Does this run on modern machines:

<https://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/warty/>

Just a thought because it is small and probably very fast as well.

Am 18.03.2023 um 19:30:00 Uhr schrieb Karma:

> Does this run on modern machines:
>
> <https://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/warty/>
>
> Just a thought because it is small and probably very fast as well.

It will maybe run in Virtualbox, but it won't run on normal hardware
because of the missing drivers (kernel modules).

No drivers for GPU, SATA controllers, network controllers included.
It might be possible if you find them and insert them into the old
kernel - but it will likely not work because nobody uses ancient
kernels.

On 3/18/23 12:30, Karma wrote:
> Does this run on modern machines:
>
> <https://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/warty/>
>
> Just a thought because it is small and probably very fast as well.

It might work ok but it lacks all the security updates that even
Canonical has bothered to make. Probably under VirtualBox or other
emulation system that has all the drivers needed in the machine VB is
being run on. If you could get to work on bare metal you would still
need to keep it off the net as those security updates are missing.
And Canonical does not do updates on the really old stuff.

It you want a fast-running system on modern hardware you
might want to look at the Puppy line of systems. I find my non-Ubuntu
system quite fast and it is only a few years old plus I get all the
upgrades and security patches in a reasonable amount of tiem,

bliss - on the ever-faithful Dell Latitude E7450, PCLinuxOS 2023
KDE Plasma 5.27.3 Kernel Version: 6.2.6-pclos1 (64-bit)
KDE Frameworks 5.104.0 - Qt Version: 5.15.6
Graphics : X11 - Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 5500
15.5 GiB of RAM CPU 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-5600U CPU @ 2.60GHz
Actually 2 real cores and 2 virtual cores.

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

On 3/19/2023 2:17 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
> On 3/18/23 12:30, Karma wrote:
>> Does this run on modern machines:
>>
>> <https://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/warty/>
>>
>> Just a thought because it is small and probably very fast as well.
>
>     It might work ok but it lacks all the security updates that even Canonical has bothered to make.  Probably under VirtualBox or other
> emulation system that has all the drivers needed in the machine VB is being run on.  If you could get to work on bare metal you would still
> need to keep it off the net as those security updates are missing.
> And Canonical does not do updates on the really old stuff.
>
>     It you want a fast-running system on modern hardware you
> might want to look at the Puppy line of systems.  I find my non-Ubuntu
> system quite fast and it is only a few years old plus I get all the
> upgrades and security patches in a reasonable amount of tiem,
>
> bliss - on the ever-faithful Dell Latitude E7450, PCLinuxOS 2023
> KDE Plasma 5.27.3   Kernel Version: 6.2.6-pclos1 (64-bit)
> KDE Frameworks  5.104.0 - Qt Version: 5.15.6
> Graphics : X11 - Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 5500
> 15.5 GiB of RAM CPU 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-5600U CPU @ 2.60GHz
> Actually 2 real cores and 2 virtual cores.
>

Fatdog (Puppy) is a 64-bit version using a slightly more
modern kernel. Traditional Puppy, the kernel is perfect for
old hardware, but on newer hardware, practically no drivers
at all work in it with the newer hardware. There are software
fallbacks, so it might still run, but traditional Puppy is
hardly focused on new hardware. The Fatdog one comes closer
to being useful.

Since Puppy uses XVesa, when everything is converted to Wayland
(and they discard XWayland because of designer ego),
Puppy will be left in the dust (in a sense).

As for the general topic of "do old things boot", some
items don't do well at all. My older Knoppix media
won't boot, and it doesn't get far enough along to be
worried about drivers.

One way to experiment, is install the item on an older
machine, then move the disk drive to a newer machine
and try to boot the installation. You can also do the
inverse of that - on a 440BX-era motherboard, the BIOS
does not understand the concept of "DVD" nor of "USB",
so you install on a hard drive, using a newer machine,
then move the drive backwards in time by connecting
to the 440BX. That's how I ran a few things on an older
machine. The 440BX BIOS doesn't even understand "SATA",
and installing a SATA card is a waste of time (ignored
by BIOS). You need a SATA to IDE adapter for such
experiments (BIOS only "accepts IDE cables").

*******

The different versions of VirtualBox, don't have exactly
the same support. A newer VirtualBox for example,
would not really support Win98. Then, the next VirtualBox
along, doesn't support WinXP. By the time you get to the
current one, the OS support is so poor, it's no longer
worthwhile virtualizing stuff. Just a warning of a
possible outcome. There are other hosting softwares,
like QEMU KVM which may work better. Their support policy
could be quite different than the commercial ones.

To be able to operate this pig, I resorted to a serial mouse
and passthru serial port. That gave me a "tame mouse" to use
to operate the screen in there. My regular mouse was a random
number generator in there. I paid $5 for that serial mouse, out of
a "barrel of surplus mice", part of me said "why are you buying
this crap?" but the other part of me said "You'll see...".
It's more than paid back the $5, in tasks like this.

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/4NHnndM6/warty.gif

Paul

Paul wrote:
>
> https://i.postimg.cc/4NHnndM6/warty.gif

Ha! I have an old machine I might try that on.

Warty is 2004. My old inherited Dell laptop (XP era) is 2006 bios.

--
Mike Easter

Am 19.03.2023 um 10:47:33 Uhr schrieb Paul:

> The different versions of VirtualBox, don't have exactly
> the same support. A newer VirtualBox for example,
> would not really support Win98. Then, the next VirtualBox
> along, doesn't support WinXP. By the time you get to the
> current one, the OS support is so poor, it's no longer
> worthwhile virtualizing stuff. Just a warning of a
> possible outcome. There are other hosting softwares,
> like QEMU KVM which may work better. Their support policy
> could be quite different than the commercial ones.

What did exactly change so it doesn't support old Windows versions
anymore?
I haven't heard of that yet.

On 3/20/2023 6:18 AM, Marco Moock wrote:
> Am 19.03.2023 um 10:47:33 Uhr schrieb Paul:
>
>> The different versions of VirtualBox, don't have exactly
>> the same support. A newer VirtualBox for example,
>> would not really support Win98. Then, the next VirtualBox
>> along, doesn't support WinXP. By the time you get to the
>> current one, the OS support is so poor, it's no longer
>> worthwhile virtualizing stuff. Just a warning of a
>> possible outcome. There are other hosting softwares,
>> like QEMU KVM which may work better. Their support policy
>> could be quite different than the commercial ones.
>
> What did exactly change so it doesn't support old Windows versions
> anymore?
> I haven't heard of that yet.
>

The graphics support used to be a single standard
with a "DEADBEEF" hardware detection. All the OSes
you were virtualizing, used this VESA compatible thing
for their graphics.

Then some chucklehead decided to change the graphics
to three different standards. Then, when you run
a Linux OS, it uses one flavor. If you run Windows, it
uses a different flavor. If you bring your VM forward,
now you have the issue of how does the machine get
associated with the correct graphics choice, and then,
how does the driver work in your Guest, if the graphics
are wrong. You can't see the screen when this fouls up.

I was seeing this today, when booting Warty Ubuntu in Virtualbox.
Graphics screwed up, took some fiddling around to see the
screen. May have taken a "vga=789" or similar.

You can see I got the graphics working here, but I do not
show the value of the boot line used for that. It might
have been the "Compatible" boot option that made it work.

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/4NHnndM6/warty.gif

And for all of the changes to VirtualBox (such as the twits
offering TPM passthru and not "swtpm"), Windows 11 is
still not ready to go for most people using the latest
VirtualBox. The VMWare people used the IBM "swtpm" to put
a soft TPM within grasp of the Guest.

A "lack of support" at VirtualBox, means that "nobody
tests that the Win2K bug is properly fixed before the
next release". When Guests are taken "out of support",
nobody cares whether they work any more. Win2K was
broken a number of times, but while Win2K was "in support",
eventually someone would re-tune the multi-core handling
until it worked again. Now, nobody gives a rats ass
whether Win2K works or not. Even on modern OSes, modern
VirtualBox hangs. You might find the Linux version is
a tiny bit better (as it is not running under the
thumb of HyperV inverted hypervisor).

It's hard to tell whether the full team is still
working on VirtualBox at Oracle. It has been limping
along for a year or two.

All I know is, I have a "Plan B", and for virtualization,
I am already using "Plan B" for operations. You can test
how your work goes with this stuff, and decide what
path to use next.

Paul