OldVersion.com software downloads for old versions of programs, drivers & games | Hacker News Reader

OldVersion.com software downloads for old versions of programs, drivers & games

oldversion.com

229 pointsgscott53 comments

Broken certs:

  curl: (60) SSL: no alternative certificate subject name matches target host name 'assets.oldversion.s3.amazonaws.com'

That aside, an obvious problem with binary download sites like this is that you don't know if what you're getting is malicious. Hosting arbitrary binaries isn't cheap, so the economics of sites like this almost encourages shady behavior, not to mention the possibility of malicious users.

Edit: I realize my broken certs problem must be caused by an extension (probably HTTPS Everywhere) here. Anyway, probably don't want to download binaries over unencrypted channels in 2020...

You could verify the binary by submitting it to virustotal.com

Are SourceForge's adware/crapware installers flagged by AV software?

Chances are they aren't since it has been years now that the site was sold to someone else who removed all the adware/crapware.

I should have used the past sense. Were they flagged by AV software (for which VT is basically an aggregator) when they bundled adware/crapware?

Possibly. I just tried the official installer for JDownloader (which i know it includes adware) and it was flagged by several engines:

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/6684894d334c9fd629c6586c...

So chances are it'd also flag SourceForge's stuff since it wasn't purpose-built malware but some sort of generic wrapper.

OldVersion.com has been around for a long time, I think if they were modifying binaries or embedding malware, something would have come out by now. The economics of a site like this also encourage making yourself a legitimate source.

That isn't to say it's 100% safe, and this type of thing has certainly happened in the past, but until something comes out I think they're relatively trustworthy. I wish all software vendors made old versions officially available, but they frequently don't.

I’d you’re downloading old versions of things then you should also be aware of any known bugs or exploits within it anyway. This isn’t a tool to be used lightly nor blindly.

Sorry for nitpicking but it doesn't matter if a host is reliable or not, since they could get hacked (unknowingly) or your download binary could get swapped out on the fly via deep packet inspection.

For what my opinion is worth, I vouch for that site. I see on my Firefox bookmarks Library that I have "Added" that in "Mon 26/12/2005, 14:36". This is one of my favourite sites when I am looking for a piece of software that "simply works". And I usually don't care how old is it, as long as it runs on my Win8.1Pro, I'm OK. Typically the older - the better.

Been using it to download uTorrent 1.7.2 for what seems like at least a decade.

Try qBittorrent. I have been very happy with it as a uTorrent replacement for the past few years.

Wonder how many remote root exploits your system is open to.

I'd bet real money it ain't 0.

If you use an older-style webhost with cheap or free bandwidth it can be a lot more afforable than one might think

This happens for s3 buckets with dots in the names as wildcard certificates (*.s3.amazonaws.com) only cover one 'level'.

You can manually work around it via using the alternative URL to access a bucket with a dot in the name:

  https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.oldversion/<filepath>

Slightly related, but I recently had to deal with an old Windows XP machine and with everything moving to HTTPS you're pretty much SOL trying to get _anything_ on the web.

I'm the founder of the site. We are ad-supported, ideally would like to be community-supported. We take the responsibility of hosting these binaries seriously, but sometimes there are bad actors in terms of users which we work to address before the binaries become available for public download.

Now looking into a potential API that could at least link with virustotal or a site like that to give users more information about each binary. Any ideas/tech solutions would be welcome.

Thanks - what an honor it is to see this passion project from 20 years ago still relevant (and would love to have it be more relevant to various communities).

This reminds me of just how bad regular Linux apt repo ecosystem is at backwards compatibility, you always have latest edition or nothing in most cases. Trying to get C64 emulator running at moment and only latest version of VICE is supported by Debian/Ubuntu repo .. issue with disk images for me. Literally no other version to try unless I self compile which accordingly let me down the usual garden path of impossible lib reqs. So. Yeah. Hope some sort of static compile reality or NixOS comes around to save us all at some point. Loathe the advertising show Windows have become but neither do I enjoy the history-less reality of current mainstream Linux dists :/

edit: forgot to add that I've been using C64 emulators since late 90s ... accomplishing this emulation feat was not a problem 20+ years ago!

> Linux apt repo ecosystem is at backwards compatibility

That's more an issue with the gnu/Linux userland progression than any package manager

There's problems with that too, but they're talking about the fact that (for example):

  $ apt-get install libfoo=0.1oldversion
  produces:
  E: Version '0.1oldversion' for 'libfoo' was not found

as soon as version 0.2newpieceofshit of libfoo exists, thus completely defeating the purpose of specifying a version.

Ubuntu dropped Qt4 from their repos, there is still plenty of third party software that uses that

There's a really good reason for that, it would be almost impossible to handle all the dependencies, you would add an entire dimension (time) to the dependency tree and that is a lot of information to process for very limited returns. Most do maintain old release DVD/CD iso and that's about as good as you're going to get if some app you love makes major changes or is completely removed.

Have you tried installing an older version of Linux (since you're bringing up `apt`, older version of Debian)?

Those packages haven't changed. All of it will still run. Maybe you'll be able to just boot it in a VM inside your current OS and it'll just work.

Exactly - all versions of Fedora are still archived and available, all the way back to Fedora Cpre 1. And people do install thos from time to time, usually for curiosity or to commemorate an anniversary.

Heck, you might even still dig out Red Hat Linux ISOs from somewhere.

Red Hat still maintains mirroring for them:

http://archive.download.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/

They just don't have any ISO images for anything pre-6.2. Most of those can be found on sites like archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/redhat-5.2_release

http://snapshot.debian.org/

"Loathe the advertising show Windows have become".

I just remove the game ad tiles from the start menu after a fresh install and never see any ads again anywhere in Windows 10.

It's not just a practical matter for many of us. We _know_ we can remove it. The problem is one of principal.

And just as a point of anecdote, I've had the ad tiles come back after updates sometimes. So it's something that rears it's ugly head even when I try to ignore it.

I'm so grateful for this site, as a software historian of sorts.

I've gotten countless versions of Opera, Netscape, and others off here.

I appreciate them continuing to support HTTP, too.

Many blessings, and a long future for you, oldversion.com

Shameless plug: If you're looking for somewhere to go with that Opera 3.62 or Netscape 3.0 you just downloaded and opened with Wine, which runs them better than today's Windows, the site in my profile is compatible with both. :)

Thank you so much!

Another similar site (sadly Windows only) is Last Freeware Version, which collects free versions of software before they're nuked by their developers when they make the software commercial.

http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/

VetusWare https://vetusware.com/ has old DOS, Mac, *NIx versions of popular software but has a ratio to maintain for members. You have to create an account and the file is reviewed by others to see if it is a virus or crap or fake, etc.

I am stuck in a Windows XP system for audio editing, and, indeed, you have Pro Tools 5.01 for me. Fascinating site that surely deserves a separate HN discussion. Many thanks! I think the React OS [1] people will love you as well.

1: http://www.reactos.org

Also telnet/ssh to vert.synchro.net, it has a HUGE software library for DOS/W31.

If you need to upload/download something with zmodem, use qodem or syncterm.

It would be great if they had iOS and iPhone firmware versions.

Useless when Apple won't activate them anymore.

Can’t you have the blobs that would let you go back? I think only iOS 14 won’t let you go back. Not sure if you already need to be jail broken or not to allow this.

you mean shsh blobs? Didn't they turn obsolete years ago when they patched the firmware to require random nonces?

Ah okay. The procedure now is to give your device info and get the shsh blob during the signing period. Perhaps that’s the way to get the random nonce you’re referring to?

So that’s pretty limiting.

Regardless, there was some talk of iOS 14 Not allowing downgrading. Not sure if that’s when jailbroken or in any way.

——-

I still jailbreak myself. But don’t pay much attention to the scene. I think iPhone 5 is when the peak of jail breaking ended. That’s all the way back in 2012. And kept decreasing in popularity

I install the same sort of tweaks for my own reasons I find very important and not much else. Important enough I’m going to go to stores this week and look for an iPhone 11 [Pro or whatever] that has 13.5 on it, so I can jailbreak again and keep my same iPhone 8 set up.

Yeah, you used to be able to cache these shsh blobs and reuse them to install the same iOS image in the future again because they didn't change.

Since quite a few years the iPhone generates a new random nonce during each restore though and requires that nonce to be signed by Apple to proceed. This makes caching the response useless for downgrading.

https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Nonce

I’ve downgraded without issue twice in recent years. Must be a jailbreak thing then. Every one is always saying to save your shsh blobs so I don’t know.

I don’t think that wiki or most sites are that up to date with jailbreaking stuff since the peak of jailbreaking was so long ago.

https://ipsw.me - download links go to official apple servers so you don't have to worry about malware.

CVErsion.com would've also been a good domain name ;)

too bad the old versions of dropbox no longer work.

Might make sense to invest into a something like Mountainduck - 35 EUR (or similar software), and get an agnostic sync client. The great advantage is you can change the backend (switch to another service) without having to learn how to use anew client

Thanks for the suggestion, but Mountainduck doesn't seem to have a Linux version. Is there something similar for Linux?

If you are comfortable with CLI, rclone is the Swiss Army knife of cloud storage.

rclone is great, but it doesn't have the same level of sync capabilities as Dropbox or Mountainduck (supposedly).

Interesting! Any luck with Backblaze B2 as a backend for Mountain Duck?

Yeah, Dropbox has been on a steady downhill slope UX-wise.

There is literally one reason to click the Dropbox icon, and that’s to pause/unpause syncing. Dropbox doesn’t need an elaborate UI, and I suspect the only reason it has one is for marketing reasons, not UX ones.

One of their PMs got a little nippy at me when I made a very similar complaint. Said they had to to survive... and I'm thinking, dude you guys should have never gone public, you could have kept a small, focused product

Dropbox is still the only sync agent that can handle a large git repo without freaking out

Second reason is to see the last-synced list, to see if things got sent / are received / if something is stuck. So they put it behind a second submenu instead of front and center ...

huh, I've been using Dropbox since 2011 and almost never ever launch the UI.

What parts of the Dropbox UI do you use? Even for uploads, you can know if its completed from the Windows Explorer.

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