So the challenge begins…
|In the second podcast, you challenged us to get some really old distros working. I’ve started off with Ubuntu Warty Warthog (in VirtualBox), as released in 2004. OK, it’s not truly ancient, but it’s a start.

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Anyone else have fond memories of Warty? I plan to work my way backwards to Red Hat 5.2 from 1998, the first distro I ever really used in anger. But will I succeed? Will I spend several days trying to get XF86Setup to work? Will I get trapped forever in a ’90s distro, and have to do all my work via Telnet? Find out the gory details in the next podcast…
7 Comments
I still have RedHat 5.0 (Hurricane) on disk, the first distro I ever installed. I would install it now for romantic reasons if my one spare laptop were not so shakey. It is a 1993 Dell Latitude, which three years ago went through Puppy, Bodhi & Slitaz, LXDE, E17 & OpenBox to end up in its current configuration; & XFCE. It works well and is still productive. I tout it as my antique legacy hardware to avoid embarrassment at dragging such a relic around with me. But it does make a point.
Go on, you know you want to:
http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/slackware/slackware-1.01/
🙂
Hah, good find Phorize! I just booted a1disk in QEMU and it seems to work… Now I need to make the other disks or put them on a DOS partition. Going to be fun 🙂
This might help you:
http://blog.nielshorn.net/2009/06/older-slackware-versions-vi/
Apparent SLS shipped with 2 versions of X, each one compiled for a specific card because there weren't actually any video drivers! Now that's LEET:)
Don't do it, Mike! I beg you. Don't go down the whole way to 5.2.
I started with PowerPack (red Hat) 5.2. I don't want to be reminded.
6.2 is the stopping point (if you're going backwards) … Enlightenment starts, sawfish and modular desktop management. I tells ya, if you go back any further then this particular brilliant point of potential promise you will regret it.
I actually think nothing will work anyway any earlier than this, but oh yeah, you're using emulation.
It ain't gonna work in an emulator, and it is highly unlikely to work in real time mode either. as it is just too darn hard to recognise a potential future that was only a glimpse in the eye of contributers back then. Trust me, redHat 6.2 is as far back as you want to go.
Believe me, I am a human. I've been there.
MK.
The last time I tried getting an old dsitro installed, I couldn't get anything before Mandrake 7 to work, which was a shame as I had hoped to get my original Mandrake 6.5 up and running.
Hum, yes good old Redhat 5.2
I seem to remember starting with version 5.0 on a cover disc from something. Loved it from the first moment, stayed with it ever since. Was looking for an alternative to Windows 98, and we used SunOS at work at the secret lab.
Oh and I checked. Wasn't me with the windows 98. Thought it might have been me on my Virtualbox machine, but it's been upgraded to XP