what a nightmare it was, like Arch today
Disagree. Arch is smooth sailing in comparison. More like installing DOS in the early 90s.
I don’t know, I installed Arch from the base archlinux-x86_64.iso followed the wiki and after boot I had a simple text login, I needed to configure ethernet network/systemd etc then install X and Xfce and all kind of stuff, like in the 90s :)
I installed DOS dozens of time, in the beginning it was two 5"1/4 floppies and super easy to install, but there was no GUI nor network
You also had to manually cut your partitions, then to manually setup everything after install - himem, mouse, sound… It was mostly loading drivers and in Arch it’s installing and configuring packages. Sure, it’s more complex due to vastly more possibilities but the actual doing is pretty similar. And there was no wiki back then. ;)
