Running ‘ancient’ linux binaries on modern systems

I just found out about this page which mentions me and my old iBCS/NetBSD adventure to running Xenix binaries on NetBSD 4.x (Sadly 5.x broke xcoff).  In there they also refer to this old redhat page on running a.out binaries on newish systems.

Apparently the ability to run old a.out stuff is still present as Alan Cox notes that “my 3.6rc kernel will still run a Rogue binary built in 1992. X is back compatible to apps far older than Linux.

I’ll have to investigate later on.

3 thoughts on “Running ‘ancient’ linux binaries on modern systems

  1. I wanted to try the old Corel Paint version that came with Linux around 1999 or 2000. You can find the Corel paint out there but getting it to work was an impossibility. Something to do with ancient libs that it wanted. A nightmare. I thought about searching for them or installing an old RedHat, then said the heck with it.

    Calling Corel was an exercise in futility, each time you asked a question they would turn it into a sales presentation on why you should get their latest Paint program. Idiotic repetitive responses soon made me break the chat, wont’ go back.

  2. X is platform agnostic; it’s network based too, so you could theoretically run X apps from an old-ass server in the 80s with X11 support and beam it to your Linux box; presuming you still have direct TCP support on a modern system. (Tunnel snakes tunneling through SSH rules!)

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