This was literally the best possible case for catching it - “quoted” person complaining, clearly visible page doesn’t have the quotes, and it still was a fight.
Most people would have had no hope and nobody would ever know.
I still remember Fry's Electronics and trying to find anything that hadn't been opened-returned-reshinkwrapped. Often it was impossible. Not sure why they had so many but eh whatever, it mostly worked fine.
That you could always just boot from the CD and start again was nice. I think I reinstalled 4-5 times the "first time" before I got it where I wanted to be.
The Gentoo wiki was (is in many ways) phenomenal, and I recommend anyone interested in the inner workings of Linux at least walk through a full install from scratch - you learn a lot even just copying the instructions into the terminal.
It's also important to remember that a ton of things we take for granted now simply didn't exist (source code control was in its infancy, merging was shit, syntax highlighting was minimal at best, compiling took time, etc).
I've always dreamed of a house plan that took this into account - imagine all the wall studs being uncut and used as delivered from the truck, each wall length designed to not need drywall cuts ...
Most people would have had no hope and nobody would ever know.
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