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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,
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.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
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
Ummmm, no,
Let it go.
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.
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
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!
... 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!!!!
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
The early distributions ran on machines as small as 386's with 2-4 MB of RAM"
Damn! Time to upgrade again!
I don't imagine there are many warez servers with 2MB RAM and 100MB free HD space... Besides that, I would think that as many versions as the underlying libraries have gone through that current cracking tools wouldn't know what to do with something so outdated.
Maybe you should create an archive of old Linux cracking tools just to even the playing field?
before ls had color?!?! ;)
no comment
...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.
About redhatsociety.org
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Don't mess with one of these old distributions. Seriously... things were broken in the old days, and often you had a bear of a time even figuring out what was wrong.
:-)
/bin/sh grrr...).
And good luck getting any answers!
If you want to go through the pain of this for HISTORICAL value... do so if you really really want to. Just don't put it on the net, ok?
If the intent is to squeeze some practical value out of an old system, then ignore these old distros and get something made for the job. One of the "Linux on a floppy" or "peanut" Linux distros would do nicely.
A really fun exercise would be "porting" all of today's "modern" Bash scripts to run on an embedded or stripped-down system.. nothing works because everyone uses the newer Bash coding styles (while still specifying the script as
A system built around BusyBox and dietlibc is pretty minimal. Just expect to learn a lot of the "old" command switches, and other workarounds...
BR What was your public IP?
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Does anyone know where to find a comprehensive archive of Yggdrasil distributions?
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.
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.
For those that don't know, there is Debian Archive of older versions. I think ibiblio has this beat with 0.91 Beta though (Jan 94).
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Wow, and i wondered where they got all the stuff for stable/woddy...
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."
Hmm, I'm running 2.6 Rc1 right now on a 386 with 4mb ram...
why do I need an old distro to run linux on really slow or old hardware??
that has always been the magic of linux... pure scalability. and it takes 10 minutes to roll your own single floppy distro.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
http://saveie6.com/
Anyone else see these pictures on the servers? hehehe, I wonder when these were taken.
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
Comment removed based on user account deletion
By my rapid calculations, ibiblio.org now owes SCO some $756,000 and change.
Wouldn't they need a working TCP/IP stack for that?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Historic Linux? Hmmm.... what should we call it?
:-D
How about "Old Hat Linux" ?
-- ba-ching! --
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
>Just because one is monoglot^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hanglophone it doesn't mean one shouldn't try to write accents when necessary... nee doesn't mean anything, the French word meaning born being nee in the feminine, masculine ne.
When a foreign word is anglicized, it typically loses its accents. See resume (the paper kind), for example. If you don't like how english operates in general, I humbly suggest you don't use it.
FYI: Nee is certainly a valid english word without the accents. Look it up before flaming next time. To REALLY bug you, noel requires no accent, also.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
that the date stamps are not preserved. I was looking at the old SLS distributions and all the date stamps say September 2003. You want to see 199[1234] for it to be really 3117 retro :)
v2sw7CUPhw5ln6pr5Pck4ma7u7LFw0m6g/l7Di5e6t5Ab6TH.
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.
:-)
Like Slackware?
Take that trolls, I beat you to it.
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.
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.