The difference is, in those days you'd install Linux and maybe you don't get a working sound card or network or modem (since that was a thing). So you have to seek out replacement cards that have drivers. The worst is if your IDE controller doesn't work and it can't find the disk, but that was rare. I guess I also had a motherboard here and there that would cause panics on boot. But, the important point in all of this, is in those days it was never the case that the installation disk was actively trying to prevent you from booting. You usually got somewhere, and the stuff wasn't actively working against you, it was mostly just missing drivers.

And of course, today a stock distro kernel has more drivers in it than Windows or OS X, so it is a long time ago that you're talking about.