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OpenSource.com Test-Drives Linux Distros From 1993 To 2003 (opensource.com)
An anonymous reader quotes OpenSource.com:
A unique trait of open source is that it's never truly EOL (End of Life). The disc images mostly remain online, and their licenses don't expire, so going back and installing an old version of Linux in a virtual machine and getting a precise picture of what progress Linux has made over the years is relatively simple... Whether you're new to Linux, or whether you're such an old hand that most of these screenshots have been more biographical than historical, it's good to be able to look back at how one of the largest open source projects in the world has developed. More importantly, it's exciting to think of where Linux is headed and how we can all be a part of that, starting now, and for years to come.
The article looks at seven distros -- Slackware 1.01 (1993), Debian 0.91 (1994), Jurix/S.u.S.E. (1996), SUSE 5.1 (1998), Red Hat 6.0 (1999), Mandrake 8.0 (2001), and Fedora 1 (2003). Click through for some of the highlights.
The article looks at seven distros -- Slackware 1.01 (1993), Debian 0.91 (1994), Jurix/S.u.S.E. (1996), SUSE 5.1 (1998), Red Hat 6.0 (1999), Mandrake 8.0 (2001), and Fedora 1 (2003). Click through for some of the highlights.
- Slackware 1.01 (1993). "The best part about trying Slackware 1.01 is that there's a pre-made image in Qemu's 2014 series of free images, so you don't have to perform the install manually... In more ways than I'd expected, the system feels surprisingly modern. What's missing is any notion of package management. All installs and uninstalls are entirely manual, with no tracking."
- Debian 0.91 (1994). "To try Debian 0.91, I used the floppy disk images available on the Ibiblio digital archive... The install process is surprisingly smooth... The dpkg command exists, but it's an interactive menu-based system... Even so, you can sense the convenience factor in the design concept... I sincerely see why Debian made a splash."
- Jurix/S.u.S.E. (1996). "Because I wasn't specifically looking for the earliest instance, Jurix was the first Linux distribution I found that really 'felt' like it intended the user to use a GUI environment. XFree86 is installed by default, so if you didn't intend to use it, you had to opt out."
- SUSE 5.1 (1998). "I installed SUSE 5.1 from a InfoMagic CD-ROM purchased from a software store in Maryland in 1998. The install process was convoluted compared to those that came before... Included desktops were fvwm, fvwm2, and ctwm. I used fvwm, and it worked as expected. I even discovered tkDesk, a dock and file manager combo pack that is surprisingly similar to Ubuntu's Unity launcher bar."
- Red Hat 6.0 (1999). "The disc I used was purchased in June 1999. The installation was fully guided and remarkably fast... The desktop bundled with Red Hat 6 was, as it still is, GNOME, but the window manager was an early Enlightenment, which also provided the main sound daemon... Unlike later implementations of GNOME, this early version featured a panel at the bottom of the screen, with an application menu and launcher icons and virtual desktop control in a central location."
- Mandrake 8.0 (2001). "Mandrake 8.0 was released in 2001, so it would have been compared to, for instance, Apple OS 9.2 and Windows ME... I'd thought the Red Hat installation process had been nice, but Mandrake's was amazing. It was friendly, it gave the user a chance to test configurations before continuing, it was easy and fast, and it worked almost like magic..."
- Fedora 1 (2003). "The Fedora Core experience is largely indistinguishable from Red Hat 6 or 7. The GNOME desktop is polished, there are all the signature configuration helper applications, and the presentation is clean and professional... A red hat icon marks the applications menu, and the lower GNOME panel holds all the latest Linux application launchers, including the OpenOffice office suite and the Mozilla browser."
This submission makes us ask an interesting question: what impact will systemd have on the historical preservation of today's software?
A lot of people have reported problems with systemd. A look through the Fedora, Debian or Ubuntu bug trackers and mailing lists will give some idea about the sorts of problems that are encountered. Many of them are quite strange, and some of them are downright stupid.
If we're running into these problems today, under ideal circumstances, I can't help but think the situation would be much worse in the future.
Will future historians trying to run Linux actually be able to do so with any ease? There's no guarantee that they'll have access to the same mailing lists, bug trackers, and people in IRC channels that we can use today to try to solve bugs with systemd, just so our computers boot.
The article makes it sound like it was challenging enough after only a decade or two, and we're talking about Linux distros from the era when Linux was much simpler, and typically just worked.
I suspect that there may need to be historical research specialists in the future who focus solely on debugging problems with systemd. That's not a job I would want to have! It's bad enough dealing with these problems now, when there are at least some support avenues available. Trying to do it in the future, perhaps without access to the resources we have today, would be a miserable experience.
Perhaps in the future we'll just see what we're seeing today: a decrease in interest when it comes to Linux, and an increase in interest in the BSDs, which avoid systemd and which just tend to work fine without needing to be hand-held and debugged frequently. Historians will study FreeBSD, rather than Linux, because FreeBSD will just work in the simulators they're using to do their research. They'll be able to focus on the historical research they want to do, rather than trying to debug pointless problems with systemd.
Bought the 4 disc Mandrake 8.0 in 2001. It came with an excellent book explaining the basics. Had been running Red Hat 6.1 for about a year and the Mandrake felt much more polished. As I recall at the time I had a Pentium II with 32 mb of RAM and it would run KDE, but worked much better with Fluxbox. A big deal at that time was to play a DVD, which it did with some help of packages from the Penguin Liberation Front. Got me on the internet as well, setting up PPPOE was stressful. Doesn't seem like 16 years ago. Have been running Linux as my main desktop ever since, no complaints.
Too soon?
Wish they looked at how the memory usage ramped up. Current distros have trouble running with less than 512MB and are normally avoiding having install CDs (instead only a partially filled DVD). The distros don't bother to make official pressed CDs/DVDs, so they are not likely to last long, given how bad burnable media is now, making it more difficult for historical preservation. From a security perspective, it would be best to have official CDs/DVDs that are signed. Does anyone care about quality, or is the architectual disaster known as systemd the only problem with Linux that people complain about?
This wasn't until a few years after 2003, but after trying to install Mandrake Whatever and Red Hat 9.0, I remember installing Debian Sarge. It wasn't magic, but I remember thinking, "So this is what an easy install feel like." No crashes or anything, it just installed easily, 1 step at a time.
You used to have to download this stuff - on dial up. And save it to floppies.
I was running Red Hat version something when I heard about this new desktop environment called KDE. Their website had screenshots, a sales pitch why this was great, and *downloads* - woowhee!!
They had packages for Red Hat - I think about 5 or 6. You'd download each package and put it on a floppy. Then the install procedure had to be done in the proper sequence - first floppy one, then floppy three, then 2 and 4, and, finally floppies 5 and 6 for optional programs. ...Or something like that.
Anyway, I was successful the first time and I grinned for a week. What these folks did is interesting but it's not even close to really being there.
it should be called "stupid if you keep running this" if any of this is on public-facing systems. No security updates, no new patches. Not a problem if it's some firewalled-off or disconnected system, but running even CentOS 5.XX on a production system is just asking to be hacked.
It's really sad that Ximian Gnome, circa 2001-2002, seems more user friendly than the 2017 version of Gnome.
#DeleteChrome
Worked on ASIC development for F-22 back in the 90's. Management had stupid idea of putting us all in a big room where we had to share Sun IPX's to work on ASIC design. I got permission to build linux PCs so we could work from our desks. I used slackware for X windows terminals. In true defense contractor fashion the PC people bought us the SVGA graphics cards I asked for, but VGA monitors. Luckily I was able to return them and get state of the art 17" 1024x768 ones :)
Easy to do with Windows too, I have ISOs and original disks for NT 3.51, NT4 Workstation, NT4 Server, Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98SE. And ISOs for Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003
Until a few days ago I had Office ISOs going back to 97, but I was in the mood for deleting old crap to free up some space on my NAS so out it went.. I do have an original OEM 7 or 8 disk set for the last version of MS Works and all the goodies it came with when it came preloaded on new PCs around the year 2000.
The first version of Linux I ever played around with was from a book with CDs about Slackware in 1997. Must have been an old version as it never worked with my Socket 7 motherboard with an AMD K5 processor. Back then it was compile and pray to get anything working. I later ran SuSE 5 through 10. Switched to Ubuntu for a while. Fedora and Mint are my favorite distros for work. These days I use Red Hat at home in case I ever get a job that required Red Hat experience.
I remember the amazement of installing the A (base) and Y? (games) series floppies of slackware and being able to play sasteroids with a smooth framerate while installing the remaing series...on floppy! This was on a single core 386.
These days on a multicore i7 I find things can start grinding to a halt if you try transferring files to some dodgy USB devices.
I've always wondered if Microsoft managed to sabotage the kernel with some dodgy "contributions". God knows they must have tried countless times over the years.
My eyes are still flickering from using all those low refresh rate CRTs in the 90s.
Not so fast.
Maybe he's a republican Nazi but people who saw the event claimed his car was swarmed and it appeared as if he panicked.
Wait for all the evidence to come to light before doxxing this guy, OK?
That was my first Linux install, soon to be followed by Slackware, then Mandrake. At that time Mandrake (and SuSE) had the absolute BEST interfaces going, though - in true Linux/UNIX fashion - they were entirely incompatible. :-) Think AIX's SMIT vs SCO's or Sun's UI experience.
Not one mention of Gentoo.
I remember it taking days to install and compile everything back on old hardware.
Softlanding Linux System (SLS) was released by Peter MacDonald in May 1992. When most of the people I know and I first started using Linux, none of those other distributions even existed. Why not install the one that introduced so many of us to Linux?
I have been a frequent flyer with them since Mandrake 5.1,
I installed it and it just worked, even the Kool Desktop Environment.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Thanks, this got me distracted. I ended up browsing old window manager programs and other stuff I have used in the past (like rox filer and stuff like that) and I have to say I was partly surprised while reading that some of those are still getting updates. Like WindowMaker, it just got updated a few months ago. Many of the projects are still alive and kicking.
Now I feel the hunger to install a minimal window manager again, with separate dock program and other custom stuff. No real reason or need for it, Gnome works ok, just an old urge coming back again. The need to tinker together something ultra sleek with no bells and whistles.
The link for some highlights just redirects to this article again.
FTR, the article is from December 20, 2016.
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
my first official clash with linux was in 1996 with a debian box. The computer was given to me to work on graphical stuff. It was brutal. It's a different thing to talk about emacs and to actually using it to earn money.
Gimp was crap, Povray was crap (no blender back then), gcc was crap. Everything was crap or half baked back then.
Nowdays with ubuntu linux is heaven. Hw support is okay. Even gaming is fine with steam. It took 20 years but finally this OS is mighty fine.
I did the same in my first sysadmin job, brought in some intel PCs with mach64 onboard (ugh) which made nice X workstations. A place to run spice and to remote other tools to from the Suns.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You must not have used Linux back in the early days. Sure Linux was simpler back then, but it definitely struggled mightily to "just work." Hardware support had to start at zero, essentially, so devices only worked in Linux as developers and Linus had time to add them. And hardware specs were quite fluid back then. Anyone remember having to deal with IRQ and port assignments? The mess that was ISAPNP? Having to use SCSI-emulation to use a CDROM drive? The mess that was the sound system on Linux that PulseAudio largely corrected?
Sorry but the "good old days" thing is a myth. Linux today, with systemd, is far more plug and play and "just works" than ever before. It's a more complex beast now because computers are more complex. So there is lots of room for bugs. But it's certainly better now than it was in the old Redhat 5 days when I really started using Linux.
Which OEMs? What exactly are you referring to here?
But pulseaudio still relies on alsa, why push for only one system when falling back to alsa has always worked?
I have always preferred debian over derivates because of the work of mantainers that allows smooth dist-upgrades, but I've just upgraded my PC from Jessie to Stretch and it made a mess, installing avahi and pulseaudio and also removing XFCE's alsamixer widget package, not to mention gtk3 always getting worse.
I think there will be no impact at all.
As you can read in TFA, just booting up an installer back in the day could be a struggle. The author tried to tweak his X settings for an entire weekend and just gave up.
Linux was a far cry from the mature OS it is today. Systemd just works for a very large portion of the user base. Remember that systemd is an old piece of software: distro's started running on systemd by default as early as 2012, in 2014 it was mainstream. Systemd protests only seemed to start when Debian (not the most progressive bunch of people) choose systemd as their default system.
Systemd is a mere footnote in the history of Linux. Linux distro's always have been full of bugs and problems, and systemd is not (significantly) different. Systemd reception is quite good in the overall community it seems. Only a very vocal conservative part of the community doesn't like it (to say the least).
I'm managing over 200 Linux servers in a mix of CentOS 6 and 7 and (mostly) Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04. I have run Opensuse in different versions (with or without systemd) and have been running Ubunut 10.04 and 12.04. My experience with systemd? It works. Upstart really really sucks. SysV works, but is hard to maintain. In a modern devops environment (we use Puppet for everything we do), systemd is the way to go.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
how the hell did the slackware 1.01 from 1993 feel modern? you didn't even have something simple and considered normal like openssh back then.
i started using linux in 1995 and a lot has changed between then and now...
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I've depended on slashdot since 1998 for shithook offtopic first posts. The only thing disappointing nowadays is that the second through fifth posts are frequently on topic.
My first experience was with a boxed set of SUSE 9 in about 2004. Total garbage! Constant driver issues. Web pages wouldn't load correctly. I must have spent 6 months messing with it.
I was able to get a copy of Windows XP Pro from my school cheaply. That was great! However, there were still some opens source apps that I brought over from SUSE. Gaim (now Pidgin) was awesome, and so was Firefox.
Eventually I bought a new computer with Windows Vista installed by default. That inspired me to try Linux once again. Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, where were you in 2004? So much better. A few graphics driver issues, but nothing "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" couldn't solve.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".