Other · Developers · Emerging

Difficulty in locating and downloading specific old software packages from archives

Users struggle to find and download the correct versions of old software packages, often having to sift through multiple files and variants.

Who experiences it: Developers

Momentum

0%

Pain

70

Competition

0

Opportunity

47/100

Signals over time

2 observed signals across 1 sources, tracked for 0 days. Confidence: low.

What people are saying Observed

  • “When you get to packages that are old enough, DiscMaster[0] is helpful for this since these packages were often on magazine cover CD-ROMs! There are several files matching "fileutils-3.9.tar.gz"[1]; the two variants seem to be the original GNU release (182.9KiB, the one you're looking for), and what looks like the result of a "make install" (57.4KiB). The original GNU release of fileutils-3.6 is there too (but be careful; one of the two files appears to include Makefiles from a ./configure run, while the other doesn't), though 3.7 and 3.8 don't appear to be. You'll need to sift through to find what you need in some cases, but it's an incredibly valuable research tool. Note: To download a file, you'll need to click on the filename, and then click the small arrow at the top that looks like a red arrow pointing down to a white box with red/green lights. (Which I assume is their representation of a desktop computer.) [0] https://discmaster.textfiles.com/ [1] https://discmaster.textfiles.com/search?q=fileutils-3.9.tar....”

    Hacker News · question

  • “When you get to packages that are old enough, DiscMaster[0] is helpful for this since these packages were often on magazine cover CD-ROMs! There are several files matching "fileutils-3.9.tar.gz"[1]; the two variants seem to be the original GNU release (182.9KiB, the one you're looking for), and what looks like the result of a "make install" (57.4KiB). The original GNU release of fileutils-3.6 is there too (but be careful; one of the two files appears to include Makefiles from a ./configure run, while the other doesn't), though 3.7 and 3.8 don't appear to be. You'll need to sift through to find what you need in some cases, but it's an incredibly valuable research tool. Note: To download a file, you'll need to click on the filename, and then click the small arrow at the top that looks like a red arrow pointing down to a white box with red/green lights. (Which I assume is their representation of a desktop computer.) [0] https://discmaster.textfiles.com/ [1] https://discmaster.textfiles.com/search?q=fileutils-3.9.tar....”

    Hacker News · frustration

Why now? AI inference

Existing solutions Observed

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