It's not only that it was text based, but that it failed in all sorts of ways.

I had a particularly bad afternoon in early 2000s when I tried to install Linux on various machines (4 or 5, each one with different hardware) and failed with all of them. Of course, I wasn't as savvy as I am now, but it's been years since I've seen an issue with a Linux install; although I might have to download and compile a driver for one thing or another, the install itself doesn't fail.

Mine was in the 90s and concerned X11 failing or crashing due to the video card typically. Redhat 5.2ish or Suse.