I do know early on there were proprietary 3rd party video card accelerator drivers available for Xwindows in the early '90s. I wasn't even aware Linux existed back then. Maybe one of the older folk can assist on that. About '98 on it wasn't a problem I believe. In saying that I had Xwindows running on Compaq Presaro CDS 524 with a 512k vga using a light window manager ok.

Interesting thread! I started with SuSe Linux, release 6.x, I believe.
At the time, there was not much that I could do with it, though.

Except learning about all the nastyness of *nix first time:

* Huge RAM requiremends (Win98SE did fly on 24MiB, SuSe 6.x not so much. It wanted 64MiB or more for the basic stuff)
* Case-Sensitivity on extra tiny text-modes
* Missing I-Nodes and damaged EXT filesystems during boot (Linux doesn't believe in power outages)
* Insanely long version numbers
* Utilities with ugly boring names no sane person can come up with
* Dependency of programs on oudated libraries nolonger included or/and supported
* Its aversion against non-English speakers (esp. for the shell commands)
* Broken audio subsystem (OSS! 😵)
* Crashy X servers (Xfree86 ?)
* Non-funtional full-duplex support for SB16
* Ugly, user-unfriendly installers (like FreeDOS has)

So yeah, the experience was quite healthy. 😉
I never expected such *fun* when I did read my father's Unix books from the mid-1980s.
By comparison, old Minix and Xenix seemed like tame creatures.
Anyway, I still try very hard liking Linux, even though I fail every time.
Maybe next year I'll do the move. 😉

To be fair, though, there also was a positive about that old Linux.
It had an awesome selection of screen savers. The simulation of burning flames was quite realistic.

Caluser2000 wrote:

Warp 3 would be a good fit, It's a tad easier on resources than 4.

I also remember OS/2 Warp 3 fondly, since it was my first OS/2 if memory serves. Plus, it was around on OS/2 heydays.
OS/2 Warp 4, however, fixed some things. It had bult-in networking (likee that Warp Connect edition), APIs like DiVE etc. and an error in the GUI could nolonger freeze the whole system.
That being said, OS/2 Warp 3 got several fixp acks after its original release, so perhaps some issues where fixed here later on, too. 😀
Resource wise, unlike Windows, Warp developed for the better. Every new release had better overall performance, despite requiring more disk space.
I remember I once saw a video where Team OS/2 said that Warp 3 required less memory than the previous OS/2.x.
Anyway, 8 MiB was the minimum (16MiB recommended), while it *could* boot (crawl) on 4MiB already.

Edit: I forgot to mention: Speaking of Linux, the above was written from the point of view of a beginner (me) in these days. I didn't meant to badmouth Linux or *nix in general.
Since then, I'm giving Linux a chance once in a while. And yes, I'm still owning a copy of SuSe; I'm keeping old distros like this as a memento (souvenir).

If I install Warp 3 it will certainly be Warp Connect with some fix packs.

Jo22 wrote:

Except learning about all the nastyness of *nix first time: […]
Show full quote

Except learning about all the nastyness of *nix first time:

* Huge RAM requiremends (Win98SE did fly on 24MiB, SuSe 6.x not so much. It wanted 64MiB or more for the basic stuff)
* Case-Sensitivity on extra tiny text-modes
* Missing I-Nodes and damaged EXT filesystems during boot (Linux doesn't believe in power outages)
* Insanely long version numbers
* Utilities with ugly boring names no sane person can come up with
* Dependency of programs on oudated libraries nolonger included or/and supported
* Its aversion against non-English speakers (esp. for the shell commands)
* Broken audio subsystem (OSS! 😵)
* Crashy X servers (Xfree86 ?)
* Non-funtional full-duplex support for SB16
* Ugly, user-unfriendly installers (like FreeDOS has)

So yeah, the experience was quite healthy. 😉
I never expected such *fun* when I did read my father's Unix books from the mid-1980s.
By comparison, old Minix and Xenix seemed like tame creatures.
Anyway, I still try very hard liking Linux, even though I fail every time.
Maybe next year I'll do the move. 😉

Yes, those old desktop Linux distributions were broken beyond belief and were used mostly by people who had way too much free time on their hands.

I never warmed up to Linux even though I had to use it in a professional environment for a long time. My home server runs Linux (because Docker) but macOS is my desktop OS of choice. Even Windows 10 + WSL is a much more enjoyable environment than desktop Linux, at least in my experience.

I'm also quite fond of *BSD; when I was studying, I lived in a huge Soviet-era apartment block with more than 200 apartments, and me and my friends had a local network of more than 30 PCs. We also had a shared internet connection and our main router was an old 486 machine running NetBSD which was 100% reliable and didn't seem to require any resources to do its job...

Excellent stuff.

Case sensitivity (around since *nix was created) and text based installers are not a big issue imho. Personnally I pefer a text based installation option if available as it is generally a lot faster on a systems/set ups like this one, a P166MMX. In respect to the dependency issue Debian pretty much quashed that and one reason I prefer deb based destos. You can even set up apt on rpm or sourced base distros if you wanted and just add the apropriate repositories to your sources.list file.

Xwindows is more capable in many ways than the Windows or OS/2s single user video display arrangement. Lke displaying windows on remote systems or terminals ie what it was originally designed for. I believe some one tried to make a single user display arrangement it didn't go too far unfortunatly. And of course you could just ignor it altogether an run as a cli only enviroment. Not most folks cuppa tea but it is there as an option.

Can't say I've had an ext issue at all and the same can happen with Fat32 and the registry can get corrupted. Mostly there is an fsck conducted on start up if the system is not shut down correctly though and sorts everything out. If not log in to single user mode as root and do a manual fschk.

As for sound an ESS 1688 AudioDrive card seems to do ok on a lot of distros I've tried so far, indeed all OSs I've run on this set up.

Wrt Xservers crashing. It's simple mater of restarting it by typing startx at the command prompt. It is hangs for some reason log in to another tty by pressing ctrl-alt-f2, log in as root, run top and kill the x-server process then ctrl-alt-f1 back to your user login season restart X. No reboot required. I generally start a root session as a matter of course after start up. Takes 15 seconds.

As I said I'm no expert in *nix but it is useful at times. The whole purpose of the thread is to possibly scratch an itch for those folk who may want to have a shot at mucking around with and also for those oldies to share their experiences.

Another nice thing about *nix is unless there is a kernal swap out you generally don't need to restart the system. You can install, update or delete on the fly most of the time. That took a bit of getting use to coming from Dos/Win9x/OS/2. My wifes Win10 lap top had to reboot just for a few minor updates yesterday.

Caluser2000 wrote:

I do know early on there were propitiatory 3rd party video card accelerator drivers available for Xwindows in the early '90s. I wasn't even aware Linux existed back then. Maybe one of the older folk can assist on that. About '98 on it wasn't a problem I believe. In saying that I had Xwinows running on Compaq Presaro CDS 524 with a 512k vga using a light window manager ok.

Fully proprietary first party implementations as well.

Shivers I forgot to reply about the so called name issue mentioned above. How forgetful of me. Well that's real easy. Any decent package mananger such as synapic or this modified version of it Xandros Networks will give a rather good description of the application. Note how the apps are broken down in to sub catagories.

This is what is available for this iddy biddy P166MMX set up right now. No hunting for archived or warez web sites or the dark web.......Also dependencies are listed below the blurb in the desciption panel.

As for long kernal version numbers there was quite a logical reasonning behind if one bothered to do a little research.

appiah4 wrote:

If I install Warp 3 it will certainly be Warp Connect with some fix packs.

The Warp 4 Server network client bundle is better and includes DHCP support

Just gave another old Linux Distro a shot. This time Red Hat 7.2 from a book called Guide to UNIX Using Linux. Two CDs. From booting up the CD rom to being online 35 minutes exactly. How many other older OSs capable of that? Picked up all the hardware, set up the sound card, detected the video card, picked up the usb mouse, clock synced and set up the ethernet. Just over a gig installation. One booting operation to first login. I'm browsing with Mozilla 0.9.2.1. The home page was mucked up but did a search and the posts come up a bit jumbled but not too bad considering it's age. No function shown to attach pics so I'll track down a newer browser and do that or post from another set up. Netscape 4.75 was also installed so manage to attach screen shots with that..

A quick 5 minute hunt with NS and an Opera 9.27 static build located and done. These older browsers are far quicker at ftp searches and downloading for sure.

Caluser2000 wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

If I install Warp 3 it will certainly be Warp Connect with some fix packs.

The Warp 4 Server network client bundle is better and includes DHCP support

How about Warp 4.50? At this point we are probably way out of 486 era OSes; Warp 3 with a recent fixpack is what I think I will go for..

appiah4 wrote:

Caluser2000 wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

If I install Warp 3 it will certainly be Warp Connect with some fix packs.

The Warp 4 Server network client bundle is better and includes DHCP support

How about Warp 4.50? At this point we are probably way out of 486 era OSes; Warp 3 with a recent fixpack is what I think I will go for..

If you can get an iso with it rolled in would be the way to go. Warp updates are a pain in the rear genaerally though. I've got a warp 3 box, no fix packs, with Warp 4 Server network client. runs quite well on a 486DX2/66 with 16 megs of ram.

Gave Slackware 13.0 another shot. Went better this time. Only issue was video was set to a weird resolution/size. Just ran mc as root and edited the xorg.conf file and sorted it out. This Distro is from 2009 or so. Nice thing is it does give you the option in the install routine to press F2 and select an i486 kernal. In the end wiped it trying a Duvian Jessie net install.

A few more tried. Got Debian Jessie on the P166MMX rig but have an issue with Xorg. It seems too intelligent for it's own good. Run Xorg -configure and it creates a xorg.conf.new file which I copy it to /etc/X11/ as xorg.conf, run startx and it's out of range. Spent a few hours editing xorg.conf but no joy. Out of range errors or no screen errors so gave up. At the consul it's fine. Every thing works.

Another was Lubuntu 10.10 from 2011. Install went fine. It even re-partitioned the hdd to accommodate Debian Jessie and altering GRUB to reflect the two Linux were installed. Xorg was too intelligent setting the video res at the highest with screen tearing. I reduced the res to what the older distros set to but still severe screen tearing. This seems to be because of using generic vesa instead of chip set specific drivers.

Third one was Ubuntu 4.10, the first public Ubuntu release from 2004. Perfect, no screen tearing and runs as smooth as silk, just like the earlier distros I'd tried. It's default desk top environment is Gnome 2 which ran better than expected. MATE is the current incarnation of Gnome 2. It's a bit snappier than KDE 3 on Xandros 2/3. Picks up usb sticks on the fly just like Xandros 2/3. This means it's easy to transfer files from later systems with ease. So rate them equally good for use on my rig.

XFCE4 is by far the best Desktop Enviroment though. I got it by adding archived Sarge repos to the sources.list file and using apt to download/install it. Another usefull program for deb based distros is menu. Once menu is installed as sudo type update--menus and all window manager and DEs will have their menus updated to show most programs installed on your system. Early to late-mid 2000s seem to be a sweet spot for P1 era systems wrt linux distros using 2.4-2.6 kernal and setting up with out much fuss. Most late 2.2 kernal distros sould be fine too with a little more user input required.. To be continued........

Just found out i586-i686 are covered up to Debian Buster so at least another four years coverage. Pretty neat for such old hardware. Checked the latest i386 repos on Stretch and Buster. Both have i586 and i686 kernels available. Jessies 3.16 kernel isn't having any issues at all. I carried out a base install without Xorg and built up from there. Worked out well.

Current OS, current browser with https and encryption on 23 year old hardware. SWEET!

Just to reiterate Debian and Devuan Jessie run well on older kit with 256megs of ram...Just did a Net install on my K6-2 266 test rig....

Tried out Corel Linux 1.1.2. A very nice 1999 a Debian based commercial distro that installs a total of 530megs hdd space when I chose install everthing. No usb hot swapping or keyboard/mouse but it did set up every other piece of hardware just fine. The default DE is KDE 1.x. Was able to use my XT Turbos GeoWorks Pro 1.2 GeoCom terminal emulator to log in as a user and use ircII to log in to irc.slashnet.org #retrodreams channal just fine via null-modem cable. Just need to edit a single line in /etc/inittab and run "init q" as root in a terminal to activate it. mc file manager and its editor make this task easy.

Once that is all set up you don't even need to login at the normal startup login screen. Just log in to via your terminal or terminal emulator via null-modem cable.. You can even just run the linux box headless ie no monitor.

Hey Caluser2000, what is your favorit 99/00 Linux distro? I'm looking for an era specific Linux distro for some PCs, I would like some decent USB and networking support if possible.. I am DE/WM agnostic..

appiah4 wrote on 2020-05-21, 08:58:

Hey Caluser2000, what is your favorit 99/00 Linux distro? I'm looking for an era specific Linux distro for some PCs, I would like some decent USB and networking support if possible.. I am DE/WM agnostic..

Corel Linux would be my choice for that period but:

Xandos 2 or 3 from a bit later on will do the job nicely and a better job re usb hot plugging... Basically they are a development of Corel Linux. Bonus is you can use Debian Sarge archive repositories. Very good Samba support for that era Windows networks and not bloated. Those are distros I use to test old pci cards as well as Duvaun Jessie.. Xandros just runs KDE 3.x by default, so similar layout to Win98-Wn2k but you can add other DEs and WMs from the Sarge archive repositories easy enough after adding the Sarge archives to the aot sources.list. Ubuntu 4.01 will be fine as well. All the info is posted above.

Actually Devuan and Debian Jessie will work just as well with a bigger software selection. They are from 2017-june this year. I use the NetSurf web browser with them. Make sure you have 256megs or more ram on any distro you try. You are kidding yourself with anything less. S3 based cards are well supported till around 2011 or so. SiS card support dropped around 2005. Most distros just used a vesa driver for legacy pci cards. That works fine but you may need to manually xorg.conf to get higher resolutions, which isn't a biggy. I use the edit utility in mc (midnight commander) as root which is a Norton Commander clone for *nix. it runs either in a separate tty or in an X window.

The big thing is not to panic if things go wrong. Personally in this hobby I think most folk would benefit from a little linux/*nix. It's simple to set up ftp servers for example for any other box, whether it be running Dos, win9x, NT based Windows, OS/2 or other*nix variants. You can login to the linux box via serial using a null modem cable or via ethernet with Telnet or using terminals or terminal emulators VT100 is the default usually. Use a RealTech pci nic and SoundBlaster live pci sound card. Xandros sorts these out nicely as well as the ability to use usb mice and keyboards.

HTH

A bit of reminiscing today. Popped over to Uncreative Labs to have a look at an old thread of mine from 2008. http://uncreativelabs.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.ph … highlight=linux

Boy things have moved along a lot since then. That system is dead now but I do has a similar form factor Compaq P75 system to take over from it.

I boot Lubuntu from CD when I need something modern on my main retro rig (Pentium 3). Mainly used it for fdisk and mkfs.vfat . Impressive that it runs a GUI on 512MB of RAM with no swap .

darry wrote on 2020-05-22, 05:14:

I boot Lubuntu from CD when I need something modern on my main retro rig (Pentium 3). Mainly used it for fdisk and mkfs.vfat . Impressive that it runs a GUI on 512MB of RAM with no swap .

I use Puppy Linux 4.1.2 Retro for that, it's a million times faster and works on even 64MB systems with a GUI.