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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."

26 of 313 comments (clear)

  1. Uhh... by grub · · Score: 5, Insightful


    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,
    1. Re:Uhh... by Pieroxy · · Score: 5, Funny

      I actually managed - back in the good old days - to boot up a Linux on a 486 33MHz with 1MB RAM. The only problem is that I couldn't log in: it took the system more than 1 minute to prompt me for my password when I entered my nickname. As the timeout is set to 1 minute, I got prompted for my nickname again, without getting a chance of typing my password!!!

      --
      Write boring code, not shiny code!
  2. Beautiful Picture? by Hayzeus · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
    1. 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.

    2. 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
  3. 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.

  4. Re:Obligatory SCO comment by garcia · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. 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 admbws · · Score: 5, Informative
      Slackware recently dropped support for i386, as the ChangeLog explains (scroll down and look for the new GCC 3.3 packages):
      Added the following test packages that we're not ready to merge in yet:
      testing/packages/gcc-3.3/gcc-3.3-i486-1.tgz: This is GCC 3.3, compiled for
      a minimum CPU target of i486. Why i486 and not i386? Because the shared
      C++ libraries in gcc-3.2.x will require 486 opcodes even when a 386 target
      is used (so we already weren't compatible with the i386 for Slackware 9.0
      and nobody noticed :-). gcc-3.3 fixes this issue and allows you to build a
      386 compiler, but the fix is done in a way that produces binaries that are
      not compatible with gcc-3.2.x compiled binaries and which suffer a
      performance hit. To retain compatibility with Slackware 9.0, we'll have to
      use i486 (or better) as the compiler target for gcc-3.3. Therefore, it is
      time to say goodbye to i386 support in Slackware. I've surveyed 386 usage
      online, and the most common thing I see people say when someone asks about
      running Linux on a 386 is to "run Slackware", but then they also usually go
      on to say "be sure to get an OLD version, like 4.0, before glibc, because
      it'll be more efficient." Now, if that's the general advice, then I see no
      reason to continue 386 support in the latest Slackware (and indeed it's no
      longer easily possible). People with 386 machines aren't going to have the
      hard drive space for Slackware 9.1 in any case.

    2. 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
  6. 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!

  7. 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 leandrod · · Score: 4, Informative
      > 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)

      Not really. While GNU/Linux was nowhere nearly as useful as it is today, it could already do things MS Windows can't do today. More importantly, it did so with decent performance and reliability and a compatible API, what means you probably can run much modern software there. Now try running modern software on MS Windows 3.0, or even finding old software to run on it...

      --
      Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
      DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
      GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
  8. Hardware by jargoone · · Score: 5, Funny

    The early distributions ran on machines as small as 386's with 2-4 MB of RAM"

    Damn! Time to upgrade again!

  9. Re:Uhh... Really? by JiffyPop · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

  10. way back... by zapp · · Score: 4, Funny

    before ls had color?!?! ;)

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    no comment
  11. The REAL value of this... by DickBreath · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  13. If you REALLY want to enable old hardware... by Sleepy · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    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 /bin/sh grrr...).

    A system built around BusyBox and dietlibc is pretty minimal. Just expect to learn a lot of the "old" command switches, and other workarounds...

  14. 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?

  15. 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.

  16. Debian Archive.. by molo · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  17. Huh? by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  18. Why do that ? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 4, Funny
    If you want a taste of old Linux then use Debian. Jeeze.

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
  19. 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.