Older versions of Minecraft, such as 1.8.4 and 1.7.10, will immediately crash when trying to launch them in the Launcher beta on Linux.

Is there a way to get the old Launcher back, so that these versions are playable? Having such old versions available is important because many mods will not work on newer Minecraft versions due to workload required to update, or because of preference for older Minecraft features (such as the original PVP).