I installed Slackware from floppies in a dorm room without Ethernet. Every time a disk turned out bad you had to restart. Down to the lab, make a new copy, back to my dorm, restart. I hated my life multiple hours before I got a clean boot. Jesus fucking Christ.
I think it was Debian that introduced an option to scan all the floppies before starting. I never went back.
Back in my day, I would have killed for a floppy after my 1/4" tape went bad an hour into installing SunOS 4.0.3 on a 3/60 workstation! (Also, see Monty Python "We were poor" sketch)
I think it was Debian that introduced an option to scan all the floppies before starting. I never went back.