Checking out old Linux distros for historical purposes

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 11:41 am

I've always wanted to try using a Linux distro from before my time in the community, and I figured a live CD would be a perfect way to do so. What were some of the earliest live CDs, and does anyone know of a place that still hosts old ISOs? I guess this sounds like a weird request, but I'm curious what old versions of GNOME and KDE were like, and just how far Linux on the desktop has progressed over the years.

Judland · Post by **Judland** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 1:02 pm

According to Wikipedia, Yggdrasil Linux was the first Linux Live CD (1995). The original files can be found here.

The only other Linux Live CD that I can remember appearing in the community was Knoppix (2003) and later, Morphix.

I don't know if you can find earlier versions of these OSs on the Net, but I might have copies of them somewhere in my many spools of old CDs I've burned over the years. I could make copies for you if you can't find them anywhere else (that is if I can find the CDs myself).

allix · Post by **allix** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 1:06 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCC_Interim_Linux

links to the actual distros are on the pages.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 1:18 pm

Thanks for the replies.

Do you think a distro from 1995 would even boot on a modern computer?

chuck · Post by **chuck** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 3:10 pm

Wally Balljacker wrote:Thanks for the replies.

Do you think a distro from 1995 would even boot on a modern computer?

I'm pretty sure that in archives around the net you can find just about any version of any distro. It's just gonna take some googling. Walnut Creek made/distributed install CDs of distros back in the day but they disappeared ~7 years ago.

Live CDs that 'just work' are a fairly new thing that Knoppix really made the breakthrough with.

Would a 1995 distro boot a modern PC, I'd say no.

Would it boot in a VM, very likely

allix · Post by **allix** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 5:35 pm

Wally Balljacker wrote:Thanks for the replies.

Do you think a distro from 1995 would even boot on a modern computer?

It depends on what motherboard interface your machine ,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_T ... Attachment , has a chart of the history of ATA, ATA-1 came out 1994, followed by ATA-2 in 1996 , which was released after that distro came out

I personally would use a VM because you are running vulnerable software.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 8:34 am

Wally Balljacker wrote:Thanks for the replies.

Do you think a distro from 1995 would even boot on a modern computer?

I've still got Red Hat 5.2 and 6.0 laying around in pretty good condition (if you're sincerely interested I could send them to you).

The problem with distros from that era is they all booted from floppy (even CD based distros). Often the boot floppies are bad. If you can get one that boots from CD, you might be OK.

You could also go with an older version of Debian, but if you really want to see GNOME 1.x, you 'll need to go back a bit farther. I guess it's worth seeing, but I lived through it and wouldn't go back.

lizerazu · Post by **lizerazu** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 9:08 am

Wally,
A (demented) hobby of mine (or at least it's becoming a hobby) is to look on craigslist and buy used computers for really cheap and a)try to build linux on them or b) reinstall my old mandrake 4 cds.

I've never done anything as far back as I think you're looking to go but I think the route that I would take is either a VM (as previously stated) or actually getting old hardware (which I just enjoy).

Regards

*edit, admittedly for my LFS builds I do it on my X2 4200 because I hate waiting for compiles.

mikeh · Post by **mikeh** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 9:44 am

Many old CD's from Red Hat and others do contain images of the various boot floppies on the CD also.

So if you lose the boot floppy or it goes bad you can recreate it from the image on the CD.

Post by **Patrick** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 9:46 am

One of my favorite Allan stories is when he describes how a RH4 or 5 box he had running got comprised over a dial-up modem. I remember him saying the hard drive was spinning like crazy and making loud clicking noises. Might not be a good idea to expose those old installs to the internet. Just a suggestion.

Linc · Post by **Linc** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 1:30 pm

Patrick wrote:One of my favorite Allan stories is when he describes how a RH4 or 5 box he had running got comprised over a dial-up modem. I remember him saying the hard drive was spinning like crazy and making loud clicking noises. Might not be a good idea to expose those old installs to the internet. Just a suggestion.

That was me. Redhat 6.0 running over the weekend downloading an ISO of a different distribution. I figured I was safe because I was only on a dislup at around 4400 baud. Well, I had telnet enabled and then next thing you know I was noticing how the output of "ps -ef" was funny looking... The rest is history.

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:13 pm

I was wondering how it might have come to pass that Allan was using Red Hat instead of Slack.

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:30 pm

Vogateer wrote:I was wondering how it might have come to pass that Allan was using Red Hat instead of Slack.

According to this, Dann and Linc "beat it into me that I couldn't use RedHat anymore" once he joined the LUG.

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 4:05 pm

Good call! I vaguely recollect other people here coming to Linux through Red Hat—I'm one of them—and didn't catch that Allan started off with anything other than Slack.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 5:49 pm

Some things about red hat piss me off, but in general I think they get way too much flak from folks on the show. I admin many RH boxes, and for the most part they all spin like a top. I've even been toying with the idea of getting an academic license and getting a redhat cert - it certainly wouldn't hurt me at all to know more.