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LinuxQuestions Interviews Slackware Founder Patrick Volkerding
An anonymous reader writes "In this in-depth interview with LinuxQuestions.org, Patrick Volkerding discusses how he got involved with Linux and Open Source, the succession plan for Slackware, the Slackware development model, his opinion on the current trends in desktop environments, potentially disruptive changes to Linux such as systemd, his favorite beer and much more."
Well, economically speaking the past few years have been pretty thin. If I hadn't made the strategic decision to head back to Minnesota several years ago there's no way I could have stayed afloat living in the bay area. California is not at all a cheap place to live, and I was always cutting it close out there. Lately I've been cutting it pretty close here, too. I don't even have insurance any more... knock on wood. Personally, absolutely. I've made friends all over the world. I hear from people every day who love Slackware and depend on it for critical tasks, and who don't want to run something else. Working on the project is exciting and fun, and the folks on the team are some of my best friends. It's just not possible to put a dollar value on that.
It's too bad the Bay Area is unaffordable for many of those who want to devote a significant amount of productivity towards open source projects.
I'd like to believe these projects could make much more money if only the right people knew about them, but we all know that's not the point in the first place.
Similar to social workers and others who do the noble work in our society, communities should devote resources to provide nice affordable housing for these people.
The problem, of course, is convincing local governments.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Nope, Slackware is well and still around. Sure, they aren't big, but at least they are pretty good and pretty stable. Troll someplace else.
In 1993, I started using Slack exclusively (except school, where Sun owned the place).
Thanks for all your hard work. Your efforts launched several careers, and many more hobbyists.
So, Thanks!
not the kind of distro you wanna risk your business on.
Neither is Ubuntu, Damned Small Linux, and thousands of other ones. There are niches for them, just as Slackware has a niche.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
They're valued perfectly. You're just incorrect about the world not being solely capitalistic. You get paid what it makes sense to pay you - enough to satisfy minimum wage (this helps prevent riots/race wars etc) if you do something which doesn't require much in the way of training, and enough to stop you leaving and working elsewhere if you are higher skilled.
Someone who does morally good things doesn't tend to get the rewards a just society would bestow on them because it doesn't benefit the people who'd be paying them. Governments don't pay them because they'll be doing the good deeds anyway, plus doing good doesn't fit into any kind of framework hierarchical systems can understand or deal with. You're supposed to want to be a dick and make your own life better and screw everyone else to get ahead etc - the idea that you might be happy with a low paid job, doing charity work in your part time or working on a free operating system doesn't occur or make much sense to most people.
To be honest, what with the population explosion, global warming, governments being too busy working with the banks to screw everyone over and billions of illiterate people all wanting nice cars and air conditioning means we're all pretty much fucked anyway so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
They're valued perfectly.
[...]
To be honest, what with the population explosion, global warming, governments being too busy working with the banks to screw everyone over and billions of illiterate people all wanting nice cars and air conditioning means we're all pretty much fucked anyway so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
If my concern is teachers/social workers/open source engineers aren't justly compensated, and your concern is a general lack of awareness or apathy about global warming, overpopulation and wealth disparity, you'd think there'd be a way we could meet in the middle here....
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
I still have my 60+ 3.5" floppies of Slackware with kernel 0.94 I believe. Took over a month to download on a 28.8 modem. The first time I typed startx after hand configuring X (yes XFConfig was available back then but my video card required hand coding) and the grey screen came up I went "Whoa!"
Patrick is the best. He doesn't release a new Slackware unless its been tested tested tested.
Anytime MythTV releases a new version I'll slap together a machine, put Slackware on it and give it a whirl. If you're a Ubuntu user and want to learn more about *nix but don't want to mess with Gentoo or a BSD, I totally recommend Slackware.
I started using Slackware since it came with the 2.0.30 kernel
I have used Slackware ever since. For my webservers I run Debian. But my home pc is Slackware. Long ago when I first got into linux as it was told to me the best way to learn is start on Slackware. You compile everything yourself unlike redhat or debian based systems with their package downloaders that did it all for you and put everything where it supposed to go, etc. :)
Slackware "put hair on your chest" hehe, you want a specific program you downloaded the source and compiled it, if it required other libraries, then you downloaded those library sources and compiled them then go back and compile the other.
It was a "flavor" of linux I always recommend for learning, as I tell people once you know Slackware, all other flavors are easymode.
Course it's just my opinion and I've always loved Slackware for my personal machines, and yes I do see use for other "flavors" as I always run Debian on webservers and such for the simple package downloaders can just apt-get whatever needed. Course it won't be compiled specifically for you but it runs.
My top 2 linux distros are #1 Slackware, #2 Debian and that's all I use, I've played with SUSE, and such. But everyone jumped on the Ubuntu fad, and to me it's good that it's noob friendly, but it's way too noobish imo, I consider Ubuntu to be linux-light :) But again that's just my opinion.
Each has their purpose.
Slackware fanboi though.
Every time I read a story about Patrick, I wonder if he ever resolved the weird health problems he shared with the Linux community...
The Slashdot story about that quoted a Slackware changelog from late 2004 as saying "I'm back in California and I'm happy to let you all know that I'm feeling much better. :-) Here are a few updates so you can see that I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. Hopefully 10.1 won't be too far off ..."