Redhat Linux 5.2 on 25yr old PC 

Thx a lot glad you enjoyed . If you’ve got any tips on what would be fun / interesting to see in a future video please let me know ...

Why? Linux is boring as hell. I first tried it around 98/99 as well and hated it from the beginning. Its totally useless. No games support linux on the old machines.

@@macdaniel6029 To each their own, but I feel the same about Windows and DOS. They are boring as hell, while Linux is actually interesting. Sure if games is what you care about you shouldn't run Linux, but for almost everything else, I like it way more.

@@jayminer But what can you actually do with Linux on a Pentium 100? Work? L33T h4xx0ring? DOS/Windows will turn every old computer into a fun gaming machine. With Linux its just obsolete technology. Like an electronic typewriter, just more complicated.

@@macdaniel6029 Well, to me I guess it's mostly about nostalgia at this point. I still think old Linux is way more usable than old Windows on an old computer if you want to play around with it for anything but games, but DOS/Windows for sure is unbeatable when it comes to that. But Linux was great when it comes to networking and lots of that stuff even back then.

That’s the idea ... hope you liked it !

I would still use E16, but for practical reasons Mate is more user friendly.

There is something "early-90s Amiga-ish taken high Res" about it.

@Rob Reynolds Ahhh, Enlightenment! I saw it for the first time back in 2000 with my first ever copy of THE COMPLETE LINUX OPERATING SYSTEM v6.0!(Mandrake Linux 6). That cd set of 3, had All the GUI goodies I still love today! I would be at work, thinking of Ethemes and window managers and Linux, and so anxious and excited to get back home to my apartment to play with Linux some more and discover more..ENLIGHTENMENT!! Sadly, E16 which is still my favorite version of E(early versions crashed ALOT, and the new version is not much better at that now!), is NOT available for Debian and Ubuntu based Linux distros. I had it in Fedora(Redhat), and OpenSUSE, but those distros do not have OTHER apps I love like CDE desktop and so on. Always somethin I tells ya.. LOL! I love Linux, and E and old GNOME desktop was the main reason!! Anybody remember the movie ANTITRUST?? Redhat Linux with Gnome desktop and Enlightenment WM was featured on the computer in the children's day care computer lab scene..

hehe ... could do a while video series on that alone :)

@@RetroSpector78 yeah, please go ahead and do it. And don't forget about other hilarious bugs like A20 line overflow, FDIV bug, you name it :))

@@RetroSpector78 and unprivileged CLI JMP $ instant lock up under multitasking OS, too (until they virtualized the interrupt flag in later 486s, yet Win9x didn't give a shit about that feature hehe)

Bugged on purpose thanks to the friendly folks over at Langley

@@nneeerrrd Win95 didn't give a shit. Sure. Shall i repeet it to my self every time when i where saw windowsnaturalgaybluescreen? Or when that windows shit installed in one localisation can not even read file names in another localisation (Even in windows98 or 2000). :D

My first Linux came on a multi CD set with roughly six different distributions packaged together by a place called Walnut Creek Software. They were quite famous in the mid 1990s for affordable CD sets of free software by mail order. A colleague suggested RedHat was the easiest one to install.

Hahaha, Bicyclenet. Ain't that shit the truth! Yeah, I remember cursing RPM dependencies back in the day...hasn't really changed much in the modern day lol dependencies are still a pain in the ass if you're not paying attention lol

Honestly, dependencies now are mostly a breeze, unless you are compiling from source or something. I think. I haven't ran Slackware since the early '00s; SuSE's and Fedora's stuff covers it for me. I do not miss bicyclenet.

Exact thing happens to me my first exposure to Linux was redhat 5.2 today I am using arch

Bicycle dependency repair is probably still faster than a windows 10 update.

SCSI disks showed up as sdX even back then :D As I recall, hdX faded out as SATA AHCI hit.

@@jeffcullen6573 yeah that's true. But I still used good old IDE drives when they phased it out and names all disks sdx

It was the transition to libata.

@@nickwallette6201 That makes sense!

Puppy linux still us HdX, i reckon

@Peyton Canaan looool hacker scam

It was mine too.

Mine too man... I also used to has an old SuSE version in the College computer lab

Yeah ... also kept on remembering stuff here that I totally forgot.

@z3 I remember when it was still called Mandrake Linux. Heck, I might have a boxed copy of a release somewhere....

And how did those 24hrs go ? :)

@@RetroSpector78 The Display was B&W it needed a driver "Package" and Modem wasn't detected , But Shell environment was great like you I liked the Boot and all the info it was showing I remember VI editor I used it for trying C coding and reading Books from Gutenberg Project.

@@nemoincognito4179 new Linux can do that too by typing a couple commands in the terminal. I use Linux mint 18.1 mate 64 bit on my PC I built myself and on my Dell laptop that has been upgraded

Yeah mine came with the RH 5.0 :D

@@PT-rg2vo the Book had Redhat Linux that's why I bought it.

Hehe ... happy times !

It's still my favourite today! I also started with linux on a P166, though initially with SuSE and then RH 5.2, later switched to Mandrake, FreeBSD and eventually, when Internet access at home became possible, Gentoo. Still haven't found anything as fast, stable or easy to configure as WindowMaker after all these years...

My First Linux was Slackware 3.0 and then Red Hat 4.2

I got my first version of Linux from a magazine as well! It was Redhat 5-something, and I got it from the Swedish PC+ magazine :-)

Yeah ... building kernels and modules to support new hardware was always fun.... never worked on the first try :)

You’re welcome....

This video was preceded by a rigourous hardware selection process :) I did have to replace the 4x cdrom drive because the original one had failed But other than that it is pretty time period correct I think. Hope it brought back some memories.

Think a lot of people had issues with that. When I had my first PC i accidentally deleted config.sys and thought the PC was completely bricked and was unfixable :) that was day 1 of me working with a PC. We’ve come a long way :)

@@RetroSpector78 I think we learn a lot from our mistakes but I just wish they weren't drive busting ones lol.

Wow. SUSE is a Distro maker right?

package A needs Package B, but package B needs Package A and the darn app will not install, is STILL and issue if you do not have the $$ to pay for internet! My internet was cut off due to lack of funds, and I tried to install and make Debian 10 work like I wanted with Virtualbox and CDE desktop, and while I had to constantly go to neighbors internet connected lappy to then run up to my non wifi tower to install missing deps, at the end, only CDE desktop installed but virtualbox DID NOT!! Becuase of the scenerior described here. Sadly, like the intel bug , this too is by design.. You need $$ and pay for internet now, if you want to enjoy anything computer or computing based.. REALLY sucks how that is. But I tried to live like it was 2000-2001 again, and now I KNOW and SEE why my Linux experience was so hit and miss, lack of ethernet connected broadband internet.. wifi might as well be dail up if you do not have a card to put in the towers and connect that way. But.. for that retro waay back machine fun, yes, using, old Linux with old PCs that match the era, is an alternative to modern computing and productivity.. A good time waster and strangely. also VERY educational? What a paradox! Love Linux!

My was RHL 3.... Well... Actually was slackware, then RHL.... Back there in '95 or '96.... Can't remember the exactly year.

I downloaded Slackware 7 over a dial up modem. It took me 3 days to get all 128 MB of it. I learned about mget * then.

No worries ... glad you enjoyed it !

Linux was fresh and wild back then. So much potential.

Paul Frederick it still is an amazing OS. If you think about how much of the services on the internet depend on it and how it has been embraced by people and organisations it is pretty mind-boggling.

@@RetroSpector78 It is. I still can't look at it the same today as I used to though. A lot has changed between now and then. I can remember getting Infographics Linux CDs that said, "The rebel's OS" on them. It's not that way today with Codes of Conduct in projects. Linux has not gone mainstream but it sure has gone corporate.

Paul Frederick remember those infomagic cd’s. 4 cd and 6 cd sets. Developers resource cd’s. Contained different distros and copies of those popular internet archives. Been searching for those for an upcoming video but lost mine.

Wanted to get a hold of my very first linux cd but was unable to find it. Contained an old slackware version.

Think a lot of people learned a lot while playing around with Linux. Love that fact that you got to learn all of these basic cli commands that are still very useful today (grep, awk, sed,.....)

I have modern Gentoo running on a Pentium II. :-) Takes all day to recompile the kernel. I haven’t gotten it to run on a Pentium though. Tried, panics on boot, tried disabling a few things via boot parameters, still hangs or panics. Gave up.

@@nickwallette6201 Nice.

Yeah, I remember being confused by distro version numbers versus kernel version numbers for my first little while being exposed to Linux. By the way -- 6:24 -- this is a 2.0.x kernel, and I’m pretty sure the first kernel version I was aware of using was 2.4.something. Though I did later, much later, come across a machine under a lecturer’s desk with an ancient 2.2-based system on it (probably Red Hat) ...

I've got the latest Alpine Linux 3.11.3 (Linux 5.4.6) running pretty much out of the box (had to add libata.dma=0 because of corruption issues with it enabled) on my Pentium 233 MMX. The 32-bit Alpine uses a i586 target. Alpine is light enough that it is actually pretty snappy and packages install rather quickly. Latest xorg even works fine with my Nvidia Riva 128zx.

You can run the latest TinyCore 11.1 with kernel 5.4 on a Pentium. The only thing I'm struggling to get up and running is my AWE32 non-PnP. A PCI sound card should work fine, though.

haha ... glad you liked it !

Think these sound emulators do exist. You should google them ...

I don't think so... I have over 20 yo hdd and they're still in perfect condition...

​@@PiotrK2022 sure, and ive had old hdd that suddenly died with much less than 20 years. I remember a 6GB seagate hdd, of the ones that had the "sea shell" underneath and one time i turned on the machine i was testing and bang, one of the chips suddenly had a crater in it. The motor driver suddenly decided to kill itself..... Also had issues with the previous hdd, i dont recall the brand but it was a 3GB one, had a bad sectors problem around the middle of the address space, so i suppose it was a two platters hdd and had tarnish in either the center or towards the outer edge. My cousing also had issues with a 20gb matrox hdd. Whether or not yours last 20 years is a matter of luck, not a guarantee On the positive side, i have a 1.2GB conner peripherials that still works relatively ok, it has a few bad sectors spread evenly throughout the disc but not a serious failure like the others. On the more modern side, i have my 80GB hitachi sata hdd that started having spin up issues at around 65k hours,so i retired it. Guess it still works, but i remember it sometimes took some time to initialize and you could hear it clicking meanwhile. On the other hand, my 1TBx4 raid5 has about 90k hours on each hdd and none of them has failed so far. Not even visivle changes in the SMART report. (in both cases, my pc remains on 24/7, 99.7% uptime last time i checked)

hehe ... believe me if I could make a modem work on my telephone line to get on the internet I would ... unfortunately that service has been gone for a long time.

@@RetroSpector78 or you can make your own dialin server. Like those old BBS times.

Yeah I found it to be a lot of fun. Didn’t mind the hard drive crash at all... that’s the way it goes .... reminds you how much patience we had back in the day. Imagine clicking in something now and having to wait 30 seconds before your browser pops up :)

I grew up with SuSE 8.1 on my first own PC. Brings back so many memories when I had to bring out all 8 CDs to install stuff when you didn't have internet

Yes, suse 6.0 is on the shelf next to me. Should try this again

@@awesomefacepalm After Red Hat 7.2 I ran whatever SuSE was out then for a long time. Up until that PC caught fire and died.

@@1pcfred my PCs has yet to do that 😁 was it a molex to sata?

@@awesomefacepalm it was just a bad PSU I used for too long. In a way it did me a favor. If that PC hadn't died I'd probably still be using it today.

Yeah ... 25-ish years .... also had a 486dx2 66 at that time but starting mid 1995 you saw lots of advertisements featuring 2500 - 3000 USD pentium 100’s :)

In 1995 I built my first PC from parts I selected and bought myself. A Cyrix 6x86 P150+ on an Asus P55T2P4 motherboard, with 32MB ram, a Diamond Stealth 64 Video, a Quantum Fireball 1.2 GB disk and a 17" monitor. 4998,90 dutch guilders at the time, this was 6 years before the euro. I ran OS/2 Warp, and Slackware Linux 3.0 on it. Ah.. fond memories... I still have the Slackware cd.

bwzes03 still looking for my first linux experience (infomagic 4 cd set containing slackware)

Did not know that, and did not expect that in 1998 :)

A trick was to install "mc", the console file manager. Its native text editor is easier than vi :)

Glad you enjoyed it. My first install was on a 486 ... but it was a very very difficult experience. (Using slackware I think). Had a friend who was very good with Linux. Felt like Chinese to me.

RetroSpector78 yeah! Nowadays Linux in consumer section is really just "next, next, next, done" I even installed Mint on my dad's laptop (he's not that good with computers and didn't need it for more than browsing web, watching youtube and checking email). And he's totally likes it. His worst complaint is that laptop has bad battery life but that's more on cheap battery on lenovo side.

Yeah enlightenment was really cool ... blew my mind back in the day.

Yes it was :) hope you enjoyed the video

Haha :)

Probably its twin brother then ... this one has been sitting in someones storage for a very very long time ....

@@RetroSpector78 You sure?When I found this I searhed my old harddrive for photo's and some scratches are identical to mine case. Whats the partnumber? Is it also made in ''Mierlo''? I have a photo of the label as well.

ThunderEagle in the video the label is shown in close up when I go over the computer

Unbelievable how we were able to manage without google.... remember reading lots of offline docs, man pages and posting to newsgroups. Such a different model for getting information....

You could always Ask Jeeves

haven't really used much of linux on the desktop myself ... when I started working in 2001 everything was heavily microsoft oriented. In 2011 I jumped ship to Apple. Only in cloud / server environments is where I come into contact with linux. And also enjoy MacOSX as I spend a lot of time in the terminal.

Thx a lot ... how did you end up stumbling on the channel ? (RU-vid recommended it or was it something else ?)

@@RetroSpector78 Good question... LGR maybe or youtube recommended me the channel. I don't remember.

I can imagine ... was always cool to see these games run in x windows. Same with quake if I remember correctly.

Don’t have good memories of IRC. Some people were happy to help but a lot of them had their head stuck up their arse and weren’t helpful at all towards newbies. Sometimes felt like a very hostile environment. And visited freenode again for this video and hd the impression things haven’t changed all that much :)

@@RetroSpector78 Hi, yes that is true some of them where some what smug.. I guess I was lucky I knew some of them privately and got a good welcome perhaps.I ended up spending lots of time on freenode giving free support.. By 1998 I started norways first and biggest internett/gaming cafe and we arranged install party's as free service to customers wanting to learn.

Yeah ... i guess you can compare it to node / javascript package management. Amazing how this managed to work, and developers had the discipline to maintain backwards compatibility and define clear version names.

Don't forget the predecessor of dnf...yum...

@@alexdhall I remember good old yummy. I remember my first Linux was Redhat 7. I remember learning that command could not get the idea sweets out of my head. lol

@@laserspaceninja Red hat was one of my first Linux distros. I later moved over to Mandrake Linux (later called Mandrivia). Ubuntu and other changes to Linux have made things much more easier to setup a Linux desktop these days.

@@alexdhall Yeah! It is amazing how quickly I can spin up an Ubuntu box without any thought. However, I have dabbled in Arch and Gentoo for fun and even that seems a little less problematic because of their respective communities. Just waltz over to wiki or forum and most of your problems have some sort of solution...It is nice to have so many good options.

I just recently got a 386sx running the 2.0 kernel with xwin. That was fun, especially since I compiled it from source, on the very machine itself... Stripped of anything and everything possible to minimize its footprint. And it worked okish.. It only took a week to get it running.

Was really fun to do and something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. Some things just don’t translate well in an emulator. For this you need the original hardware, diskdrives, cdroms, hard drive noise, crt monitors and crashing hard drives to get the real experience :)

Not familiar with Litestep... will add it to my list of things to look at.

Beware of magic smoke when powering it on ...

@@RetroSpector78 Once you let the magic blue smoke out, it doesn't work any more. We used to joke the new guys doing their first build. We would solder a 1/4 Watt resistor across the power socket. The look on their face when they put the AC to it was precious.

Enlightenment indeed .... spent hours browsing through teams and trying to get them installed ... was always something that didn't work ... incompatibilities between versions, alpha quality software / themes ... but still .... when you were able to start something that more or less resembled what you saw in those screenshots you could easily impress your windows 95 buddies :)

Classic setup. I can imagine this would have been an excellent combo back in the day.

Sounds like a nice setup.

My latest slackware one is even a bigger throwback :)

@@RetroSpector78 I watched that one first! That was was definitely before my foray in to Linux as my first distro was slackware 3.5. I loved the coverage of Enlightenment in this RH video. It's nice to see the devs went on to some big roles too.

They didn't make any new models but they continued producing A1200 and also A4000 (I think).

Did you buy it for the box and manual

It's a Unix, so there's no major changes. No autodetection of hardware, so you have to know what you have, know the right module and insert it in "/etc/modules". Sometimes a pain for Isa sound cards :) Also no autodection for X, so you have to edit the config file by hand with "vi". Another big pain for a beginner :P That's why each distrib had its own tools to make configuration easier, but they were not perfect and you still had to know how things work.