But what to say about the manuals?
Those manuals and books included with the CDs, in the box.
For me they were a catalyst in my Linux learning.
Really good quality manuals, with reference tables, and covering many (many) topics. From the the graphical environment to the command line, from the administration of the local system, to network services, good structure, nice tips, cheatsheets, reference tables, even covering kernel compilation!
As you say, they did include everything needed, to live together with win98... tools, floppy images, etc... and the documentation about howto do it beforehand.
In that modem times, with low speed internet, the CDs where valuable, indeed.
But those books included in the box, for people like me in such times (self-taught beginner with Linux) those manuals were like gold!
Did use my first linux from a CD in a computers magazine.
Did play with redhat, and debian, then I did buy my first suse box with suse 6.0 (around 1999), and did buy again the box for suse 7 and 8.
Latter I did get faster internet, and did jump 100% to debian for everything. But I still have those manuals with my books.
The complete package (cds + books) is something that I remember fondly for how useful it was to me, and a lot of respect for the work of the people who made it.