Re: Installation
On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 12:37:55 -0400, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 09/18/2012 12:12 PM, Camaleón wrote:
(...)
>>> True, although there *is* a potential limit on just how *much*
>>> "understanding on how this stuff works" is, or should be, necessary.
>>
>> Okay, I agree the user does not need to hold a MS in Computer Science
>> as a previous requirement for installing an OS and managing a computer.
>
> So we have an upper boundary. Do we have a lower boundary? I think that
> might be part of what this discussion is (or should have been) trying to
> arrive at.
No, we don't. There are no upper no lower limits other than a user
wanting to learn and showing interest in what he/she is doing. If the
user holds a MS in Computer Science, perfect. If he/she is still at the
school, no problem: what matters is how he/she confronts a situation.
>>> To look at things from a possibly different perspective: what are the
>>> minimum advance-reading and resulting-understanding requirements, for
>>> install and (separately) for basic system usage, for e.g. Windows?
>>
>> For installing Windows "from scratch" I'd say the requirements are
>> pretty the same: the user will need to know about BIOS booting
>> preferences, hard disk partitioning strategies and filesystem formats,
>> network settings and the basic rules for choosing a username and
>> password. And this is the bare minimum they'll need to know.
>
> Depending on the Windows version, I'm not sure you do need to know that,
> at least not if you're willing to accept the defaults rather than
> clicking on "Advanced" buttons.
(...)
I have installed different Windows versions from scratch along my life (I
remember starting from 3.11, 95, 98, 98SE, Windows 2000 Server, Windows
XP and Windows XP 64-bits Pro).
The requirements have not changed that much (can't tell for Vista and 7)
and for some older versions (98/98SE) you had to boot from a bootable
floppy disk from where to run the "setup.exe" routine on the CD that you
had to generate (the so called "windows startup disk") because the CD
media wasn't bootable at all.
I also remember that I had to use the command line utility "fdisk" before
installing in order to get FAT32 formatted partitions instead FAT16 to
get compatibility with bigger disks...
"O tempora o mores!" :-)
Greetings,
--
Camaleón
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