Elasticsearch fails very shortly after launch

No, the folder does not exist.
The first attempt follows the guide linked in the OP while the second follows the official guide from the website (https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/getting-started-install.html).
Both using a clean install of 18.04.2 LTS, and the second attempt on VirtualBox.
First log on the first post and second log on the second post.

I tried to install it on an old laptop and it worked at my first attempt, using the guide from the ES website.
I think that my desktop CPU is even older:

Memory: 9,3 GiB
Processor: AMD® Phenom(tm) ii x4 955 (2009)
OS type: 64-bit
Disk: 116,6 GB

It does not support SSE4.2 which I've seen mentioned here: Failed to start Machine Learning on Elasticsearch 7.0.0.
But I can't get to work older version of ES either.
See the log of version 5.2.0: https://pastebin.com/raw/8kfj4KVM.
Attempt with 6.8.1:

user@guest:~/elasticsearch-6.8.1$ cd distribution/src/bin
user@guest:~/elasticsearch-6.8.1/distribution/src/bin$ ./elasticsearch
Error: Could not find or load main class org.elasticsearch.tools.java_version_checker.JavaVersionChecker
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.elasticsearch.tools.java_version_checker.JavaVersionChecker