Anyone have any suggestions for a good site that has "clean" obsolete distros, when the original makers of the distros no longer offer them from their site or linked mirrors?
Out of curiosity I decided to try to hunt down Linux Mint 2.0 the first stable release to try out on an old laptop, and Linux Mint's website that offers links to many worldwide mirrors for at least USA, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia that I searched all went as far back as 3.1 when the website shows links to all, but no mirrors found here go back past 3.1 for Mint.
Version Codename Package base Status
14 Nadia Quantal Quetzal Supported until April 2014.
13 Maya Precise Pangolin Long term support release (LTS), supported until April 2017.
12 Lisa Ubuntu Oneiric Supported until April 2013.
11 Katya Ubuntu Natty Obsolete since October 2012.
10 Julia Ubuntu Maverick Obsolete since April 2012.
9 Isadora Lucid Lynx Long term support release (LTS), supported until April 2013.
8 Helena Ubuntu Karmic Obsolete since April 2011.
7 Gloria Ubuntu Jaunty Obsolete since October 2010.
6 Felicia Ubuntu Intrepid Obsolete since April 2010.
5 Elyssa Ubuntu Hardy Obsolete since April 2011. Debian Debian Testing Rolling
4.0 Daryna Ubuntu Gutsy Obsolete since April 2009.
3.1 Celena Ubuntu Feisty Obsolete since October 2008.
3.0 Cassandra Ubuntu Feisty Obsolete since October 2008.
2.2 Bianca Ubuntu Edgy Obsolete since April 2008.
2.1 Bea Ubuntu Edgy Obsolete since April 2008.
2.0 Barbara Ubuntu Edgy Obsolete since April 2008.
1.0 beta Ada Kubuntu Dapper Obsolete. Unstable. As copy/pasted from here:
http://www.linuxmint.com/oldreleases.phpI have been using Mint since version 6 'Felicia', ( after using Ubuntu 7.04 'Feisty Fawn' prior to that ), and it is my #1 choice for Linux distro. Currently running Mint 14 'Nadia' Cinnamon 32-bit.
Found it interesting that Mint 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, and 3.0 are no longer available from the Main Linux Mint site and mirrors, which I believe should offer it for download even if only a few people a year may ever download such an old distro. Seen some available on google hunting for specific distros, but even though I have yet to find a poisoned distro, I like to get them from a known clean source which is usually directed from the makers of the distro if not readily available directly from the maker of the distro. I would never use such an old distro for anything important like online banking etc, but even if it is to be used for low/no risk applications its nice to have it a known clean state ISO ( even if the distro has security flaws/vulnerabilities given its age and dropped support to patch.)
I was thinking there was a website such as Linux Heaven or something like that that someone told me many years ago that was the final resting archive/download location for obsolete distros, but not finding it, so maybe its gone or named something completely different.
Just out of curiousity I also looked into old versions of Fedora and they have an archive to get the older distros from, but I ran out of time to dig further and cant check from here at work. There was a readme file at the location of versions earlier than 7 that gave you url to their archive path. Mint should also have something like this given its not much work to add to their website and these days storage of ISO's is not a problem with massively large drives available.
