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Historic Linux File Archive Created
jemagid writes "Ibiblio (nee metalab, nee sunsite)
has rummaged through all the old CDs and old
FTP archives we could find, to put together a
beautiful picture of the early days of the Linux community: Historic
Linux. The files include snapshots of
the early Linux archives including sunsite.unc.edu and tsx-11.mit.edu, and early distributions such as MCC (Manchester Computing
Center) and SLS (Softlanding Linux Systems), which were some of the first attempts to make Linux easy to install and use. The early RedHat releases are also included, as is early Suse, Debian, Slackware,
and Blade. The early distributions
ran on machines as small as 386's with 2-4 MB of RAM, so these could be
fun ways to resurrect ancient hardware."
The early distributions ran on machines as small as 386's with 2-4 MB of RAM, so these could be fun ways to resurrect ancient hardware.
I certainly hope no one intends on putting these old versions on the net lest they become a w4r3z server or DDoS drone..
Trolling is a art,
unfortunately, this troll is worthless. SCO claims ownership of Linux code that includes SMP (in fact, they only can claim that code following 2.4.somethingorother is actually not GPL'd).
If you are going to troll, at least be smart about it.
...in 10 or 15 years
The real value of this is to have an archive of the entire development history and community. Out there in the open for all to see. Right there in front of God and everyone. It will help protect Linux from future SCO's.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I still have the Yggdrasil Fall 94 CD. It got me through a couple of UNIX courses. It was amazing at the time. It kept me from having to drive out to the computer lab or attempt a remote (VERY slow) connection via modem.
Sure, these old distros had their rough edges, but consider the alternative. Does anyone remember the kind of hoops you had to jump through to get a Win 3.xx system online? Anyone remember Trumpet?
It's interesting how the tools I take for granted are even older than I thought. This is perhaps the most significant reason UNIX works well, where the system was debugged in small modular pieces, because they had no choice. Sure, vi, for example, has some quirks, but it very rarely fails.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
A quick USEnet search on Google shows that they were posted on c.o.l.a. at 1993-02-26 08:16:27 PST by Lars Wirzenius.
.au (Sun audio format, not Australia) files of Linus pronouncing "Linux" in English and Finnish.
I seem to remember that they were fairly widely distributed (on CD, the Infomagic set in particular) in the earlier days of Linux, along with two
I started out running Linux in January of 1994, using MCC on my 25MHz 486SX with 4 MB of RAM. I think the entire distribution was about 7 or 8 1.44 MB floppies, which I painstakingly downloaded using bitftp. (Yes, I was on bitnet. If you don't know what bitnet was, be very grateful).
The machine was too underpowered to run X comfortably (although I did play around a bit with TinyX - made the machine swap like nobody's business); however, I hooked up my VT102 terminal in order to have separate vi and bash sessions. Just poking around trying to figure out what all of the Unix programs did was great fun. yacc? What the hell is that? The best part was gcc; my previous programming experience had been with Microsoft Quick C. Having a development system where my buggy programs didn't cause the entire system to crash was a beautiful thing.
Anyway, those were good times, and it's nice to see that these old distributions are still around.
It wasn't until 1995 that I became a CompSci student, and found that completing my assignments was far easier than it would be on Windoze with Borland C or MSVC.
In stark contrast to today's world, where about the only think that 'programmers' learn at the University (in the first 2 years of CompSci, anyway) is either MS VC++ or CodeWarrior.
A few years back I asked an instructor of mine if I could use GCC instead of MSVC++ for c coding and was asked 'what's gcc'...
This is true at damn near any public university, unfortunately. Higher-level students are often given a choice of tools, but not until they've had their brains retarded by years of MSVC++ or Codewarrior...
Back in the 386 days, computers didn't come with a whole heck of a lot. How do you download anything when you don't have a terminal program?
.8 or .9 timeframe, and was thus presumably in the tens-of-thousands-of-users range, I had no idea what to DO with it and couldn't improve it for the next generation; I was completely confused by Unix in general and had nobody local to learn from. It excited me, I could see the potential, but about all I could contribute was evangelism. I simply didn't know enough real Unix to be useful. I got it into some companies that wouldn't otherwise have looked at it, so I suppose I was able to help, a little, but I feel bad that I didn't do more.
I accidentally wiped out the hard drive on my 386-16. I had enough of a DOS install disk to reformat the drive, but that was about all. The only other thing I had was a modem and a (set of?) Quickbasic disk(s).
So I ended up writing a very simple terminal emulator and a UUDECODER in QuickBasic, used that to download {COMMO}, and used {COMMO} to download enough stuff to get myself working again. (As a tangent to my tangent, Commo is probably the tightest, fastest comms program ever written, 100% in assembler and very, very customizable. Not sure if I ever registered it, I was very poor back then. Bad me.)
But even that pain (took me a weekend to A) write the term program, and B) use that term program to find docs on UUENCODE, and C) implement a local uudecoder) is NOTHING compared to the pain of trying to get early Linux working. I installed an SLS distro in this same timeframe on the same computer, and it took me TWO WEEKS to get an XF86Config file that worked, and I hosed a monitor doing it. (It's possible I might not have tried X until Slackware, but I definitely did screw up a monitor, whether it was with SLS or with Slack.) The HOWTO was very very clear that I was doing dangerous things, so I blame nobody but myself.
And I had it *easy* compared to the guys who went before me... I had HOWTOs! MCC and SLS were much better than what preceded them. (did any distros precede them? I don't even remember now.)
I read an article, long ago, that claimed that at first, there were probably 100 people in the entire world who were technically able to install Linux; they improved it so that 1000 people could do it. Those 1000 improved it so that 10,000 people could do it, and so on -- to the point that my mom could probably install a modern distro, maybe with a little coaching.
I am a bit ashamed to admit that, while I was able to install Linux in the SLS/kernel
I think we forget to say 'thank you' often enough to all the guys who work so hard to make Linux better. It is AMAZING how far it has come; I now use Linux as my work desktop and am absolutely happy with it. I don't miss Windows at all. I still run XP at home, but mostly for games; eventually I'll bite the bullet and switch over to Linux as my main desktop. It wasn't until last year that I really thought Linux was a good replacement, but it's finally 'there' for me. It took 10 years, but it finally happened.
I know it sounds a little hokey, but THANK YOU to all the devs who have made this possible. You are wonderful!
I think I will post this as an A/C, since this looks so much like karma whoring. I'm dead serious (hit karma cap LONG ago), but I'll post as AC anyway, just in case.