[pbhjpbhj]

Not at all. If I meant that I'd have said "is never required" or similar; I clearly stated it was my personal experience.

It depends on your hardware as much as anything IME - sadly most PC hardware sellers make stuff to work under MS Windows, so if you're not careful with your purchases you can have problems.

I used to use Slackware, and that was a lot of command line - or at least text based - configuration; but I chose it to learn about administration. Like buying an old car so you can practice fixing it.