The original installation was very minimal. It had Mint in the AUTO folder and NAES. No U:\ partitition (...)
That cannot be true. The U: drive is present in every MiNT kernel from very early versions.
I think lack of knowledge of Mint and the way the docs often start with the complex stuff has put many people off Mint.
There are docs in freemint/doc directory, explaining basic stuff, but nobody reads them, as it appears. No wonder then if users are lost with such a matter as protection flags.
Pozdrawiam KMK