Where To Get Older Linux Releases

Why?

1) Drivers

2) Size

3) Mis-Features

4) Methods

This article gives a good example of some small-hardware-friendly Linux releases and an idea of one reason “why”:

https://www.linux.com/news/linux-distros-older-hardware

Note that it is from 2006, so add a decade to his idea of small old hardware…

Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier
February 24, 2006

Linux distros for older hardware

For these tests, I dug out Igor, an old PC that had been collecting dust in my closet. Igor is a Pentium II 233MHz machine with 64MB of RAM, an 8x CD-ROM drive, a 3GB hard drive, and an integrated ATI 3D Rage Pro video card with 4MB of video RAM. You can run Linux on older and slower machines, but this is the most under-powered machine I had available.

Next, I selected a handful of lightweight Linux distributions that looked promising, and started downloading. The distributions ranged from popular “mainstream” distros such as Slackware and Debian to distros that are specifically developed for lightweight machines, such as Damn Small Linux (DSL). I apologize in advance if your favorite lightweight distro is not represented here.

Sadly, I suspect the Raspberry Pi is going to kill off much of that antique gear. Heck, I’m looking at my old White Box PCs and thinking of deep-sixing them… and I have an old TUBE radio the size of a small stove in my office…

Drivers

Old equipment is made of old parts. Pretty obvious. Those old parts need “drivers” to work. Drivers are the software that sits between the basic operating system and the actual hardware. Things to make that old dot matrix printer run, or that old serial mouse and primitive screen function.

As time goes on, fewer of those machines run the newer operating system. Eventually, the maker of the OS decides to not bother putting that old driver into his operating system, making it bigger and more complex, for no real use. Then that OS no longer works on that old hardware.

If, like me, you have a bunch of old hardware, or sometimes inherit it for “free”, you want those drivers. The place to find them is in the old operating system.

Size

Code bloats. There are many reasons for it, some more valid than others. The simple fact is, it happens. The original Linux ran in 16 MB of memory. 32 MB if you wanted a nice graphical X-window environment.

My last 16 MB machine just hit the trash can. An old Hitachi laptop that finally had too much hardware die to keep it running. It had been my “office router” for a few years, starting about 15? 18? ago. I’d plug it into the wall ethernet, then it would be my boundary router to the company and the rest of ‘my gear’ was on a switch or hub behind it. That, and ‘blinky lights’ on things, meant that IF our network were hacked (or someone in Engineering was ‘playing’…) my desktop had an extra level of security and inspection. (Hey, I was the Sys Admin, they were out to get me! ;-) Besides, I have the logs to show it…)

But over time, code gets bigger. Then you needed 64 MB or 128 for the fancy releases. Now it’s up nearer 512 MB / 1 Gig. Heck, even the Raspberry Pi Model 2 with a Gig of memory has people complaining the memory is too small.

Some of this is from compile time parameters (you can set how big buffers are) and some is from changes of languages used ( the Object Oriented languages are generally fat and pudgy bloat makers). Sometimes it is just that a fine intensely hand crafted bit of code needed a re-write for some valid purpose, and the new party was not going to sink 1000 hours of time into making it smaller when “memory is cheap now”. More is from the ever acuumulating long list of drivers for “New” hardware that isn’t in your “old” box. (Modular kernel design could help here). Then there are a growing list of new “protocols” to support… all taking more code.

In any case, IF you want a small OS or just to compare the small program with the fat current one to ask “why?”, having the old copy is essential. For old equipment, it is usually a small memory size that limits running the newer versions, not the instruction set or disk / video.

Mis-Features

Far less frequently, something gets ‘fixed’ in the new versions that is just horrible for some other uses. Time to go digging in the old freezer for that now deprecated version so you can resurrect it and / or use it as a basis for new replacement version sans ick.

While the general bugaboo thrown at folks is that you just MUST get the newest version to have security, the old one being buggy and having had those security holes not-patched, an equal truth is that all the new “features” added often are the source of the “new” bugs of tomorrow. So your vendor shoves “systemd” down your throat and against your will. 2 years later when you want to swap from Ubuntu to, oh, CentOS, where do you find that last old release pre-systemd?

Methods

How things are done changes over time. Languages have fads. Compilers change. When memory is cheep folks use algorithms that are memory intensive. When memory was incredibly expensive, folks used very memory-careful code. The old code often has the old methods embodied in it.

So lets say you are working on a 6 GB Memory Octo-Core SuperDuper machine with a Linux that takes 2 GB before you load up your 4 GB of Applications and datasets… and you are swapping a little sometimes… Now your boss hands you a new project. An embedded system board with 128 MB of memory and about 1 GB of flash. Where do you go to look at “how to make it fit”? Where’s the textbook of “the old ways”?

It is often easier to just look over some old code to get a quick set of clues.

Odds & Ends

I’m sure there are other reasons too. That’s just the set I think of most often. Sometimes I’ve just wanted “that old favorite wallpaper” and sometimes I’ve wanted to open an old file that has a format no longer supported. Archivists often have need of old ways. Or a forensic investigation might hinge on “could someone have broken into the suspects machine?” (to frame them). Or a movie maker wants “period correct” graphics on the screen… or There’s a long list of other reasons.

But whatever the reason, sometimes you need versions that just are not the newest.

So I’m going to just link a few sites here. If you know of any others, or have any favorites, please add them below in comments.

Note that this isn’t a ‘retro computing’ thing. While I like retro-computing and pine for my own B6700, and welcome any links to them, too; this is specifically including software you can run and use on hardware today.

Some Linux sites I use:

Least Old: Void Linux

This is just their active download page. I have yet to test drive it yet. I did download a copy to the PC, but it had issues at boot. Likely my fault for that particular old hardware, but I may need to work out a driver issue (sound familiar?)

http://www.voidlinux.eu/download/#download-installable-base-live-images-x86

They also have ARM images for the Pi:

http://www.voidlinux.eu/download/#download-ready-to-boot-images-for-arm

“someday” there will be a need for “Old Void images”, but for now, as a new port, there isn’t much old out there to find. Just as an example of one extreme.

For this kind of site, you would need to make a clone of the ‘repository’ (often, now, a ‘git repository’) to capture the past iterations.

https://github.com/voidlinux

Releases that have been around longer, often have a formal release cycle and formal “support” periods where serious security fixes get applied (as a ‘patch’) to older versions. Eventually, even older releases exit the “interesting to developers” land and are left to rot. Sometimes a ‘friend of the project’ takes on the job of being the project attic…

Ubuntu

Ubuntu loves to come out with new releases and rapidly drop older software from their “current”. From live desktops (Unity) to their preferred applications, they love to do that Microsoft thing of “that’s old so it’s gone, this is new so it’s all you get”. Then the hollers from the masses cause them to sometimes recant. BUT, while that new one is shoved at everyone, you sometimes need to know where to get the old ones.

http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/

The following old releases of Ubuntu are available:

Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog)
Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog)
Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)
Ubuntu 6.06.2 LTS (Dapper Drake)
Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft)
Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn)
Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)
Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS (Hardy Heron)
Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)
Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)
Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)
Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS (Lucid Lynx)
Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)
Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)
Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot)
Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal)
Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail)
Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander)
Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn)
Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet)

The following releases are also available which have been superseded by later point releases (the current point release is available on releases.ubuntu.com as usual):

Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS (Precise Pangolin)
Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS (Trusty Tahr)

Some old releases of Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and Xubuntu are also available here.

For current releases, see releases.ubuntu.com.

Ubuntu is based on Debian. It takes a bit more to find where Debian has their attic.

Debian

http://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdimage/archive/

Even here, early versions are not to be found. Nothing from the 1.x series, and 2.x is sparse. Historians will be frustrated…

The following releases are currently available here:

    Some user-provided 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 images (Hamm, Slink, Potato)
    3.0_r0 to 3.0_r6 (Woody)
    3.1_r0 to 3.1_r8 (Sarge)
    4.0_r0 to 4.0_r9 (Etch)
    5.0.0 to 5.0.10 (Lenny)
    6.0.0 to 6.0.10 (Squeeze)
    7.0.0 to 7.11.0 (Wheezy)
    8.0.0 to ... (Jessie) 

Then there are the “oddball” formats to deal with and the obligatory nag to never ever even think of using anything but the latest bit of 2 GB memory needed and quad core Intel code on your old 386 box with 64 meg of memory… (bold mine)

Notes for older versions

Most importantly: the archive images are provided as a service for our users who may need them. We strongly recommend that you install the current stable release of Debian if at all possible, as that is where you will receive the best support. Older releases will no longer receive security updates – this is limited to 12 months after the release of the succeeding stable version (e.g. Squeeze was released on the 6th of February 2011, meaning that we stopped formal security support of Lenny in March 2012).

By default, for each release here we keep all the images in jigdo format to save on space and download times. We also often keep the ISO images for the last release of each series.

In the days of Woody (3.0), we started producing DVDs reliably for every release from r5 onwards. Later releases included both CDs and DVDs as a matter of course.

Starting with Etch (4.0), we started making multi-architecture CDs/DVDs which would boot and allow for installation on more than one type of computer.

Starting with Lenny (5.0), we added Blu-ray (BD) images, downloadable only in jigdo format for the sake of mirror space and bandwidth. We also regularly produced live images – bootable images that run completely from the CD/DVD/USB stick and do not need to be installed to your hard disk. (More details…)

Starting with Squeeze (6.0), we started building CDs and DVDs for kfreebsd-amd64 and kfreebsd-i386, marking the first released non-Linux port of Debian.

Not familiar with “jigdo”? Well, nobody else is either. Last I looked there were something like 2 places still using it. I would characterize it as a sort of strict Bittorrent with central control. Never has caught on. Eventually, it will only be found in old archives of other releases… but a bit longer in Debian.

Now a particular peculiar problem comes up with Net Based Releases like Debian, where you do most of your install from the internet. You need an online repository from which to get that “apt-get install”… It is unclear to me where you find that for an old “Woody” release, but it likely ought to be found, and mirrored to be saved along with those CD or DVD images. Either that, or figure out how to create such a system from the DVDs.

Oddly, there is also ANOTHER site that claims to be the Debian archive (and points to a third…):

https://www.debian.org/distrib/archive

but it looks to be more an archive of the source listings:

debian-archive

If you need to access one of the old distributions of Debian, you can find them at the Debian Archives, http://archive.debian.org/debian/.

You can search packages in the old distributions at http://archive.debian.net.

Releases are stored by their codenames under the dists/ directory.

squeeze is Debian 6.0
lenny is Debian 5.0
etch is Debian 4.0
sarge is Debian 3.1
woody is Debian 3.0
potato is Debian 2.2
slink is Debian 2.1
hamm is Debian 2.0
bo is Debian 1.3
rex is Debian 1.2
buzz is Debian 1.1

As time goes on we will expire the binary packages for old releases. Currently we have binaries for squeeze, lenny, etch, sarge, woody, potato, slink, hamm and bo available, and only source code for the other releases.

CentOS

CentOS (as the Community ENTerprise Operating System) derivative of Enterprise Red Hat (i.e. RHEL without the price) is easy to find, and surprisingly complete. Then again, it tends to be used by folks who know they may be sued and know they may need to assemble “what the system was like then” or lose. Though even they are missing the 1.x series…

http://vault.centos.org/

[DIR]	2.1/	19-Aug-2009 01:36 	- 	 
[DIR]	3.1/	31-Jul-2005 16:05 	- 	 
[DIR]	3.3/	17-Mar-2005 11:17 	- 	 
[DIR]	3.4/	01-Mar-2005 01:38 	- 	 
[DIR]	3.5/	28-Jul-2005 16:14 	- 	 
[DIR]	3.6/	04-Apr-2006 16:59 	- 	 
[DIR]	3.7/	06-May-2006 01:20 	- 	 
[DIR]	3.8/	20-Apr-2012 10:55 	- 	 
[DIR]	3.9/	20-Apr-2012 10:49 	- 	
[...]

and on down to 7.2 of May 2016… I’m not listing the RHEL or older Red Hat (the original) series. While I have an old Red Hat 7.2 CD set (from just before the RHEL conversion of numbers) and used to run it preferentially, that conversion and subsequent changes left me uninterested in them. CentOS is about as close as I come. In anyone else cares, they can put up links to that stuff.

Slackware

For some things, you may need to go to “The Wayback Machine” at archive.org. Here’s an example using Slackware:

https://archive.org/details/slackware-12.1_release

A bit sparse. Some sites ask to be left out. Others just got missed. Sometimes the same name of a link causes it to be hard to find as you must pick the right date and hope an archive sweep caught it. Still, it can be your friend.

Slackware has dozens of mirrors, and each may well have different ‘cut off’ for the oldest releases they have “up”. Good luck digging through all that…

http://mirrors.slackware.com/mirrorlist/

At one time I’d just occasionally buy a CD set for various releases, and I’ve got a few very old Slackware… in a box… somewhere…

An Archive For All:

On my “someday” dream list is to set up a Linux / BSD archive site where I can collect at least one copy of every release… but that would take a lot of money I don’t have. Oh Well. Besides, someone else is already doing it, and for Mac & Windows too:

http://www.oldversion.com/

BSD and other Hardware Broad support OSs

There are literally hundreds of “distros” of Linux and a half dozen of the BSDs. Each with a dozen or more major releases. The problem space is exponential in growth. Then some OSs, like FreeBSD, run on a half dozen different chip sets and platforms. Note the naming in this link. FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/ That’s the old i386 CPU and the 8.1 release.

http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/8.1-RELEASE/packages/All/

At that “old-releases” level they have:

Index of /pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/
Name	Last Modified	Size	Type
Parent Directory/	 	-  	Directory
alpha/	2009-Feb-09 11:40:11	-  	Directory
amd64/	2014-Jun-24 11:55:14	-  	Directory
i386/	2014-Jul-01 09:29:11	-  	Directory
ia64/	2014-Jul-01 10:06:00	-  	Directory
pc98/	2014-Jul-01 10:17:03	-  	Directory
powerpc/	2014-Jul-01 10:19:28	-  	Directory
sparc64/	2014-Jul-01 10:39:32	-  	Directory

Seven different major CPU chips. Other releases, too, can have “variety chip-sets”… So a “full collection” would be:

Chip-sets x OS_Distro x Version x Minor_Number x {Options – like Libraries or toolchains} x Size {CD / DVD / Full / Source} and maybe a few more things I’ve forgotten.

While hot impossible to “capture that history”, the odds that it will be done, and effectively, are slim.

So I just hope that “enough” is captured for “folks like me” to do “the things we do”… I have a bookcase of old software to upload to that “oldversion” website. “Someday”. Heck, I even have one machine with a floppy drive in it that can still read the media! I just need about 4 months to “get a round tuit” and do all the unpacking, booting, uploading, etc. etc. etc. before my kids just toss it out one day after the “service” and while “cleaning out the garage”…

Oh Well… I’d do it now, but I’d rather have a cold beverage and ‘sun time’ ;-) Priorities, don’t you know ;-)

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