Project Description

SUSE dissolved an old warehouse, containing lots and lots of boxes with old SUSE / SuSE / S.u.S.E software. All of those boxes were originally going to be dumped in March 2021, which could be prevented.

The original aim of this project aimed to screen the existing stock and create an inventory list. With this list it may be easier to decide what should be preserved and what can be dumped forever.

The final goal is to preserve the older part of SUSE's history and keep at least one copy of each item.

Results

Goal for Hack Week 24

Archive, archive, archive! We have a dedicated workflow script now, two people can work in parallel on two fully equipped workstations.

Result: Archived about 2/3 of the SLE 7 releases, including the SuSE Linux eMail Server, SuSE Linux Groupware Server and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7, see the SLE part of the archive.

Goal for Hack Week 23

Now that we know what's there let's document it!

I started to archive things, but I'm currently lacking the time to continue this in my free time. An initial digital museum page has been created called The Virtual SUSE Museum to document the individual releases.

  1. Website changes: Improve performance (images on product page are loaded in full resolution), rework metadata structure to make adding new releases easier.
  2. Rewrite file list generator: the current Shell script is extremely slow. Introduce some new format to store file lists as metadata, too.
  3. Scan, archive and document more releases and add them to the webpage.
  4. Try to get a hand on more releases.

Goal for Hack Week 20

  1. Create an inventory list of the existing stock. Lots of hidden gems and unknown products there!
  2. Keep one of each item for SUSE's museum.
  3. Find potentially interested parties (employees, archives / museum) for remaining stock.

Some More Pictures

Before:

Stack 1 Stack 2 and 3 Stack 4

After:

Treasures text text

Looking for hackers with the skills:

Nothing? Add some keywords!

This project is part of:

Hack Week 20 Hack Week 23 Hack Week 24

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  • All Activity

    Comments

    • jbohac
      almost 4 years ago by jbohac | Reply

      FYI, we had a very modest "museum" (some 20-30 boxes on display) in the Prague office before the last move from Lihovarská to Křižíkova (few years back). I remember these got packed in some boxes and are likely lying somewhere in storage. I don't think there were any rare boxes there but if you're interested, we could try to find these in the Prague office storage, possibly send you the ones you're missing and throw out the rest as well.

      • fos
        almost 4 years ago by fos | Reply

        I guess I should mention that I'm talking about ~50 moving boxes (I've adjusted the description accordingly), each containing dozens of individual software boxes, so it is really taking a lot of space.

        If it's really just 20-30 individual boxes, then I'd suggest keeping them and think about restoring the small museum instead ;-)

    • tdz
      almost 4 years ago by tdz | Reply

      Hi! I'd be interested in old Suse Linux distros for nostalgia, specifically 5.1. That was my first Linux. I'd even have an old Pentium here to run it :)

      • fos
        almost 4 years ago by fos | Reply

        I think I've seen very few copies of it! (Though I'm not entirely sure any more - I've seen so many boxes and had so little time...) The oldest versions I've found so far were Slackware based, but came in a jewel case only.

        I'll definitely reserve one for you if there are some in the archive! (And if this project gets approved in this form by our management - a reply is still outstanding.)

        • tdz
          almost 4 years ago by tdz | Reply

          Cool! Thanks a lot!

        • tdz
          over 3 years ago by tdz | Reply

          I hope this doesn't look too greedy: I also have fond memories of Suse Linux 6.3. So if 5.1 is not available, 6.3 would also be nice.

          • fos
            over 3 years ago by fos | Reply

            Greedy? I'm glad about every piece that doesn't get trashed, so feel free to request whatever you want add-emoji

            SuSE Linux 6.3 is available in multiple editions, so choose wisely or take one of each.

            S.u.S.E. Linux 5.1 is also available, but only in English or in the Business Variant for Siemens Nixdorf - I assume there should be a German retail box too, but it's not there...

            • tdz
              over 3 years ago by tdz | Reply

              Awesome! Thank you so much! In this case, I'd like to take the german CD edition of 6.3 and the english edition of 5.1. Do you know where to send this.?

    • ancorgs
      almost 4 years ago by ancorgs | Reply

      In Canary we also have a very modest exposition (in an office we use to share among several home-office workers). See it at paste.opensuse.org/4794494

      It would be cool to have the opportunity to raise a voice before the discarded boxes are dumped. We may like to adopt some of them.

      • fos
        over 3 years ago by fos | Reply

        I fear you won't take the whole stock, will you? add-emoji

        I still hope at least some parts will find a new owner.

    • fos
      almost 4 years ago by fos | Reply

      add-emoji

    • mook_work
      almost 4 years ago by mook_work | Reply

      If there is anything they don't have, archive.org could probably take them (digitally).

    • jsevans
      over 3 years ago by jsevans | Reply

      While not exactly the same thing that you are doing, I found this a while back while doing Usenet research: https://groups.google.com/g/de.comp.os.linux/c/94xlEQPngEE/m/WH9OEfaDc5cJ One of, if not the very first, advertisement for SUSE 1.0

      • fos
        over 3 years ago by fos | Reply

        Let's see whether the corresponding discs can be found in some box add-emoji

      • fos
        over 3 years ago by fos | Reply

        It seems that post is actually announcing the second version if the stock is complete - and we have posters announcing the 1.0 release!

    • q5sys
      over 3 years ago by q5sys | Reply

      I'm definitely interested if you have extras you are willing to part with to a collector, I've been piecing together a collection over the past decade... here's the current state: https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-9rGtx5k/0/485bbd5a/X5/i-9rGtx5k-X5.jpg For SuSe versions, I have Boxed 4.3, unboxed 5.1, Boxed and Sealed 5.3 (two of them), then 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.0 Personal, 8.0 Professional, 8.1 Personal, 8.1 Professional, 8.1 Personal, 8.2 Professional, 9.0 Personal, 9.0 Professional, 9.1 Personal, 9.1 Professional, 9.2 Professional, 9.3 Professional, 9 Enterprise, 10.0, 10.1, 11.0 Most of the older ones never made it to North America so they are impossible for me to track down.

    • tux93
      over 3 years ago by tux93 | Reply

      Very cool Project, if there are no other takers I'd be interested in one of the 8.2 Professional boxes, as that was my first contact with Linux as kid on moms PC add-emoji

      • fos
        over 3 years ago by fos | Reply

        You'd just have to define which one(s) - there are multiple languages and variations available add-emoji

        • German
        • German (Update)
        • German (with t@x 2003)
        • German (Update, with t@x 2003)
        • German (with PartitionMagic 8.0)
        • English
        • English (Update)
        • English (with PartitionMagic 8.0)
        • Spanish
        • Italian
        • Hungarian

        See http://digitalimagecorp.de/misc/fotos/galerie-1/IMG20210325122327_7.jpg for a visual overview.

        • tux93
          over 3 years ago by tux93 | Reply

          Whoops missed your reply, I'm inclined to ask for a German box since that's what we had and an English one for homecomputermuseum.nl since I doubt there was a Dutch version ^^;

          btw the picture you linked is 8.1, 8.2 was right next to it ;) http://digitalimagecorp.de/misc/fotos/galerie-1/IMG20210325122343_4.jpg

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