Fun with really old distros in virtualbox [Archive]

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bwhite82

April 17th, 2010, 02:38 PM

Just for sh**s sake. I've managed to get Jurix Linux booted (predates Suse). If anyone else is bored and cares joining me in my endeavor check out:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/historic-linux/distributions/

This thread "Bottom Line: Its Got to be EASY to Install" got me reminiscing about how it used to be and how far Linux has come:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1456278

Remember having to specify start and end cylinders for your hd to create that partition? How about specifying IRQs for each piece of hardware?

BTW I am sure there is someone out there just itching to chime in with:

"That's not old! I started out on the abacus youngun!" or other such. (Please refrain and just enjoi).

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_iu9GeSlWjc4/S8m4W30spWI/AAAAAAAAAGI/RjT7PmmDw98/floppy_boot.png

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_iu9GeSlWjc4/S8m4XFny7TI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/ScSMQDu0I4Q/jurix_boot.png

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_iu9GeSlWjc4/S8m4XOBx80I/AAAAAAAAAGM/NW-f5A9HUao/jurix.png

bwhite82

April 17th, 2010, 03:39 PM

Redhat 2. Couldn't get very far. For some reason it wasn't recognizing my swap partition thus not letting me continue with installation. "You'll need at least 16mb for the base system...." LOL!

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_iu9GeSlWjc4/S8nHyVZvNjI/AAAAAAAAAGc/s-PafzAEheY/redhat_welcome.png

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_iu9GeSlWjc4/S8nHyIf73kI/AAAAAAAAAGY/wMkidd4-4bs/partition_redhat.png

dsavi

April 17th, 2010, 03:50 PM

:lol: That's awesome. The oldest distro I've used is not so terribly old, probably RedHat 6. (Not RHEL)

jrothwell97

April 17th, 2010, 04:11 PM

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_iu9GeSlWjc4/S8m4XOBx80I/AAAAAAAAAGM/NW-f5A9HUao/jurix.png

You know something's very much in the "experimental" stage of development when the instructions, instead of saying "you should probably do x," say "it might be interesting to do x." :)

The oldest distribution I've ever used is Debian 1.1ish to beat some life into an old laptop. (See me whisper and wobble my way through a video about it. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLWwHVN-0-U))

bwhite82

April 17th, 2010, 04:17 PM

You know something's very much in the "experimental" stage of development when the instructions, instead of saying "you should probably do x," say "it might be interesting to do x." :)

The oldest distribution I've ever used is Debian 1.1ish to beat some life into an old laptop. (See me whisper and wobble my way through a video about it. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLWwHVN-0-U))

Ha! Very cool, will have to watch the full thing later (I skimmed through some of it). :) Thanks for sharing.

bikodog

April 17th, 2010, 04:20 PM

so does anyone know where we could find iso's (or floppy equivalents) for some of these old distros?

I have a PII laptop circa 1999 that i would like to get up and running. I've experimented with puppylinux and DSL, but even they are maxing out its capabilities.

bwhite82

April 17th, 2010, 04:27 PM