[itcmcgrath]

s/proprietary//

While I like non-proprietary software, there is nothing inherit that makes much of a difference for the lay person. As the complexity of the software goes up, so does the level of what is considered a 'lay person'. For any sufficiently complex software and non-pervasive problem - you're SOL in both cases. Standards help more than proprietary/non-proprietary. Lower complexity also helps more.

[dalke]

For example, if you had your own compiler which generated a.out output, then the Linux 1.2 switch to ELF would have broken the code in a similar backward incompatible way, despite there being no proprietary code involved.

(Standards wouldn't have helped either.)

[npsimons]

I'm calling your bluff:

https://plus.google.com/115250422803614415116/posts/hMT5kW8L...

Specifically, Alan Cox's comment that he can still run an a.out rogue binary from 1992 on a 3.6 version of the Linux kernel. Linux 1.2 was released March 1995.

[dalke]

Bluff called, I fold .. and sweet!

Looking around, it requires a bit of work (see for example http://www.ru.j-npcs.org/usoft/WWW/www_debian.org/FAQ/debian... ).

Here's a recent (2014) report of success: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/running...

rogue is text only. According to a report from 2009 at https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/linux-binary-compati... :

> A Mosaic binary from 1994 just segfaults, as well as all the other ZMAGIC binaries (1994-1995) I have lying around.

but OTOH that may be because of the setting of noexec and other flags.

[markrages]

Uh.

  # modprobe binfmt_aout
  # uname -rv
  3.2.0-60-generic-pae #91-Ubuntu SMP Wed Feb 19 04:14:56 UTC 2014

Standards help a lot, that's why a.out still works on modern Linux.

[pbhjpbhj]

I'd imagine if it doesn't work though, in contrast to the OP's situation, you could spin up a virtual machine with a pre-1.2 version of Linux and run the code without having to pay anything to do so. Also this is a quite different situation to reading a document.

[voltagex_]

I'm having trouble locating a (floppy?) image that old but I'd love to try - AFAICT VirtualBox was written with kernel 2.6+ in mind.

Edit:

Debian: http://archive.debian.org/debian/dists/Debian-0.93R6/disks/

RedHat: http://archive.download.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/1.0/en/o...