So what can you do when you're at home with the flu on a rainy day?
Well, I decided to organize my junk a bit and found an old box with the original Slackware 3.5 CDs.
I know I have the 3.1 CD somewhere, and some other versions (I had the subscription from the Walnut Creek folks at the time. Who remembers them?) but couldn't find it.

So I started wondering if it would still work on modern hardware...

The first 3.5 CD is bootable, so I created a virtual machine in VMware, inserted the CD and started installing.
It was funny to do an install again of this version. Not much has changed, except that it didn't give me an option for DHCP. OK, put in a fixed IP address...
I did a full install, which was probably the first time I did this with Slackware 3.5, as in those days we didn't have disk space in excess...

Everything worked flawlessly, except for the network card VMware emulates. I had to modprobe a module for that.

Just to have an idea, here are some specs. And remember that, according to DistroWatch this version was released on June 9th, 1998.
- Kernel 2.0.34 (I think Slackware 3.1 was the first with the 2.0 kernel)
- Box says: requires 8 MB of memory, 12 MB of hard disk space (for a CDROM dependent installation) "For better performance, install Slackware Linux to your hard disk using 40 to 400 MB
- "The advanced 2.0.34 kernel will provide stellar performance on high-end systems, including support for symmetric multi-processing (up to 16 processors)"
- Includes X (v. 3.3.2) but we didn't have KDE, Gnome or xfce in those days... But it came with fvwm95 !

Just one more funny detail: Tux was not smoking a pipe on the box yet. On my Slackware 4.0 CD Box he is smoking

ok, I confess... I did nothing useful, but just had some fun

Ding dang it man, and I thought I got bored sometimes.

Interesting post for a relative newby like me, who wishes he'd got into computing sooner than he did. I think it was a useful, as well as a fun, project.

Hi,

Aw, the days of old and of my youth.

My first linux install was Slackware-3.3. But it was a real baptism of fire because the only computer I had was an Imac running MacOS-classic. So first I had to get grounded in using the macbochs emulator, then install and run slack-3.3 from a hard-disk image... For some reason I never could get 3.5 to work.

I found my first Slackware CD last week (3.0) and was wondering the same thing, but I wasn't THAT bored LOL. I guess it wouldn't work on most modern computers these days (Wireless network, SATA drives etc) but on virtual machines it apparently does :-)

Biggest problem for me would be the boot and root disks as I don't have a floppy drive anymore. And... as I recall, I couldn't install it from CD as I had to put everything on floppy disks for the install procedure (I had 42 disks IIRC and at install time I found out that nr 30 was a bad one :-( ).

But fun to hear it still works :-)

I remember those disk installs... My first installations were also with piles of disks as the computer I installed 3.1 on had no CDRom drive and I had no idea what NFS was

This thread just got my attention. My first experience with Slackware was 7.1. I decided to hunt around the net for a copy of 3.5 and found one, and even a live 3.5?

http://slackware.cs.utah.edu/pub/sla...kware-3.5-iso/
http://slackware.cs.utah.edu/pub/sla...e-3.5-live.iso

http://slackware.cs.utah.edu/pub/slackware/ Seems the only place now that has all versions from 3.0 to 12.1, and in iso form. Time to fire up those VMs guys, and take a trip through memory lane.

Oh no! My installation is too modern! Now I HAVE to get Slackware 3.0 with the 1.2 kernel!

Slackware 3.5 came with a "liveCD", it was the second disk in the box. The first one was bootable, so you didn't need to create the bootdisk as with the previous versions.

I have no idea if my 3.5" drive even works - it has been years...
But with VMware you can use images for disks, so that's no problem.

Now, if you really want to go back in history, visit this site.
It still carries Slackware 1.1.2 and 2.1
You can even find Softlanding Linux System there, on which Slackware was based.

Forgive my ignorance, but just how old is 3.5?

Hi,

You might find the GNU/Linux Distro Timeline interesting.

This link and others are available from 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

In my OP there is a link to DistroWatch that shows the timeline of most Slackware versions:

• 1.1.2 - Still available on sunsite.unc.edu: 1994/02/15
• 3.1 - First version I got with a book on Linux: 1996/07/24
• 3.5 - The one I installed again: 1998/06/09

So, 3.5 is over twelve years old now. Younger than my son, but older than my daughter

I remember installing the Walnut Creek CDs at Uni back in '97. Great days.

I've only just rediscovered Slackware a few weeks ago. Eleven wasted years in a Windows Wilderness. I'll never get that time back.

Just a small update...

I tried installing some really old versions (1.1.2 & 2.1) of Slackware in a virtual machine but was not successful.

Problems: these older versions do not recognize IDE CDRom drives, and neither knew the pcnet32 network card emulated by VMware.

The only solution would be to create the disk images for installing from floppies, but that's something for another rainy day with the flu (which has passed, by the way).

If anyone feels challenged, be my guest!