Getting Red Hat Linux 5.2 up and running on 86Box

A somewhat oddly rendered Feb 2024 google.com in Netscape 4 on Red Hat Linux 5.2. I suppose we’re lucky a 26 old browser can access google at all..!

Introduction

One of my longer-running goals for Period Sites in Period Browsers was to include a good number of non-Windows hosted web browsers and the first stage in that is the creation of a functioning instance of the operating system hosted within an easily managed virtual machine. Unfortunately, whenever I’ve tried to install premillennial versions of linux within QEMU, I have categorically failed.

And, given the lack of guides on the internet, I’m not the only one.

In this guide we’re going to install and configure a working (albeit non-perfect) version of 1998’s Red Hat Linux 5.2. By the end of this guide we will produce a Red Hat Linux 5.2 install with a working network connection and functioning XWindows/Desktop environment.

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Counting Chrome Tabs on MacOS (Or, I have an open tabs problem!)

Another aide-mémoire; open Chrome tabs can, on MacOS, be counted via the following incantation. This particular incantation will pull the tab count from all open windows – minimised or otherwise – without the need to activate Chrome in any way.

osascript -e{'set text item delimiters to linefeed','tell app"google chrome"to url of tabs of windows as text'} | wc -l

Which, when run on my currently open set of tabs, comes back with a number slightly higher than 4,000.

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Disabling Windows XP Ballon Tips

And it’s time for an aide-mémoire for a fact that seems to be disappearing into the ether.

Windows XP bubble tips can be disabled by:

  • Opening Regedit
  • Navigating to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
  • Creating a new String value of ‘EnableBubbleTips’.
  • Setting this value to ‘0’.
  • Restarting Windows.

86Box config for RedHat 4.X

Recently I’ve been playing around in 86Box (build 3.7.1 for MacOS to be precise!) with 1997’s Red Hat Linux 4.2. After a little fiddling I seem to have got it mostly working – with one major caveat; I have had real issues with getting X/FVWM to work with any other display resolution than 640*480. Should I come up with a solution I shall, of course, update this page.

Linux Kernel 2.0.30? Gosh!
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