Comment by ofalkaed
First time I installed linux was around 98, something went wrong and I could not boot and once able to boot could not get on the net. Went through all the information I had printed out and the books I had to no avail, called everyone I could think of. For the next week I had daily bus rides to the library where I would get on IRC to ask any question I could think of, download anything which might help, take lots of notes, make a new boot disk or two and then back home to spend the night trying to sort things out.
First thing I did when I got everything working was sign on to a couple local BBS's so I could play LORD, had to catch up on all that lost time. Felt pretty great to play LORD from console.
:) It's difficult to imagine this today, but back then most households had a single ("the") computer shared by everyone. This was a challenge for adventurous geeks interested in Linux for two reasons. First, you couldn't get help with setting up Linux from the internet if the computer was out of service or you couldn't get online (getting your "winmodem" recognized and working was an endeavor all by itself). So I totally relate to your trips to the library. I used to print all the possible manuals and tutorials up front before attempting an installation, and have all the drivers I might need on floppies ready to go.
But most importantly, if you messed up the Windows installation for any reason (Linux was unusable after all in those days for mere mortals...), you broke the machine for everyone else in the household. I remember getting into trouble for this several times, and tinkering with Linux was always a rush because of it. I finally got my own _personal_ computer a few years later, which was a huge relief.