Slackware was the first distribution I encountered, I hadn't actually heard of SLS till this - very interesting though. I wish I had written down more of what I was doing at the time - I was just playing around and had no idea of what was to become of this. I first used slackware with a pre 1.0 kernel. 1994 time frame. On a military base where we had an internet connection and I had a piece of a subdomain so i could create DNS records. I got as far as having it run sendmail and in theory my email on that box was addressable world wide. I'm pretty sure I got X running on that first build. I know I did a lot of early hacking with the X config files when you had to be careful you didn't set your video adapter in a way it would damage your monitor. By 1995 I was able to connect from home over dial-up internet to the Sparc 5 on my desk at the base and direct the display back home.
It really is comical how insecure the internet was back then... Connecting to your Sun box on a military base from home, sending unencrypted X sessions and plaintext keystrokes across the net.
I started on Slackware in 1996 after finding a Slackware Unleashed book in the bargain bin for only $10. I went through that book literally page by page and was the foundation of everything I know today... I am so grateful for that book (which I still have) for introducing me to the world of Linux but more importantly, saving me from having to write ~40 floppies just to install lol.
I actually plan to do more in this area, but it's kinda tricky to also not make it samey. Early Linux is basically GNU userland, and some variant of fvwn, assuming I can even raise the X server from the dead (I feel lucky I got XFree 1.3 to work; I don't know if I could manage earlier). I actually have a boxed copy of Debian 2.0-ish coming with Myth II, but it got lost in the post. That video was supposed to be made somewhere in December, but until I actually have it, it's kinda moot.
@@NCommander Awesome! I was just reading some old Linux Journal magazines and thinking about the pain of configuring X in the early 90's when I stumbled upon your channel (guess TH-cam algorithm worked well this time). Hope you get your Debian boxed copy delivered. Debian was my first distro and I'll surely check your video. Best regards and happy new year.
From the tidiness of the beard, you can see that this is the early beginning of NCommander's passage of rite towards becoming a master legacy software sorcerer.
Funny thing, Puppy Linux, a current distro, not only recommends running it as root, it shows a very noticeable warning against creating another user. It's one of my favorite distros.
Brings back some memories. Never heard of SLS. But trying to bring up X on a laptop in early Debian was a real struggle. Display and touchpad were not there yet.
Man, you are persistent (a fine quality in a programmer).... I'm reminded of what a friend who was into early linux said: It's for people who _enjoy_ formatting their hard disk once a week. PS. WordPerfect bigot here too. :D Jerry Pournelle also used WordScar in the early days, but later switched to Word.
Once a week? pfft. amauters. Real hardcore Linux users format on a daily basis if not more. */s* (and as far as WordPerfect goes, I'm trying to resurrect WordPerfect for Linux. It hasn't gone well thus far)
What version of WordPerfect? 5.1 was of course the pinnacle of software development... :) If you don't know about it... WPDOS on-not-DOS howtos: www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/linux.html Somewhere around here I have WP4.2 for Xenix ... gave a copy to a linux dude and he had zero luck getting it to run (this was a long time ago, 2002ish?) There exist WP8 and WP9 for linux, but I gather they weren't very stable, and really needs the OS to be something old, like Corel Linux, to get it to run at all. (All to be found on archive.org) I'd settle for a stable version of Photopaint, which I can't live without. (Well, now VMs are practical, so...)
@@NCommanderresurrecting wp for Linux ? What about trying to run WP51 for xenix on Linux using iBCS2 kernel module? Because iBCS2 was the undiscovered thing.
Really amazing video!! I subscribed, and I look forward to future content! :) I love your determination for not giving up even though the system had lots of obstacles. The other videos on your channel seem really interesting and I am going to watch them later. I feel like I stumbled upon a gem of a channel, and I hope your channel keeps growing. This is exactly the kind of content I love.
Thank you very kindly. I do think I need to start ordering floppy disks and stuff for that 250 special cause I might reach it a lot faster than expected.
Thanks for sharing you pain. I recall the same pain with SLS in 1994 on a 486. We did manage to get it to work, and did a large install with the numerous floppies. We rapidly moved to a Slackware version once we got a CDROM installed. I think we ordered Slackware from Walnut Creek in the US, and it was a breeze of an install compared to SLS on floppies. I recall then we got an early boxed RedHat version on CDROM from Delix in Germany, who then became SUSE! Small acorns grew into large oaks! Who would have thought in 1994 messing with SLS would become the Linux OS it is today! Thanks again
Wow, it looks just like a default OpenBSD install (which still uses fvwm). Under the hood it's an ultra modern system but they still honor this classic UI. They have an emacs clone in base call mg that looks exactly the emacs you used, nice!
What's pretty remarkable is that OpenBSD's installation pretty much hasn't changed since the 90s. FreeBSD and NetBSD also were text based for a long time. Solaris of all things was the first UNIX that I know of that had a legitimate graphical installer, as did NeXTstep.
@@NCommander Actually one of the few touching pints between OBSD present days and this early Linux install process is that it is text based. FVWM is still the first thing you'll see after startx on OBSD and that's true. But they also include as an option CWM, wich being minimal is a whole new UI paradigm over the TWM/FVWM/WinodowMaker etc. lineage of WM's. TL'RD - On a first look It seems like OBSD guys didn't chanhe too many things since 90s but it is not entirely true. Honestly, I hardly could imagine something more easier these days to install, different than OBSD :) Great video and commentary! Keep the good work, cheers!
@@NCommander I done a bare metal instalation of OpenBSD and everything was text based but it was really easy and straight forward. Like it even includes a partition editor, in the old Unix way ofc. The default GUI is definetely ancient but it's pretty easy to replace. It's pretty much done in the same way old SysV init Linux distros did back in the day.
I remember trying out Slackware Linux on an AMD 386DX40 computer!! And I even re-compiled the kernel too. I used the InfoMagic CD-ROM set as the source media, because there was not any other easy to get it at the time.
3:30 "Green and Black" wtf? That screen is a dark shade of aquamarine (mint blue). Is this gonna be the Linux version of "the dress is white and gold"?
Wow. Things came a long way in two years! Running RH 3.0.3 in 1996 on a 386SX-25 with 4 Megs was painfully slow, but I got a fully featured X running (I just had to be really patient). The card I was using did, indeed, support 800 X 600, and 1024 X 768 (I think it was a Cirrus Logic card, but I'm not really sure now...) Well done with SLS. It is an interesting artifact. I don't know that I'd have the guts (or the time) to fool with it nowadays, so my hat's off to ya.
I used X in 640x480 for years. I think it's just your Virtual viewport settings that was off. See 13:15. 'Virtual' sets the "surface size" of you screen. 'Modes' sets the possible monitor visible portions. If you hit Ctl-Alt- + or Ctl-Alt- -, you can cycle through your available 'Modes'. Careful, you can fry a CRT this way though. I nearly did a few times. :D
@@Kippykip that’s how it was back in the day with CRTs. They’re analog devices. Turning it up to 11 is always an option. The old X11 docs would warn you, setting a 30Hz display to 60Hz can damage it. A good CRT might have some safety hardware filtering that could detect a misconfig and give you a “Display out of range” type of error. An older or lower end model might not.
I still have the 11 SLS floppy disks I used to install my first ever Linux distro on a '386/SX-40 maxed out at 16M of RAM, with 2 MFM drives. Both drives were 40M Seagate ST251s, but one of them had a bad head, so I told the BIOS it only had 3 heads and it formatted to 30M. I used that drive for a swap partition. I downloaded the disk images for SLS from the Delphi online service at 2400bps. I don't remember what version this was, and there may be optional disks I didn't download, but I only have 11 disks, not 33.
Never used SLS, instead started with Slackware around 1994. I'll sure agree with your take on getting XFree86 configured.. I smoked several EGA monitors (literally) getting the modelines set up...
I never smoked a monitor personally; my first X experience was with Xfree86 which had remarkably large warnings in the installer about modelines and I had the manual which had the full ranges. Later monitors also were usually smart enough not to magic smoke themselves.
I remember considering myself accomplished after getting my first X system to work. The need to manually edit the X configs, IMHO, was left out of the instructions because it was assumed that everyone knew.
It's something I'm still working on. At the moment, I don't have a boom for the mic, and I can't easily record in a way that has me close enough to the mic and where I can still read to do the voiceover. I did try videos recorded from the laptop but the end result wasn't much better. If RL goes as planned, I should be moved into my new place next week and then I can get a proper boom which will let me stand while recording.
14:20 I notice you have the habit of typing the “-a” flag to ls. Might I suggest “-A” instead? That leaves out the pointless “.” and “..” entries that occur in every directory.
It's a very old habit because -A is a GNU extension (or at least its not there on older Solaris), so I use -la(h) primarily because it works across most UNIX
Very interesting. What other applications worked with X? It seems there was only xterm... Anyways, I really enjoy this kind of content. Hope to see more similar videos in the future.
There's actually a fair bit; emacs itself is actually graphical in this version although it doesn't look like it. There's also vector drawing programs, and a few other things. That will be in Part 2 (or well, Part 3 since I hit 250 subs).
I don't know if the GNU Project is really *owned* by the FSF, and GNU actually predates the FSF, although the FSF has contributed funding for developers to work on GNU tools and holds the copyrights to some of them. BTW, is it safe to talk about Richard Stallman again?
Hmm? This actually reminds me of Caldera OpenLinux 1.3! And 1.1, both of which I did install on real hardware and both had X working but it is as you said, limited and required some manual editing of Xconfig and for me, the inittab file for starting up in X at boot, and when things went south or did not work, I could edit the inittab and run in console mode to fix, and then back to X. OpenLinux 1.3 had a more complete desktop with FVWM, but 1.1 was just like SLS here.. I actually LEARNED alot more about LINUX by installing and tinkering with OpenLinux 1.1/1.3 in 2018 than I could have ever known back in 1999/2000. when I bought my first ever Linux box sets. Funny how time and experience can demystify things we once feared or dreaded eh?The mouse issue arose in my OpenLinux too. I had to specify psaux as the xfree86configurator chose microsoft bus mouse by default. A tricky annoying thing I can assure you!
My personal preference is 86Box over PCEm, just because the former supports a larger number of emulated devices. Thanks for the video! There's definitely not enough love for proto-Linux distros out there. I played with Slackware back in the day and spent way too much time trying to get X to work.
The problem with 86Box is no Linux port, and it won't run reliably in WINE. I've kept an eye on the project and if I need someone more archaic than what PCem has out of the box, I'll likely have to fire up Windows to use it but I run Linux pretty but 24/7 unless I legitimately need Windows for something like sysadmin work.
Reminds me of setting up FreeBSD 2.0 in ‘94 over the winter break. My friend setup his system with a BBS (T.A.G.) so I could down the part files so I could do a floppy install. Good times.
I did not remember correct if it was SLS or Slackware with that 30 floppy disks i pulled through my modem. To install it was not so difficult as i remember correct, having some experience with Minix at my Atari ST and Interactive UNIX on my 386/33
SLS installation isn't bad aside from acquiring the media TBH. The only "hard" part is fdisk, and for someone who'd familiar with PCs and such, that isn't so hard although we didn't have FIPS at the time for resizing disks.
SLS was my first GNU/Linux system. But I had clearly moved on to Slackware (probably some time 1993) before it was *this* easy to get working. Also: 8 MBytes of RAM! You must be loaded! 4 MBytes was more the norm.
I'd have trouble recommending anything beyond DOS in the era with 8 MiB. I know WIndows 3.1 could squeeze into 4 but that's *really* pushing it. Swap does help, but with slow MFM HDDs of the era, it wouldn't exactly be a speed demon. Then again, OS/2 was amazingly even slower :)
Shouldn't be hard to get. I never used Yggdrasil Linux, but I've been told it was the "best" experience of the early (pre-1995 versions) of Linux, since I use 95 as a dividing line between early Linux and golden age Linux (1996-2006), vs. modern Linux (2006-present day)
which version of MS-DOS had a graphical interface for fdisk? 1994 was the year of MS-DOS 6.2x. Under DOS you had to partition your drive with a textmode fdisk. I'm not even sure if windows 95 required you to use the fdisk before being able to install it.
The NT series had a semi-graphical one from day one, but most people just used DOS FDISK. Once booted, you had Disk Administrator. the 9x series never had a graphical one as far as I remember.
@@NCommander Yes, exactly what i remember. Also how happy i was as tools like Partition Magic evolved. Resizing existing partitions? Wow! Golden days of x86! ;-)
The first time I tried to run X it was an immediate disaster I had to swap the graphics card to finally get it to work. This was just before intergrated graphics chips.
This was one of my earliest videos when I was still really learning to do video editing (and is actually back when I used kdenlive); I've gotten better at it!
Of this, I have no idea. If I emulate a PS/2 machine, it does let me use a PS/2 mouse with a 386/486, but I couldn't get that to work; I think it wants a reference disk despite being an ISA PS/2 emulation and I couldn't get it to kick. I do vaguely remember both my own Compaq DeskPro and my dad's 486 Tower were serial mouse affairs. I'm not really sure when PS/2 mice became a standard thing.
You would more or less need a 3 button mouse for Linux, most ps2 was 2 button. I had a 3 button serial on my pentium 75 that I kept using until scroll wheels were standard 10 years later
I'm having panic attacks watching you trying to set up xserver. I had such a bad time with that back in the day, pretty sure it was slackware and I must have spent days messing with Xconfig trying every permutation trying to get it to work. I didn't have the internet to fall back on to either cos it wiped out my windows partition! I eventually got it dual booting with windows and whenever I had a problem I booted into windows, called the internet and tried to find an answer there.
God i remember using one of the first Redhat linux, this was a walk down memory lane. I remember making the kernel for the first time to include sound support, it was a nightmare. i had an old S3 graphicscard and it was no easy feat making X run
Oh mah, you're going to love my next video, because I autospy Debian 2.1 from 1999, and let me tell you, I was longing for SLS by time I was done with it.
modern Linux especially Arch Linux uses systemd-boot by default and you know I actually think systemd-boot is better than grub and lilo tho its kind of wild to see how far Linux has come in the past 31 years
@@leeroyjenkins0 the thing about using old BIOS and not UEFI is your limited to 2TB partition sizes unless you can use gpt on mbr which I don't think is possible
10:02 You could run a Linux version of Doom instead, although I'm not sure if such an old version of Linux is supported. With libsvga, you don't even need X.
It's possible, but I'd have to look at how libsvga talks to the OS. This version of SLS is still a.out binaries and not ELF based so it would have to be recompiled regardless.
Unfortunately, I don't have it since I ended up trashing it somewhre along the way of making the Part 2 video. I could make another one, but it's not that hard to install
@@NCommander No problem, I figured I would ask because it's a great part of Linux history. Great video tho, I enjoyed learning about Linux in the early days.
When it comes to X and getting it to run the other distributions weren’t any better in the 90 and early 2000s. I think that is one of the reasons why Linux failed on the desktop.
I would have to say linux failed as a desktop because there was simply nothing to run. None of the common office suites (M$, Lotus, PFS, etc.) existed outside of DOS and Windows (or Mac.) Games were also almost totally absent. Unless you were writing X11 applications (and/or had source for the apps you wanted), or worked with other UNIX(tm) systems and thus could use linux as an X11 terminal, a linux desktop was mostly just for show. (At NCSU is was useful as the latter.)
I know this is an old video but you should try installing 1.03 version of this.... its a special type of fustrating hell. Its only on 1.2mb images that the installation program just FAILS to recognize. I have literally tried everything possible to get the installer to see the 2nd boot disk but it just refuses lol.
Ah, intellimouse emulation throwing a wrench in things. Original mice didn't have a scroll wheel, so when they added them, they expanded the format of the data that the mouse sends to the computer. Older software wouldn't support the newer format though and would assume the data was in the old format, which when read resulted in the nonsensical cursor movement and clicks seen here. A similar thing would happen if a piece of software configured to read intellimouse data was given old-style mouse data. PCEm should be smarter than that.
@@NCommander its called running an RX Vega. By default (under Archlinux) X tries to configure them using 12 bit color then crashes cos X doesn't support 12 bit color.
@@segfault-berlin ... *technically* X should actually support 12-bit color from a protocol level because I know that both SGI and Sun had graphics cards that supported it. That being said, X.Org might go "BLEH". I've had some issues with my RX 470 when I installed OpenCL, but your story takes the cake.
Arch Linux is basically a distribution that doesn't install anything by default and expects the user to basically install the entire OS from the terminal. It's not a bad OS once you get past the installation process.
@@hanro50 Arch doesn't go around claiming it's newbie friendly or half the claims that were on the VA Linux box. If the box was much more clear on what to expect, I'd be considerably less critical of it.
Started with Slackware, X was always a problem in the early days with any sort of acceleration, on any sort of CRT display Oh wait they all were CRT. I have fond memory's of x86config and or hand editing or was that nightmares! I remember dos and windows being a floppy swap thing too... Most operating systems have come so far I can truly say I hate them all!
I remember when we first got slackware running and were stuck in 60hz refresh on a CRT for weeks, I know a lot of people can handle it but anything below 75hz to me and my brother would induce headaches and horrible eye strain, so with all those physical issues you sit there messing with x configs to make things work and minute by minute you build this bad feeling about linux. Thankfully things are so much better nowadays.
@@NCommander I guess that's what happens when you pop up on r/linux edit: finished comment, I accidently hit send when trying to type comment, fuck phone keyboards
10:40 nothing changed much in 30y it seems. just kidding. The other day my x-server linux setup was borked, then I installed cinnamon and wayland, all problems went away ! It can't be bothered with XServers any second anymore in my life. I'm done with it.
Count yourself lucky. At least you did not have to patch X to add a driver to support the video card and then pray for an hour or so while you compiled X from scratch. (make world is indelibly printed on my brain) Kids today don't know how good then have it ;)
thank god for your channel bkuz you know what i have two old win95 pc runing win 98 and its run a form of win 98 i never seen bkuz they belong to a professor from bighamting college in computer science so he even costomized the bios you can change it to any color and do all kinds of shit i found that there a jumper pin on mb that you have to put a jump plastic thinging so anyway i was thinking of puting linux on them but not after seeing this vid
1993: SLS is in the horizon. Patrick Volkerding are frustated with this distro... Fork this and made Slackware, in more Milles: Ian Mundock have the same frustation: Debian is born.... SLS are the Granfather of distros...
Tbh pronounciation of Linus Torvalds is makes me sad. There's a voice recording of him you can listen that he pronounces his name and how he pronounces Linux. Other than that, nice video, thumbs up
Slackware was the first distribution I encountered, I hadn't actually heard of SLS till this - very interesting though. I wish I had written down more of what I was doing at the time - I was just playing around and had no idea of what was to become of this. I first used slackware with a pre 1.0 kernel. 1994 time frame. On a military base where we had an internet connection and I had a piece of a subdomain so i could create DNS records. I got as far as having it run sendmail and in theory my email on that box was addressable world wide. I'm pretty sure I got X running on that first build. I know I did a lot of early hacking with the X config files when you had to be careful you didn't set your video adapter in a way it would damage your monitor. By 1995 I was able to connect from home over dial-up internet to the Sparc 5 on my desk at the base and direct the display back home.
Early Slack I think was 1993-ish in response to earlier SLS versions. I really can't find any definitive data on how early Linux distros gained/lost marketshare.
1:27 The “Soft Landing” follows on from the term for bailing out of Windows, namely “defenestration”.
"soft landing" more like that guy breaking the window and jumping to his death.
th-cam.com/video/VOT8PEz0MiE/w-d-xo.html this is what I call bailing out of Windows in 1995
Nowadays.... most people are bailing out of modern windows 😅
Not gonna lie, I *gasped* when you mentioned the XFree86 version 😳
Slackware 0.99 was my first dip in the pond. Thanks for the trip back!
Slackware was the first distribution I encountered, I hadn't actually heard of SLS till this - very interesting though. I wish I had written down more of what I was doing at the time - I was just playing around and had no idea of what was to become of this.
I first used slackware with a pre 1.0 kernel. 1994 time frame. On a military base where we had an internet connection and I had a piece of a subdomain so i could create DNS records. I got as far as having it run sendmail and in theory my email on that box was addressable world wide. I'm pretty sure I got X running on that first build. I know I did a lot of early hacking with the X config files when you had to be careful you didn't set your video adapter in a way it would damage your monitor.
By 1995 I was able to connect from home over dial-up internet to the Sparc 5 on my desk at the base and direct the display back home.
That's so cool
It really is comical how insecure the internet was back then... Connecting to your Sun box on a military base from home, sending unencrypted X sessions and plaintext keystrokes across the net.
I started on Slackware in 1996 after finding a Slackware Unleashed book in the bargain bin for only $10. I went through that book literally page by page and was the foundation of everything I know today... I am so grateful for that book (which I still have) for introducing me to the world of Linux but more importantly, saving me from having to write ~40 floppies just to install lol.
I'm happy I've found this channel. Theres not much else on the youtube about Linux on its early days.
I actually plan to do more in this area, but it's kinda tricky to also not make it samey. Early Linux is basically GNU userland, and some variant of fvwn, assuming I can even raise the X server from the dead (I feel lucky I got XFree 1.3 to work; I don't know if I could manage earlier).
I actually have a boxed copy of Debian 2.0-ish coming with Myth II, but it got lost in the post. That video was supposed to be made somewhere in December, but until I actually have it, it's kinda moot.
@@NCommander Awesome! I was just reading some old Linux Journal magazines and thinking about the pain of configuring X in the early 90's when I stumbled upon your channel (guess TH-cam algorithm worked well this time). Hope you get your Debian boxed copy delivered. Debian was my first distro and I'll surely check your video. Best regards and happy new year.
From the tidiness of the beard, you can see that this is the early beginning of NCommander's passage of rite towards becoming a master legacy software sorcerer.
Funny thing, Puppy Linux, a current distro, not only recommends running it as root, it shows a very noticeable warning against creating another user.
It's one of my favorite distros.
Take THAT, Windows UAC!
I wonder how much software they had to make patches for to run as root.
@@kargaroc386 I don't think you have to patch anything to run a Linux distro as root.
@@QuotePilgrim But few programs (not many, but still) will refuse to run as root.
Brings back some memories.
Never heard of SLS.
But trying to bring up X on a laptop in early Debian was a real struggle. Display and touchpad were not there yet.
All the pain and configuration of early X... oh god I'm getting flashbacks to 90s era Slackware installation and configuration again!
The nightmare is real, and it came on 31 floppy disks.
Man, you are persistent (a fine quality in a programmer).... I'm reminded of what a friend who was into early linux said: It's for people who _enjoy_ formatting their hard disk once a week.
PS. WordPerfect bigot here too. :D
Jerry Pournelle also used WordScar in the early days, but later switched to Word.
Once a week? pfft. amauters. Real hardcore Linux users format on a daily basis if not more. */s*
(and as far as WordPerfect goes, I'm trying to resurrect WordPerfect for Linux. It hasn't gone well thus far)
What version of WordPerfect? 5.1 was of course the pinnacle of software development... :)
If you don't know about it... WPDOS on-not-DOS howtos:
www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/linux.html
Somewhere around here I have WP4.2 for Xenix ... gave a copy to a
linux dude and he had zero luck getting it to run (this was a long time
ago, 2002ish?)
There exist WP8 and WP9 for linux, but I gather they weren't very stable, and really needs the OS to be something old, like Corel Linux, to get it to run at all. (All to be found on archive.org)
I'd settle for a stable version of Photopaint, which I can't live without. (Well, now VMs are practical, so...)
@@NCommanderresurrecting wp for Linux ? What about trying to run WP51 for xenix on Linux using iBCS2 kernel module? Because iBCS2 was the undiscovered thing.
Really amazing video!!
I subscribed, and I look forward to future content! :)
I love your determination for not giving up even though the system had lots of obstacles.
The other videos on your channel seem really interesting and I am going to watch them later.
I feel like I stumbled upon a gem of a channel, and I hope your channel keeps growing.
This is exactly the kind of content I love.
Thank you very kindly. I do think I need to start ordering floppy disks and stuff for that 250 special cause I might reach it a lot faster than expected.
I remember what a huge deal and a relief it was when XFree86 gained the -configure ability and it was likely to work
Thanks for sharing you pain. I recall the same pain with SLS in 1994 on a 486. We did manage to get it to work, and did a large install with the numerous floppies. We rapidly moved to a Slackware version once we got a CDROM installed. I think we ordered Slackware from Walnut Creek in the US, and it was a breeze of an install compared to SLS on floppies. I recall then we got an early boxed RedHat version on CDROM from Delix in Germany, who then became SUSE! Small acorns grew into large oaks! Who would have thought in 1994 messing with SLS would become the Linux OS it is today! Thanks again
Wow, it looks just like a default OpenBSD install (which still uses fvwm). Under the hood it's an ultra modern system but they still honor this classic UI. They have an emacs clone in base call mg that looks exactly the emacs you used, nice!
What's pretty remarkable is that OpenBSD's installation pretty much hasn't changed since the 90s.
FreeBSD and NetBSD also were text based for a long time. Solaris of all things was the first UNIX that I know of that had a legitimate graphical installer, as did NeXTstep.
@@NCommander Actually one of the few touching pints between OBSD present days and this early Linux install process is that it is text based. FVWM is still the first thing you'll see after startx on OBSD and that's true. But they also include as an option CWM, wich being minimal is a whole new UI paradigm over the TWM/FVWM/WinodowMaker etc. lineage of WM's. TL'RD - On a first look It seems like OBSD guys didn't chanhe too many things since 90s but it is not entirely true. Honestly, I hardly could imagine something more easier these days to install, different than OBSD :) Great video and commentary! Keep the good work, cheers!
@@ngcbg639 I see you got a bunch of OpenBSD stuff, so I'm kinda tempted to do a OpenBSD 0.x, or go back to the common ancestor of 386BSD.
@@NCommander Oh it gonna be very cool! I've never touched 386BSD or the notorious 4.4 lite.
@@NCommander I done a bare metal instalation of OpenBSD and everything was text based but it was really easy and straight forward. Like it even includes a partition editor, in the old Unix way ofc. The default GUI is definetely ancient but it's pretty easy to replace. It's pretty much done in the same way old SysV init Linux distros did back in the day.
I remember trying out Slackware Linux on an AMD 386DX40 computer!! And I even re-compiled the kernel too. I used the InfoMagic CD-ROM set as the source media, because there was not any other easy to get it at the time.
very interesting man continue doing this!!
Thanks, will do!
3:30 "Green and Black" wtf? That screen is a dark shade of aquamarine (mint blue). Is this gonna be the Linux version of "the dress is white and gold"?
There was a brief period where Linux was distributed with userspace also written by Torvalds. It wasn't a patch on GNU, obviously.
Wow. Things came a long way in two years! Running RH 3.0.3 in 1996 on a 386SX-25 with 4 Megs was painfully slow, but I got a fully featured X running (I just had to be really patient). The card I was using did, indeed, support 800 X 600, and 1024 X 768 (I think it was a Cirrus Logic card, but I'm not really sure now...)
Well done with SLS. It is an interesting artifact. I don't know that I'd have the guts (or the time) to fool with it nowadays, so my hat's off to ya.
The pain of trying to get my onboard Mach64 integrated graphics controller working under Linux back in the day...
I used X in 640x480 for years. I think it's just your Virtual viewport settings that was off. See 13:15. 'Virtual' sets the "surface size" of you screen. 'Modes' sets the possible monitor visible portions. If you hit Ctl-Alt- + or Ctl-Alt- -, you can cycle through your available 'Modes'. Careful, you can fry a CRT this way though. I nearly did a few times. :D
Wait? Fry a CRT?
That's not good for an OS lmfaoo
@@Kippykip that’s how it was back in the day with CRTs. They’re analog devices. Turning it up to 11 is always an option. The old X11 docs would warn you, setting a 30Hz display to 60Hz can damage it. A good CRT might have some safety hardware filtering that could detect a misconfig and give you a “Display out of range” type of error. An older or lower end model might not.
That pun at 10:22 was Xcellent!
I still have the 11 SLS floppy disks I used to install my first ever Linux distro on a '386/SX-40 maxed out at 16M of RAM, with 2 MFM drives. Both drives were 40M Seagate ST251s, but one of them had a bad head, so I told the BIOS it only had 3 heads and it formatted to 30M. I used that drive for a swap partition.
I downloaded the disk images for SLS from the Delphi online service at 2400bps. I don't remember what version this was, and there may be optional disks I didn't download, but I only have 11 disks, not 33.
Never used SLS, instead started with Slackware around 1994. I'll sure agree with your take on getting XFree86 configured.. I smoked several EGA monitors (literally) getting the modelines set up...
I never smoked a monitor personally; my first X experience was with Xfree86 which had remarkably large warnings in the installer about modelines and I had the manual which had the full ranges. Later monitors also were usually smart enough not to magic smoke themselves.
I remember considering myself accomplished after getting my first X system to work. The need to manually edit the X configs, IMHO, was left out of the instructions because it was assumed that everyone knew.
A 1993 version of SLS was my first distro. I switched to Slackware soon after
14:36 what is up with the subtitles??
quick tip: never show yourself reading from the monitor. It does not look good on video.
It's something I'm still working on. At the moment, I don't have a boom for the mic, and I can't easily record in a way that has me close enough to the mic and where I can still read to do the voiceover. I did try videos recorded from the laptop but the end result wasn't much better.
If RL goes as planned, I should be moved into my new place next week and then I can get a proper boom which will let me stand while recording.
@@NCommander On the other hand, the recording is fantastic, and the voiceover itself absolutely perfect c:
That's what teleprompters are for, though. Some people use head mounted displays, like Zack Freedman (see his "custom google glass" video).
Wow. A swap file in 1994? When did Windows get page file?
14:20 I notice you have the habit of typing the “-a” flag to ls. Might I suggest “-A” instead? That leaves out the pointless “.” and “..” entries that occur in every directory.
It's a very old habit because -A is a GNU extension (or at least its not there on older Solaris), so I use -la(h) primarily because it works across most UNIX
Very interesting. What other applications worked with X? It seems there was only xterm...
Anyways, I really enjoy this kind of content. Hope to see more similar videos in the future.
There's actually a fair bit; emacs itself is actually graphical in this version although it doesn't look like it. There's also vector drawing programs, and a few other things. That will be in Part 2 (or well, Part 3 since I hit 250 subs).
That was fun, of course DOSEMU is still being actively developed under the guise of DOSEMU2
I don't know if the GNU Project is really *owned* by the FSF, and GNU actually predates the FSF, although the FSF has contributed funding for developers to work on GNU tools and holds the copyrights to some of them. BTW, is it safe to talk about Richard Stallman again?
the owner of this channel is still butthurt about stallman
Hmm? This actually reminds me of Caldera OpenLinux 1.3! And 1.1, both of which I did install on real hardware and both had X working but it is as you said, limited and required some manual editing of Xconfig and for me, the inittab file for starting up in X at boot, and when things went south or did not work, I could edit the inittab and run in console mode to fix, and then back to X. OpenLinux 1.3 had a more complete desktop with FVWM, but 1.1 was just like SLS here.. I actually LEARNED alot more about LINUX by installing and tinkering with OpenLinux 1.1/1.3 in 2018 than I could have ever known back in 1999/2000. when I bought my first ever Linux box sets. Funny how time and experience can demystify things we once feared or dreaded eh?The mouse issue arose in my OpenLinux too. I had to specify psaux as the xfree86configurator chose microsoft bus mouse by default. A tricky annoying thing I can assure you!
My personal preference is 86Box over PCEm, just because the former supports a larger number of emulated devices.
Thanks for the video! There's definitely not enough love for proto-Linux distros out there. I played with Slackware back in the day and spent way too much time trying to get X to work.
The problem with 86Box is no Linux port, and it won't run reliably in WINE. I've kept an eye on the project and if I need someone more archaic than what PCem has out of the box, I'll likely have to fire up Windows to use it but I run Linux pretty but 24/7 unless I legitimately need Windows for something like sysadmin work.
Reminds me of setting up FreeBSD 2.0 in ‘94 over the winter break. My friend setup his system with a BBS (T.A.G.) so I could down the part files so I could do a floppy install. Good times.
FreeBSD was the first UNIX systems I used; I remember the floppy install option but I had a CD-ROM.
I did not remember correct if it was SLS or Slackware with that 30 floppy disks i pulled through my modem.
To install it was not so difficult as i remember correct, having some experience with Minix at my Atari ST and Interactive UNIX on my 386/33
SLS installation isn't bad aside from acquiring the media TBH. The only "hard" part is fdisk, and for someone who'd familiar with PCs and such, that isn't so hard although we didn't have FIPS at the time for resizing disks.
is it me or does the LILO config file look strikingly similar to syslinux's config?
SLS was my first GNU/Linux system. But I had clearly moved on to Slackware (probably some time 1993) before it was *this* easy to get working.
Also: 8 MBytes of RAM! You must be loaded! 4 MBytes was more the norm.
I'd have trouble recommending anything beyond DOS in the era with 8 MiB. I know WIndows 3.1 could squeeze into 4 but that's *really* pushing it. Swap does help, but with slow MFM HDDs of the era, it wouldn't exactly be a speed demon.
Then again, OS/2 was amazingly even slower :)
Wonder if you could get your hands on Yggdrasil. another vintage distribution designed to automatically configure hardware.
Shouldn't be hard to get. I never used Yggdrasil Linux, but I've been told it was the "best" experience of the early (pre-1995 versions) of Linux, since I use 95 as a dividing line between early Linux and golden age Linux (1996-2006), vs. modern Linux (2006-present day)
My experience trying to get X up and running on debian 2...was...well lets just say I never was able to lol.
I never had working x11 until about 1997 - used command line only until then.
What's a DOZ?
which version of MS-DOS had a graphical interface for fdisk? 1994 was the year of MS-DOS 6.2x. Under DOS you had to partition your drive with a textmode fdisk. I'm not even sure if windows 95 required you to use the fdisk before being able to install it.
The NT series had a semi-graphical one from day one, but most people just used DOS FDISK. Once booted, you had Disk Administrator. the 9x series never had a graphical one as far as I remember.
@@NCommander Yes, exactly what i remember. Also how happy i was as tools like Partition Magic evolved. Resizing existing partitions? Wow!
Golden days of x86! ;-)
Actually all MS-DOS releases except 1.0 had an interface similar to cfdisk which appeared years prior.
Makes an arch install look easy
The first time I tried to run X it was an immediate disaster I had to swap the graphics card to finally get it to work. This was just before intergrated graphics chips.
Never heard DOS pronounced "DAWS" before. Always have heard it as "DOSS" as in "tree moss"). Regional thing?
Ok. But there’s no reason for those searing guitar solos when you were showing off the x virtual desktop
This was one of my earliest videos when I was still really learning to do video editing (and is actually back when I used kdenlive); I've gotten better at it!
Where can I git-clone and try out PCM for myself out of curiosity, getting waaayyy too many results for PCM audio
pcem-emulator.co.uk/ - no git repo, just a tarbomb. Isn't too hard to compile. WIndows build works under WINE.
What the heck, why does PCem make the mouse emulation on 486 a serial mouse? I had a 486 back in the day and it had a standard ps/2 mouse.
Of this, I have no idea. If I emulate a PS/2 machine, it does let me use a PS/2 mouse with a 386/486, but I couldn't get that to work; I think it wants a reference disk despite being an ISA PS/2 emulation and I couldn't get it to kick.
I do vaguely remember both my own Compaq DeskPro and my dad's 486 Tower were serial mouse affairs. I'm not really sure when PS/2 mice became a standard thing.
You would more or less need a 3 button mouse for Linux, most ps2 was 2 button. I had a 3 button serial on my pentium 75 that I kept using until scroll wheels were standard 10 years later
DOZ?
While SLS wasn't my first distro, the same incompatibility with X is why I have never tried to use Linux again in the 20 years since.
I think you might be able to get pretty close to SLS on modern hardware with a still supported distro would... probably be Slackware.
This is really cool!
I'm having panic attacks watching you trying to set up xserver. I had such a bad time with that back in the day, pretty sure it was slackware and I must have spent days messing with Xconfig trying every permutation trying to get it to work. I didn't have the internet to fall back on to either cos it wiped out my windows partition! I eventually got it dual booting with windows and whenever I had a problem I booted into windows, called the internet and tried to find an answer there.
God i remember using one of the first Redhat linux, this was a walk down memory lane. I remember making the kernel for the first time to include sound support, it was a nightmare. i had an old S3 graphicscard and it was no easy feat making X run
Oh mah, you're going to love my next video, because I autospy Debian 2.1 from 1999, and let me tell you, I was longing for SLS by time I was done with it.
@@NCommander Hah yeah the distros back then where horrible lol
modern Linux especially Arch Linux uses systemd-boot by default and you know I actually think systemd-boot is better than grub and lilo tho its kind of wild to see how far Linux has come in the past 31 years
@@leeroyjenkins0 the thing about using old BIOS and not UEFI is your limited to 2TB partition sizes unless you can use gpt on mbr which I don't think is possible
10:02 You could run a Linux version of Doom instead, although I'm not sure if such an old version of Linux is supported. With libsvga, you don't even need X.
It's possible, but I'd have to look at how libsvga talks to the OS. This version of SLS is still a.out binaries and not ELF based so it would have to be recompiled regardless.
Would you please upload your PCem image? I would love to play around with it and it would be good for preservation purposes.
Unfortunately, I don't have it since I ended up trashing it somewhre along the way of making the Part 2 video. I could make another one, but it's not that hard to install
@@NCommander No problem, I figured I would ask because it's a great part of Linux history. Great video tho, I enjoyed learning about Linux in the early days.
When it comes to X and getting it to run the other distributions weren’t any better in the 90 and early 2000s.
I think that is one of the reasons why Linux failed on the desktop.
I would have to say linux failed as a desktop because there was simply nothing to run. None of the common office suites (M$, Lotus, PFS, etc.) existed outside of DOS and Windows (or Mac.) Games were also almost totally absent. Unless you were writing X11 applications (and/or had source for the apps you wanted), or worked with other UNIX(tm) systems and thus could use linux as an X11 terminal, a linux desktop was mostly just for show. (At NCSU is was useful as the latter.)
My first distro was Yggdrasil then Slack nearly got X correctly. Ran with the Klingon language font for a while...
12:43 Personally, it was always "Cirrus Logic"
I know this is an old video but you should try installing 1.03 version of this.... its a special type of fustrating hell. Its only on 1.2mb images that the installation program just FAILS to recognize. I have literally tried everything possible to get the installer to see the 2nd boot disk but it just refuses lol.
What software would I need to install so that my system looks like that on modern linux (which DE/WM does it use)?
fvwm for what I show exactly, plus customized Xinit startup files, and menus files: www.fvwm.org/
@@NCommander thanks
It sure merits taking a Tlook
Ah, intellimouse emulation throwing a wrench in things.
Original mice didn't have a scroll wheel, so when they added them, they expanded the format of the data that the mouse sends to the computer.
Older software wouldn't support the newer format though and would assume the data was in the old format, which when read resulted in the nonsensical cursor movement and clicks seen here.
A similar thing would happen if a piece of software configured to read intellimouse data was given old-style mouse data.
PCEm should be smarter than that.
aww. come on I have to edit X11.conf on my modern linux and modern PC if I want such luxuries as an image on screen today. Some things never change.
I'm actually afraid to know what sort of hellish environment you're running where such a thing is still necessary ...
@@NCommander its called running an RX Vega. By default (under Archlinux) X tries to configure them using 12 bit color then crashes cos X doesn't support 12 bit color.
@@segfault-berlin ... *technically* X should actually support 12-bit color from a protocol level because I know that both SGI and Sun had graphics cards that supported it. That being said, X.Org might go "BLEH". I've had some issues with my RX 470 when I installed OpenCL, but your story takes the cake.
Arch Linux is basically a distribution that doesn't install anything by default and expects the user to basically install the entire OS from the terminal.
It's not a bad OS once you get past the installation process.
@@hanro50 Arch doesn't go around claiming it's newbie friendly or half the claims that were on the VA Linux box. If the box was much more clear on what to expect, I'd be considerably less critical of it.
when "Install everything" was "(100 Meg)" - those were the days...
In 92 I tried slackware. I remember when startx worked for the first time. I think I about wet my pants.
Started with Slackware, X was always a problem in the early days with any sort of acceleration, on any sort of CRT display Oh wait they all were CRT. I have fond memory's of x86config and or hand editing or was that nightmares! I remember dos and windows being a floppy swap thing too... Most operating systems have come so far I can truly say I hate them all!
I remember when we first got slackware running and were stuck in 60hz refresh on a CRT for weeks, I know a lot of people can handle it but anything below 75hz to me and my brother would induce headaches and horrible eye strain, so with all those physical issues you sit there messing with x configs to make things work and minute by minute you build this bad feeling about linux. Thankfully things are so much better nowadays.
what is this DAUZ you speak of?
;)
when he said DOAWS i felt that
250th subscriber ;)
Floppy disks have been ordered. Production will begin when I have eneough media on hand. That happened way faster than I expected!
@@NCommander I guess that's what happens when you pop up on r/linux
edit: finished comment, I accidently hit send when trying to type comment, fuck phone keyboards
we lukly now have wayland and good distros like fedora
Daws 6
Who the F at the time used a GUI for fDisk?
10:40 nothing changed much in 30y it seems. just kidding.
The other day my x-server linux setup was borked, then I installed cinnamon and wayland, all problems went away ! It can't be bothered with XServers any second anymore in my life. I'm done with it.
Count yourself lucky. At least you did not have to patch X to add a driver to support the video card and then pray for an hour or so while you compiled X from scratch. (make world is indelibly printed on my brain)
Kids today don't know how good then have it ;)
I still use fdisk
that X errors O_O
Xrossing the X indeed.
thank god for your channel bkuz you know what i have two old win95 pc runing win 98 and its run a form of win 98 i never seen bkuz they belong to a professor from bighamting college in computer science so he even costomized the bios you can change it to any color and do all kinds of shit i found that there a jumper pin on mb that you have to put a jump plastic thinging so anyway i was thinking of puting linux on them but not after seeing this vid
George RR Martin - author of A Song of Fire & Ice. Lol
"Dawes"
1993: SLS is in the horizon. Patrick Volkerding are frustated with this distro... Fork this and made Slackware, in more Milles: Ian Mundock have the same frustation: Debian is born.... SLS are the Granfather of distros...
Tbh pronounciation of Linus Torvalds is makes me sad. There's a voice recording of him you can listen that he pronounces his name and how he pronounces Linux. Other than that, nice video, thumbs up
circus logic 🤣
Slackware was the first distribution I encountered, I hadn't actually heard of SLS till this - very interesting though. I wish I had written down more of what I was doing at the time - I was just playing around and had no idea of what was to become of this.
I first used slackware with a pre 1.0 kernel. 1994 time frame. On a military base where we had an internet connection and I had a piece of a subdomain so i could create DNS records. I got as far as having it run sendmail and in theory my email on that box was addressable world wide. I'm pretty sure I got X running on that first build. I know I did a lot of early hacking with the X config files when you had to be careful you didn't set your video adapter in a way it would damage your monitor.
By 1995 I was able to connect from home over dial-up internet to the Sparc 5 on my desk at the base and direct the display back home.
Early Slack I think was 1993-ish in response to earlier SLS versions. I really can't find any definitive data on how early Linux distros gained/lost marketshare.