Installing Old Linux (2): the cave-in

Back in 2024, I tried installing SuSE Linux 7.0 in a VM but didn’t get a very satisfactory result, mostly graphics-wise. My main issues were that I got just VGA (640x480 pixels with sixteen colours), no working network and no graphical login. For the graphics, I’d need a working XFree86 configuration, and without a network, I would have had to copy things from my host PC, which was impossible without clipboard integration. I meant to look into this further, but as so often, didn’t.

Hence, another “to be continued” not continued.

Last week the universe converged on two fronts:

• The PC USB floppy drive I bought could read and write but without formatting it was an incomplete experience.
• Someone on what I normally call Dutch eBay alternative, but which is, in fact, a Dutch eBay subsidiary, Marktplaats.nl, came from the past to offer two boxes filled with books and CDs and DVDs: SuSE Linux 7.2 Professional and SuSE Linux Professional 9.2 Student Version.

Those 90 days are over

In May 2004, I started working for the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek hospital/Dutch Cancer Centre in Amsterdam, supporting a micro biology group with mostly Java and Python code. Because of the international nature of the job, I used a laptop, a Compaq Armada E500, but around 2005 my group leader bought me a newer and better one, a Sony Vaio. I don’t remember what exact type it was but I think it was a VGN-NR series. I don’t have it anymore, but I used it for quite a long time. I have one picture from 2012 with the laptop running Ubuntu (see below).

I tried to install what was my favourite distro at the time, Crux. That didn’t work, mostly because of all the nonstandard stuff inside. I gave in and went to a bookshop in downtown Amsterdam, where I went straight to the information science department and bought the exact SuSE 9.2 box in the picture above. I remember the person at the counter wishing me good luck.

The Sony Vaio

Good luck? This was me caving in to laziness.

In the picture at the top, the box on the left contains version 7.2, which is slightly newer than the one I tried installing into a 32-bit VM in 2024. When opening the box, I recognise the books with the cute chameleon cartoons from 25 years ago, when, after crossing the street from my house in Groningen, I also entered a book store, that time to buy the big white box to the left, or an even earlier version.

Getting back to the convergence mentioned above, I am in no way ashamed to say that, out of pure and untampered laziness, I have caved again and instead of fixing the VM, simply bought an IBM ThinkCentre S50 with a floppy drive and a DVD player, again from Marktplaats.nl. I will be installing both SuSE Linux versions on it and see if I can get further than in the VM.

The ThinkCenters were a line of small form factor desktop PCs meant for the professional market. They had the same sober black look as their mobile ThinkPad counterparts. They were built for durability and easy maintenance, which makes them perfect for my use case. I found a pair of 80 GB IDE hard disks in the attic (I never throw those away) that I hope I replaced years ago because I needed SATA disks and not because they developed too many bad clusters. We’ll see. In any case, now I have the same handbooks again that helped me write a working XFree86 configuration 25 years ago, so I should be able to do this even without networking.

Stickers!

The SuSE Linux 7.2 box contained stickers! Of course, they’ll be going on the ThinkCenter, but not before I have either a working SuSE 7.2 or a 9.2 running on it in glorious SVGA resolution with at least 256 (8 bit) colours.

PS. I grep(1)ped through the blog posts of the last three years and made a list of undelivered to be continued promises. Whenever I want something new to research, I have my projects lined up now.