Situations not unlike this repeated during the initial growth phase of Linux as well. You had a bunch of undergrads and recent grads upgrading their system one piece at a time, or even taking castoffs from friends and family. Typically you had one good drive that wasn't quite big enough for all the junk you thought you needed.

You also had people who would build a Linux box out of any old hardware they had left over. That's how I ended up with my first firewall.