OpenSource.com Test-Drives Linux Distros From 1993 To 2003

'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.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/08/12/0341251 Cheers, Pete -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

On Mon, 14 Aug 2017 12:03:40 +1200, Peter Reutemann wrote:
'The article looks at seven distros ...'
The article itself is here <https://opensource.com/article/16/12/yearbook-linux-test-driving-distros>. The author includes the actual qemu commands to boot up the distro images on period-compatible (virtual) hardware. One common sticking point is how fiddly it was to configure XFree86 back then.
participants (2)
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro
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Peter Reutemann