[rescue] Recommended patches for old versions (why)

[James Lockwood]

On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Kevin Loch wrote:

> 2.0 Nope
> 2.1 Very buggy, many drivers missing
> 2.2 First viable production release (though still many problems)
> 2.3 Many improvements, wide-spread adoption

In between here there was a significant X server overhaul.  R.I.P. NeWS.
On the plus side, a lot of things got faster.

> 2.4 Solid stable release
> 2.5 Added features (CDE on supplement disk)

Note that you could install the supplement disk (including CDE and WABI)
on 2.4, and it was supported.  I ran my desktop 4/330 (40MB RAM, dual 1GB
5.25" drives, P4 cg6) for 2 years with Solaris 2.4 and CDE.  Ditto for my
SS2/GT as support was dropped in 2.5 and I really, really wanted a 24bpp
framebuffer.  Fantastically slow though.  WABI on the 4/330 was almost
kind of useful if you kept your expectations low.

2.4 was bearable, except for monstrosities like the printing subsystem.
When fully patched it was very stable, and aside from some annoyances (had
to pull in libucb to get bcopy(), for example) it could compile just about
anything.

-James