The saga of my main Desktop PC continues – but first some history. The computer was upgraded to Linux Mint 20.2 a few weeks ago and I it went well and seemed fine for a few days. It was running out of disk space because the partition was too small. When I enabled timeshift (the backup program) I let it install on the same partition as the OS. It should have been put on one of the other partitions. So I had to deal with that and somehow I had to reinstall Linux again. All the programs were installed and configured. Web site bookmarks had to be installed and other things. On one of the restarts I noticed a new option in the GRUB loader: log in as OEMinstaller. Or something like this. I vaguely remember seeing a message about the new user will be configured on the next reboot.
Friday when I turned the PC back on, I was in for a shock. I was forced to setup a new user with a password and other settings. The new user was installed and my previous work was partially gone! My Vbox (Virtual machines) were all gone. The programs like Brave Browser and GIMP still existed. Somehow I lost my settings for the three users in Linux. So I started all over again setting up my users just because I was curious about a new option in Linux.
These kind of snafus on MY equipment are how I learn and train it IT. I’d never do something like this on a client’s equipment. OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer. OEMInstaller would be used for the company building and setting up the PC and the user is unknown at the installation time. When the user buys the PC or receives it and takes it wherever it will be used, they can setup it up the way they want to as OEMinstaller.