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Historic Linux File Archive Created

Posted by simoniker on from the welcome-to-the-world-of-yesterday dept.

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."

25 of 313 comments (clear)

  1. This is great to see. by CrackHappy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You know, it's always wonderful to see this kind of effort going into preserving some of the history of our technological society.

    It was great to browse through some of these pages and see how our community has changed. As a recent convert to Linux (Mandrake), it's very interesting to see how distributions have changed over the years.

    Great job!

    --
    1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
    1. Re:This is great to see. by RobotWisdom · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I hope to add direct links from my Linux timeline sometime soon.

    2. Re:This is great to see. by XO · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I can tell you for sure, that 'vi' definitely predates 'unix system iii' which was the first one i used, several years before there was a linux.. in fact, all the GNU tools were available. I don't think the GNU people have written a single new tool in 20 years...

      --
      "Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
  2. Bogus Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Remember that one? It eventually became Red Hat. Seriously.

  3. Modern distros on old hardware by i.r.id10t · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Modern distros on old hardware still work - I've got a 486sx33 laptop with 4mb ram (Toshiba Satellite 1910) that had Slack 7.0 and 7.1 on it. I upped the ram to 12mb and it now is a fairly useful machine with Slack 8.1 on it.

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
    1. Re:Modern distros on old hardware by IM6100 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The XFree86 folks decided awhile ago to start abandoning support of older video hardware. So, what ends up happening is that older video cards, that worked fine, start to quit working. I have a nice expensive (for the time) STB Video card that they abandoned awhile back. It uses the S3Trio64 chip. Most of the early S3 video cards are now abandoned by XFree86. It's ironic, because STB was one of the few PC Graphics card makers who were actual members of the X Consortium.

      We used to make fun of Microsoft for abandoning old hardware, and it used to be a pround rallying point for Linux folk that Microsoft 'gave free hardware to Linux' by abandoning support for it.

      Nowadays when I mention things like this about, for instance, Xfree86 abandoning old hardware, or the KDE/Gnome bloat making older machines useless, I get the same comments ("get new hardware!") from Linux zealots that we in the Linux community used to expect from the Microsoft zealots.

      Times sure change.

      --
      A Good Intro to NetBS
  4. Memories... by tsa · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Slackware 3.1 is there to be found. That must be the second version of Slackware I installed. In that time I have a 25 MHz 486 with 8 MB of RAM, which was pretty fast considering the specs (I also had a 80 MHz AMD 486). Those were the days... Well I must say I'm glad we moved on :-)

    --

    -- Cheers!

  5. a fun way to resurrect ancient hardware... by stratjakt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... would be to put something new on it, something the designers of the time would never have concieved. Like the hacking community around the atari 2600 or colecovision, or getting the C64 internet ready with its own ip stack. Make it do something it wasn't meant to do.

    Running a 10 year old linux on a 10 year old computer is just as interesting as running DOS or Win3.0 on it, though only half as useful. (Mod me down if you must, but linux was still very much a toy for comp sci students back then)

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    1. Re:a fun way to resurrect ancient hardware... by molarmass192 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Assuming you're not trolloing, and it is a toy, then you'd better get busy and tell the NSA, US Army, US Navy, NOAA, LANL, Exxon, BP, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, Citigroup, Morgan Stanely, Merrill Lynch, Caterpillar, Siemans, 3M, Home Depot, Fedex, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Verizon, Oracle, IBM, Sun, HP, Dell, Cisco, Motorola, Novell, CA, and Borland among others because they obviously didn't get the same information you did.

      --

      Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
    2. Re:a fun way to resurrect ancient hardware... by TrixX · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Running a 10 year old linux on a 10 year old computer is just as interesting as running DOS or Win3.0 on it, though only half as useful. (Mod me down if you must, but linux was still very much a toy for comp sci students back then)

      Wrong! I have a 33Mhz 486 DX w/8MB of RAM running two meters at my left. It runs Debian Woody 3 (no old distro) and XFree4. When I'm working w/someone else I boot it up and launch ssh or X remotely.

      I can use a GNOME2 session in that box w/o no problem (scrolling is a little slow, because of the old videocard, but it's very usable).

      I had no need to use an old distro. Debian worked out of the box; I optimized it a little removing VTs, disabling seervices and recompiling a custom 2.2 kernel, but it worked even w/o that.

    3. Re:a fun way to resurrect ancient hardware... by Peter+Simpson · · Score: 2, Interesting

      ... it could already do things ...

      And how! I remember installing Slackware on a 486/33 at work and blowing people away, running Linux with X11, logging into the Unix system and running the schematic capture tool remotely from an xterm :-)

      I was *supposed* to be running it under Win3.1 on the 486/33. Guess which was faster? Yup, Linux/X11. And guess which didn't crash or hang? Yup. That sold me. Unfortunately, my boss was less understanding (both technically and manager-wise) and was not at all amused with what I'd done. He left shortly thereafter.

      BTW, found a CD of Infomagic Linux dated 12/1993. Must have been one of the early dumps of TSX-11 or Sunsite, because I remember distinctly, loading 11 3.5" floppies to install that system.

      Thanks for the memories, Linus! We've come a long way since 1993.

    4. Re:a fun way to resurrect ancient hardware... by Viol8 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Yes, and MS Windows can do something Linux still can't do today, run Win32 software well."

      And how well does Windows run linux binaries? Or any binaries for others systems for that matter? Oh thats right , IT DOESN'T!

      And don't give me crap about network IO completion , theres a lot more to network speed than that. And remember this is an OS that had multiuser
      logins and remote management (whooo , maan , so advanced!) trumpeted as a big deal by MS recently. I mean jesus , what cave have the techies at MS been living in the last 30 years??

  6. Linux Internet Archives by sfbanutt · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I actually have a 6 CD set from Yggdrasilof the 'Linux Internet Archives Winter 1996'. That's about the time when things were starting to become usable by mere mortals.

    --
    I've wrestled with reality for 35 years and I'm happy to say, I finally won out - Elwood P. Dowd
  7. Re:Beautiful Picture? by kaszeta · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I remember trying to install from those same SLS diskette images downloaded from Rusty 'n Edie's at 9600 baud. It was not a pretty picture.

    Indeed, I still have a whole shoebox of floppies that (if they can still be read) consist of the current Slackware version in 1993/94. I managed to get many a free meal in exchange for letting folks borrow the box to do a Linux install. Those were the days.

    Then again, I've got better museum pieces than that, including a 486 still running Debian 0.93R5 (that even made 666 days of uptime in '96 or '97 before a power outage took it out), although it doesn't really do much other than sit there. Doing anything with it stopped being the point a long time ago...

    But really, it's rather interesting that someone is still keeping these old dists around, it's interesting to see what happened when.

  8. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  9. Why no Yggdrasil Linux? by mTor · · Score: 4, Interesting
    That's a great page but I just noticed that they don't have any Yggdrasil Linux distributions. Yggdrasil was the very first Linux distribution I installed and I always get a warm feeling when I see anything related to it.

    Does anyone know where to find a comprehensive archive of Yggdrasil distributions?

  10. Re:OLD school linux... by volkerdi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah, that's a great idea, I'll resurrect an old 386 with a 11 year old linux distribution, put it on the net, and watch all 11 years of security holes get exploited! yay!

    Doubtful. They'd actually have to THINK about how to attack old holes that have been patched for years. More likely your box will get hit by script kidz trying to exploit modern holes (like buffer overflows with Red Hat specific offsets) and your box will remain unexploited.

    Not that I recommend this, mind you, but there is a certain amount of security that you get from running an OS that nobody uses anymore.

  11. I went to Manchester by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While I was there, Microsoft bunged a MASSIVE load of cash to Manchester computing centre.

    Sad really, they ripped out a load of perfectly good sun workstations in my department and put in (then-new) windows nt 4.0 workstation boxes. Nothing worked right after that, but at least MCC got to employ 3x its former staff. :-(

    I wondered why MS targeted MCC so completely (it wasn't until years later they started targeting the Oxbridge crowd) - they must have been out to kill GNU and Linux even then.

  12. Re:Beautiful Picture? by Hayzeus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah -- the early TCP stack was a disaster, and as I recall there were major problems with serial port handling. I used BSDI for my internet/UUCP/file server needs basically until linux kernel 1.2 came out, at which point I switched permanently over to Linux (Yggdrasil distro , I think).

    --

    Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
  13. Re:For god sakes!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    What, you mean you didn't like sharing computer time with people via the snake, gonzo, and satan accounts?

    The sad thing is that there was a point when most of the people with access to the Internet would only use them for good. If they found a hole, they'd probably patch it up and leave a note in the motd. Now the world is overrun by lusers and everyone has to be armed to the teeth and completely distrustful of every other system out there.

  14. Re:Huh? by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    first off, there are GOBS of bash or perl scripts that can do it for you, secondly, there are gobs more embedded linux distros out there.

    and yes, even if I did go step by step from sources, I can get it done in 10 minutes. not a problem at ALL! the kernel, busybox and a couple of directories + /dev points and you are finished. gzip it and put it on a dos diskette with syslinux and you are done.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  15. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  16. Re:Uhh...they would need.. by gosand · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I certainly hope no one intends on putting these old versions on the net lest they become a w4r3z server or DDoS drone.


    Wouldn't they need a working TCP/IP stack for that? :-)

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  17. Re:Redneck Linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    it was one of the 5.x versions of RH that had the redneck language option. 5.1 or 5.2 I believe

  18. Re:Redneck Linux? by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wasn't quite an easter egg; it was both out in the open, and had a use. That was there first version of their installer that supported multiple languages. At that time, they didn't have translators to do a polished second language, so they came up with Redneck. I always installed in Redneck, and put them thar shiny thing in that fancy cupholder tray.

    I doubt if "corporate" RedHat would do this now. I doubt if many folks shelling out $2500 for Linux would appreciate the beauty that is Redneck.