This image was created by /u/kuebic@discuss.tchncs.de for this comment here: https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/21735989. I had encouraged them to post it somewhere, but as far as I can tell, they never did.
Panel 1: “Installing Windows 20 years ago” screenshot of install wizard with just a couple buttons
Panel 2: “Installing Linux 20 years ago” screenshot of a busy command line
Panel 3: “Installing Windows today” screenshot of a busy command line
Panel 4: “Installing Linux today” screenshot of install wizard with just a couple buttons
May I remind you that 20 years ago was actually 2005? What you are referring to was more like 30 years ago.
30 years ago, Windows 95/98 (not sure about things like NT4) would just fall back to going through the BIOS to access the disk. It was slow, but it worked, and you could install Windows and then install your storage drivers later. Needing to push F6 and install your storage drivers during the install was a Windows 2000/XP thing.
I skipped 2000, but I installed XP a lot of times and I never had to insert a floppy. IDE and SATA drivers were preloaded, maybe you had some really weird storage system?
I think with cheaper consumer desktops using IDE hard drives, that worked out of the box, but some more exotic storage configurations (SCSI, anything to do with RAID) were a little bit harder to get going.
20 years ago you needed to search the web and download all the drivers AFTER the windows install then install all of those.
I don’t miss that time. Especially on laptops that weren’t supported by the manufacturer and you had to hunt for individual drivers.
Today that only happens if you run Linux and have an Nvidia card. Especially one that’s not supported by the newest driver version anymore.