[SGVLUG] Memories of SLS Linux

Mon Mar 16 09:40:09 PDT 2015

Oh I need to attend meetings. (just overly busy)

You guys are making me remember the days of saving up for months to put together my first PC (up from Commodore64/128) and thinking 4MB of RAM a 40GB SCSI and a 128bit video card was close to the top of the line back in the mid-late 90’s, all while trying out Slackware (from the back of a book purchased from the local book store) and Redhat 4 and 5.2. After struggling for hours if not days for when I “finally” got X windows to work, and feeling such an accomplishment. To present day using Gentoo on render farms to “squeak out” all the power I can.

Yes linux has changed significantly, for the better. When you can teach a 9 and 10 year old to use Linux that is now my current scale of accomplishment, up from starting X windows being the accomplishment in the 90’s.

Gary Perkinson | Project Engineer
Direct: 949.809.5211 | Main: 949.809.5000  | Fax: 949.809.5006 | Cell: 949.202.8801
gary.perkinson at tetratech.com

Tetra Tech
Complex World, Clear Solutions™
17885 Von Karman Avenue, Suite 500 | Irvine, CA 92614 | www.tetratech.com

PLEASE NOTE:  This message, including any attachments, may include privileged, confidential and/or inside information. Any distribution or use of this communication by anyone other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender by replying to this message and then delete it from your system.

From: sgvlug-bounces at sgvlug.net [mailto:sgvlug-bounces at sgvlug.net] On Behalf Of Matthew Campbell
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2015 11:27 PM
To: SGVLUG Discussion List.
Subject: Re: [SGVLUG] Memories of SLS Linux

> My first attempt at installing Linux was Red Hat 7.x

LOL, does my first install of the closed-source XENIX in 1983 on an IBM AT count?

"Microsoft, which expected that Unix would be its operating system of the future when personal computers became powerful enough,[4]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix#cite_note-letwin19950817-4> purchased a license for Version 7 Unix<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_7_Unix> from AT&T in 1978,[5]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix#cite_note-5> and announced on August 25, 1980 that it would make it available for the 16-bit<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16-bit> microcomputer market.[6]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix#cite_note-6>"
Wow, history lends an interesting perspective...

Here's another interesting read for those who were around in the early days of personal computing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer

I got into larger Unix systems in the mid '80s and ran on Dec and IBM hardware through the early 90s and then SGIs into the 2000s.  I didn't crack the covers on an open source OS until I ran into Linux in 2002.  In 2004 I jumped onto Fedora 2 and adopted it as my main OS.  It was a private personal favorite until they really stabilized the desktop somewhere around F11.  I was stoked, now I could recommend Linux to less technical users.  Unfortunately immediately thereafter they went into what seemed an identity crisis which resulted in several less stable releases and I had to move friends and customers off to other distros.

Now with Fedora 20 I have finally moved my father-in-law onto Linux.  He's not getting it:

Tom:  Why can't I download Flash Player?
Matt:  Because every time you download and install software to watch cats playing piano you get a virus.  We moved you to Linux so I could lock you out of your own hardware.
Tom:  Ah, yeah, I remember now...

Does this sound like anyone you know?

Matt

On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 2:54 PM, Lan Dang <l.dang at ymail.com<mailto:l.dang at ymail.com>> wrote:

Braddock,

Did you take notes? I seem to recall that one of the ideas for the LUG 20th anniversary is to showcase old Linux installs, so we can see how Linux has changed over the years.

My first attempt at installing Linux was Red Hat 7.x. this was probably in 2002 or 2003. I might'very gone for a dual-boot system. I was unable to connect to the Internet. I suspect that it was an Ethernet driver issue as I usually connected via Ethernet in those days. That was the day I acknowledged myself that computer without network connectivity is basically a paperweight to me.

Lan

________________________________
From: Braddock Gaskill <braddock at braddock.com<mailto:braddock at braddock.com>>;
To: Sgvlug <sgvlug at sgvlug.net<mailto:sgvlug at sgvlug.net>>;
Subject: Re: [SGVLUG] Memories of SLS Linux
Sent: Sun, Mar 15, 2015 4:12:04 AM

I got SLS Linux 1.05 circa April 1994 installed and running in qemu.  It was neat to go through the old process - actually easier than I thought.

I (eventually) followed a very good guide here:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/node/2097

This is probably the oldest Linux distribution available.  There is an earlier SLS 1.03 on biblio, but it appears to be incomplete and fails on installation.  I tried VMWare before qemu without success.

It would be an interesting project try to get networking support.  You'd either have to SLIP over the emulated serial port, or recompile a very old version of the kernel if the emulated network hardware was by chance supported in 1994 (which I doubt).

Another interesting project would be getting X windows to work.  startx failed out of the box, as I expected.  I recall getting X windows running at the time as a very difficult and frustrating process.

But I probably won't go further into this.

-braddock

On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 10:35 PM, Braddock Gaskill <braddock at braddock.com<mailto:braddock at braddock.com>> wrote:
James was talking tonight about installing an "old" linux distribution for fun.  It brought me back to my first encounter with Linux, which I thought I'd share.  Maybe others can share their experiences.

The fall of 1993 was the start of my freshman year at college.  I spent all the money I'd earned at my first programming job the prior summer on a new 486DX2, even though I had been raised on an Amiga.

MSDOS on the 486 was a bore compared to the Amiga.  The DEC Unix workstations in the lab were far more interesting.

My dorm-mate Mark had received a big box of used floppy disks from his mother's work.  We went to the computer lab and started downloading SLS Linux from MIT's ftp server.  Slowly.  One floppy at a time.  To speed things up we commandeered half a dozen lab computers at once, looking over our shoulder in case the campus IT department got mad at our flagrant abuse of machines and precious bandwidth.  We were sure we'd get in trouble.

One by one we downloaded all 50 floppy disks of SLS.  I still remember the prompt coming up on my freshly installed 486 and thinking I finally had a real machine.  Linux was at version 0.99.  There was no ethernet in the dorm, we had to run SLIP over a serial line.

I only had 4MB of RAM, which wasn't really enough to run X - although Mark hacked on my computer all night to get the modelines correct to at least start it up.  The rule of thumb was you could open one window per megabyte of RAM over 4MB.  The next summer I upgraded to 8MB and could even run Mosaic - I recall fondly feeling like I had a real workstation.

I haven't stopped running Linux since.  I see there is a vintage copy of SLS on ibiblio, so maybe I'll give it another try.

-braddock

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://sgvlug.net/pipermail/sgvlug/attachments/20150316/a4d54c90/attachment-0001.html>