“Once upon a time, Linux was difficult to install. In the early
1990s, weary users had to swap out dozens of floppy disks (remember
those?) to complete the installation procedure. When CDROMs finally
became available, the geek community proclaimed it the greatest
advance in technology since the invention of the plow. Then
text-mode installation scripts were (mostly) edged out by GUI
installers–suddenly, installation was not only easy, but fun.“Nevertheless, it was the appearance of Knoppix in late 2002
that just blew everyone’s socks off. Knoppix was the first truly
useful ‘live CD.’ No need to mess with a GUI installer–just stick
a CD into the drive and boot. Awesome hardware detection made
manual configuration obsolete. Knoppix was so easy to install that
one could literally do it with his/her eyes closed…”