there is an "Advanced" option to say be more open ended with the permissions when creating cache stuff as one option (which actually should be default).

Another way to look at this major road block problem is in tracking down and proving to the provider what they have done wrong and need to do to make your stuff work.

I recommend/suggest that the initial setup system compatibility test should fail on a permissions test and advise with help pages for a new provider how to test, correct, and confirm they are SugarCRM compliant (and maybe email or phone everyone you can think off personally while your at it.)

Anyway to sum up and clarify. For me it's completely unusable although it sort of runs without CSS via theme or any cache at all I guess.
Installation check should fail the "Permissions Test". Proper explanations setup and super simple instructions even an idiot hosting provider can follow.

I'm thinking that typically the user owns the files (user_id), the group is what the apache or server user access level would be group_id, and just to be safe one would like other(s) to also have access to the folders with write permission in case the group is not set to a group the web-server is the owner of.

To test I suppose one can FTP a file which is done at install pre-setup running, which if the can run the install setup it would be fine and accessible.
Then the server side functions that make the cache files could quickly check if setting permissions is support and actually achieve the necessary modifications, also by access the very web-server the setup is running from internally from the server side setup process and see that owwww?! seems I can't read a cache css theme file.
Then report system check failed please set all the files group via chown or whatever to a group the web-server process owner is part of, or change other permissions etc. but either way it's typical there's no SHH or command prompt allowed or beyond the average installers knowledge to even explain to someone, and their FTP tool or Server side FTP doesn't allow setting recursively. You could recommend an FTP that might be able to set the permissions properly from the unpacked rare which is typically read only but I'm not sure it that in itself would help.
Again I think it's something too restrictive with the setup installing other access as 0 (no read.write.execute permissions), when that might be right to be secure, should be detectable as a problem for some and then ask "would you like the install to continue with 'other' access enabled".

Thank you for listening. I hope one day to see if the program is useful at all.