Linux, a pain to install, more then ever

[Zacko10000]

Ok heres something strange that has happened to me while installing Red Hat 6.0 in recent days, now I think I will stick to SuSE or maybe try Caldera. Keep in mind, I've been using old 486 340MB Hard disks. I've installed SuSE (works great) but what are the chances that my installation went this bad for Red Hat.
First Attempt:
It has a strange error and forces me to reload the entire thing which takes hours (note: I had to reinstall DOS+CD Driver first, a pain).
Second Try:
It loaded fine but after the installation was almost done and I was configuring Windows X, the hard drive made strange loud rumbling noises and began to smoke, scratch one hard disk.
Third Try:
Red Hat loaded and actually booted up! I typed root and had set my password to: password. Unfortunatly the setup must believe it is something else and to this day it has still not worked.
Have I just had bad luck with Red Hat? I know Linux is a pain to install but I've never had it this bad...
Note: On my old machines it can take up to 2 hours to complete the install!

[geekd]

old hardware sucks.

dude, everyone keeps saying how hard linux is to install.

it's just not true

It's no harder than Windows98 and easier than NT

Why did you have to install DOS+CD driver? RedHat will take care of that for you.

With a newer BIOS, you can just boot right off the CD, no OS or drivers installed.

I have never tried to put Linux on a computer that old/ hard drive that small, so I don't know why you have had such problems...

-geekd

[800XL]

I seem to recall a password problem once when installing redhat. Solution, capslock. Try PASSWORD instead. Somewhere along the line I think capslock twiddled on and messed with my head. As for dos and cdrom drivers, create a set of boot and root disks to install from. I'm not sure off the top of my head what support the redhat 6 cd has for creating these, but they'll make the install cleaner than involving dos.

[Zacko10000]

This BIOS is too old too support CD booting. Also, I guess we can turn this post into "Survey:Worst Linux Experiences" If anyone else has had bad problems with it at one time

After one more try Red Hat installed fine but strangely Win X and all configs relating to it did't work, tried setup, xf86config, etc but nope. The Win X packages installed, I watched them with my very eyes! Could my CD be bad (not not the commercial version)...

[This message has been edited by Zacko10000 (edited 07-11-99).]