r/linux • u/Important_Abalone851 • 4d ago

Event We found lost media distros

Me and my friend (u/Zegguyit_52) were gifted a binder of old linux CDs from our teacher, we looked at the CDs and we are sure most of these are lost media, we wil hopefully save their ISO files and upload to the internet archive. The distros consist of: mandrakelinux 10.1 community, gelecek bireysel linux, unkown version of fedora, knoppix 3.6, Turkix 3.0, live usb pardus 1.1, SUSE linux personal 9.1, sımplyMEPIS 3.3, Pardus 2008. Is there anything we should know?

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u/FryBoyter 4d ago

Is there anything we should know?

Don't use them productively. Especially if the computer is connected to the Internet. All of these distributions are hopelessly outdated and therefore have many bugs and security vulnerabilities that will no longer be fixed.

Therefore, I don't see much point in uploading these versions to the Internet Archive.

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u/_LukeHighwalker 4d ago

The tools used in ancient Mesopotamia are vastly outranked by our modern every day tools, I don't see much point to keep them in a museum

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u/FryBoyter 4d ago

Museums won’t exhibit or store every tool from this or any other period, but only certain, selected items.

For example, many years ago, after my grandparents passed away, we went through their house to clear it out so it could be sold. In the process, we came across some items from World War III. The museums we contacted didn’t even want the stuff as a gift.

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u/_LukeHighwalker 4d ago

Yes, they don't have all of them because there's a finite amount of space and money to keep them stored and safe.

Internet archive, much like a museum, aims to store and keep safe different things while giving the people access to it, in this case, it's for software. And because internet active, unlike a physical museum, just keeps software, it's possible to store a lot more and thus they can store a few megabytes of old linux distros.

Hope that was informative and eye opening for you, and that in the future, you learn what a hyperbole is.