Only hardcore veterans use real Amiga these days. The OS is too outdated for casual user and I am not surprised you are frustrated. I would be if I had to use Amiga 1200 as a desktop again. For gaming experience it is better have vanilla Amiga 1200 or Amiga 500 and leave desktops for those few hardcore users.
I quite disagree; the Amiga is easily the simplest computer of its era to get up and running, and hardly any more trouble than modern OSes to install. The only real issues I had were getting large files onto the system (which I could've solved by springing for a CF->PCMCIA adapter, and eventually did) and getting networking setup (which was mostly trouble because I breezed through the settings and missed some important stuff.)
That said, I do understand the OP's frustration at having to use such a roundabout method to do the initial install - even for UAE users, you'd have to think that having a functioning disk image that could just be written to a hard drive or CF card would be handy. But I hope it doesn't deter him; ClassicWB really is amazingly nice once it's on there, and there's plenty of people here who can help him through the rough spots.
A few online friends and I have been working on a new Workbench distribution which caters to real Amiga users, and has been built from scratch on real Amigas only. We will distribute it the way I described, as a single file which is unpacked directly to the Amiga. Once it's installed and running, you will be able to easily add new software by loading the package manager, which lists plenty of programs, utilities and games which are available, you simply select the ones you want and click and install button, the package manager takes care of downloading and installing the files for you.
Ooh, nifty. Looking forward to this!
