An excuse to spend inhuman level of time in front of a computer, suffering.
That's actually roughly what happened to me the first time I tried to install
Trisquel, although it was my fault in the end. Here's my GNU/Linux story:
I knew I couldn't dispense with Windows, because I was working on a large
document that Word could read but LibreOffice couldn't. I'd looked up the
documentation and expected an option "Install Trisquel alongside Windows 7",
but that option wasn't there. Figuring I could handle things, I went into
custom partitioning and selected a few partitions I thought were unimportant
and happily installed Trisquel.
Big mistake.
Windows became unbootable; I got a Blue Screen of Death whenever I tried to
boot it. I panicked and called tech support for my computer manufacturer, and
(surprise, surprise) my warranty had expired. I paid $50 to hear that I had
to reinstall Windows and lose all my files. I lost everything but a few files
I'd hastily backed up before installing. My friends laughed at me and bought
me a hard drive for backups.
That swore me off GNU/Linux for a few months. But the call was irresistible,
and I tried a bunch of other distributions. Debian was out of date; Fedora's
bootloader installation kept failing; I couldn't figure out how to install
OpenSUSE at all (but at least their installer's interface is quite
aesthetically pleasing). When I was at the end of my patience, I saw the
Trisquel live CD that had mucked up my computer the first time.
I think I only used Windows twice after that. And I'm never going back.
