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Patrick Volkerding Interviewed by The Age 127

Posted by CmdrTaco from the insert-slackware-joke-here dept.
boa13 writes "The Age, a major newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, has published an interview with Patrick Volkerding, The Man behind Slackware. Covered are the early history of Slackware, its business model, its current state, Patrick's plans for the future and his opinion about the commercialisation of Linux. "
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Patrick Volkerding Interviewed by The Age More

Patrick Volkerding Interviewed by The Age

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  • Another interview (Score:5, Informative)

    by RDW ( 41497 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @09:18AM (#4396792)
    Here's a good companion piece, from the second issue of the Linux Journal way back in 1994:

    http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=2750 [linuxjournal.com]

    Read the shocking truth about Patrick's Grateful Dead tape collection, and the possibility of a Slackware/Debian merger!

  • Anyone else see the humor (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gerry Gleason ( 609985 ) <{gerry} {at} {geraldgleason.com}> on Sunday October 06, 2002 @09:20AM (#4396796)
    in his teaming up with Bob to work on Slackware?

  • Sick Sad World (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gorjusborg ( 603799 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @09:24AM (#4396806) Journal
    From the Article: "I don't have a problem with commercial versions of Linux (Slackware is one, after all). My main concern is that everyone plays by the rules, and I've heard about things (like binary only releases and beta testers forced to sign non-disclosure agreements) that just don't seem compatible with the GNU General Public License. Hopefully the Free Software Foundation is keeping a close eye on the situation."

    I hear many fl4mz0rs spouting off about how this distro 'blows' and this other one '0wnz0rz', etc. And many times their beef with the distrobutions is that they cater to the mainstream (Windows?) users, rather than to the old-school-bloatless-speedfreak user.

    I just want to clear this up for any fl4mz0rz listening. GNU/Linux will not ever be ruined by any company who releases a distrobution.
    Anyone can make a linux distrobution [linuxfromscratch.org], and because of this, if you ever see that all the distrobutions of linux are heading down the road to Redmond, you can learn (now thats a novel idea) how to make your own (if it's important enough to you). The atrocities mentioned abover are not good practice for companies, but do not hurt the GNU/Linux community very much because educated users will not support companies who do them.
    • True, true. I did my didks by reading the bootdisk-HOWTO, essentially doing it all by hand. It took a week of trial and error, but I wouldn't trade the experience and education for anything.
    • Indeed. The guarantee that the software will always be available for free. I had heard on /. that RedHat was crippling KDE to some extent. Whether it's true or not I don't know, i use Slackware myself. The point is, If RedHat cripples it's distro it's to their own detriment. People will just download the source from official places and compile away. If you use slackware, you won't even mess up the RPM database doing so :)

  • GNU Prairie Home Companion (Score:3, Funny)

    by cloudscout ( 104011 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @09:28AM (#4396820) Homepage
    What were you doing at the time you started Slackware?

    I was finishing up my bachelor's degree in Computer Science at Minnesota State University, Moorhead.

    It's MinnesotaLinux, dontchaknow!

  • Erm... (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Purple_Walrus ( 457070 )
    While most other commercial Linux distributions have problems balancing the books, Volkerding hasn't had to worry since he decided in 1994 that the only way to keep the project going was to find some way to fund it.

    No need to worry since all he needs to do is find some way to fund it? Doesn't that apply for almost ANY business model? I think that the person who wrote this article is a freakin' moron...
    • If you actuall read everything in the article, you would know he had some venture capitalists sniffing around. By keeping it small and not having a big marketting staff to support, he has kept it going through the lean times.

      The VCs will give you money to expand, but then if the climate turns, they might not be willing to keep funding. Now you have made lots of commitments to customers, employees and supliers that you just can't keep up.

      About three years back I got a great job with a dotcom just when they got funded by a VC. By the end of the year, the company had doubled in size and by the next spring they had to lay off about half of the current staff. When I shook hands with the CEO on my way out I could tell he was very sad that he had let all of us down this way. The CTO that I reported too couldn't even look me in the face, but that's another story. Recently I heard the were absorbed by the VC and pretty much closed up their operation.

      • It's not his model the poster was writing about, but the actual sentence. "He didn't have to worry since he'd decided that he just needed a way to fund the operation" (or something like that). Every business has to find a way to fund themselves. The writing in the article itself was poor.

  • Original usenet post by Patrick Volkerding! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 06, 2002 @09:34AM (#4396836)
    Here [google.com]

    I found it by searching for the subject line he mentioned in interview mentioned here [slashdot.org].
    • Well I use RedHat for work (I am a self-employed Linux coder) and slackware for myself.
      You cannot sell slackware to a business, it is just not designed for it - which does not make it bad btw.
      It is in my opinion one of the greatest Linux distro's out there. I have been using slackware since the time when kernel versions started on 0 and I still love it. But it isn't designed for non-geeks, it is good that we have geek distro's surviving.
      Debian is great too - now if only they would have a release often enough so you could have a semi-up-to-date software set without spending hundreds of bux on your net connection (in South-Africa you pay per minute so it is a real issue).

      I am actually a great LFS fan and ran it for a long time, same problem though, you need to be online more than I can afford to do it.

      Slackware is briliant in that respect, nothing is forced on you, you can modify it anyway you want with little risk of breaking things, and there's a new CD out fairly frequently.

      There is however one part of my business where I get to uses slack, custom systems, there is a lot of work in this area amongst SME's and the fact is simply that for this job slack kicks butt as a startoff platform.

      Ciao
      A.J.
    • Anonymous wrote:
      > Here [google.com]

      If you take the google usenet archive link listed above, switch to thread mode and follow the thread, there is also a followup post by Alan Cox in there too!
  • Slackware is still going on with the latest 9.0-beta still the first choice of Slackers!

    :)

  • Thanks Patrick for making me learn (Score:3, Interesting)

    by YJ87 ( 231475 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @10:10AM (#4396929)
    Here is my experience with slackware.

    The first linux CD i had was Slack 2.0 in the fall of 1995 and the Windows partition survived only 2 days. I can't say it was the easiest distro to work with but it forced me to buy the Linux bible and RTFM to get it working.

    The memory of having my first X-session after hacking modelines etc for 2 days .......Now all my machines run Slackware ( including my Sony VAIO XG18). When i got my Sun E250 last month , it took me only 2 hours to get it all set up with Solaris 9 ( Having NEVER worked on Solaris at an admin Level ). All this because i did not have a automagic install and had to learn/piece it all together.

    Keep the good work going Patrick.

    YJ87
    • Me too... I heard about Linux Slackware when I was an undergrad in CS, 1993. In 1994, when I finally upgraded my PC (to a 486 33Mhz!) I learnt about the joys of Linux via slackware.

      Haven't looked back since.

      (Well, I have really, but I just wanted a cool sounding end line :).

  • Slack's great, but package management? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Much as I love Slack, and use it several times a day, it's a shame that there's no native package management tools. Red Hat and SuSE have had the excellent RPM system for a decade now, while Debian's apt-rpm system is equally impressive.

    I know that Slack has .tgz tarballs which work in a similar way, but they have trouble retaining the metadata and fine-grained dependency stacking information that an easily-upgradable package management system provides.

    I'll still keep using Slack, but I can only hope that they develop a superior package system, or at least do a proper Ports implementation.

    Just my 2 cents. Mod down if offtopic :)
    • The best native package management is a combination of three things:

      1) BOFH
      2) tar -xzf
      3) gcc

      At least, that seems to be the view I get from using Slackware. (And I love it!)

      • 1) BOFH
        2) tar -xzf
        3) gcc

         I still reminisce for those days as well. I enjoyed figuring out the different build systems (scripts, editing .h files, imake, Makefile (vs. makefile).) I still remember how long the X11 build took for me to figure out (and then compile.)

        Although, I suspect the BOFH made all those configure scripts, libtool and such (which would be much better if they worked on SunOS again.)

        P.S. You are too trusting, I always tar tvzf first.

        P.P.S make -n install is just plain confusing now.
        • P.S. You are too trusting, I always tar tvzf first.

          Rules of BOFH package manager

          1. Untar on a non-production environment
          2. Compile on a non-production, testing machine
          3. emacs and gdb are a potent combo
          4. ./configure is for wimps, real BOFHs always hand hack

          Oh, and it's always good to blame any breakage on someone else

    • Re:Slack's great, but package management? (Score:4, Informative)

      by AntiBasic ( 83586 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @12:46PM (#4397605)
      There is one. It's called "autopkg". A great tool, can do something quite similar to apt-get.

    • Re:Slack's great, but package management? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by schon ( 31600 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @01:23PM (#4397777)
      Red Hat and SuSE have had the excellent RPM system for a decade now, while Debian's apt-rpm system is equally impressive.

      And all of them lose, hands down, when compared to Slackware's package management.

      Slackware's package management (and yes, it IS package management) conforms to the principles on which Unix is based.

      Instead of one (nonstandard, multifunction) tool, Slackware uses standard command line tools, such as grep, ls, and cat. These are commands that every sysadmin already knows. The package database is a list of plain text files, not a binary mishmash (I've seen Redhat people bitch about the Windows registry, and how plain text files in /etc/ are much easier to deal with, but they miss the point that they're married to the exact same concept with the RPM database.)

      Ever had the RPM database become corrupt on a Redhat box?

      How about if the RPM command itself gets hosed?

      If you have, you'll appreciate the simplicity of Slack's system. If not, pray that you never do.

    • Re:Slack's great, but package management? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by VB ( 82433 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @04:09PM (#4398557) Homepage

      A good package management system doesn't necessarily need to include a plethora of automated utilities that allow you to forget how to be a system administrator. RPM actually discourages thorough knowledge of your system in the same way M$ approaches updates / "package management." With RH, you'll eventually need to reboot (unless you're very good; but the distro discourages you from being very good).

      I've upgraded glibc on a slackware server 2000 miles away before without a reboot. And, yes it worked just fine for another couple hundred days until I got on a plane and traveled to where it was so I could get it.

      People put way too much emphasis on package management. I prefer to maintain my own as closely as possible. Creates much less work in the long run...
      • I have to agree. I am always distrustfull of "package managment" such as installshield or RPMs. Undo one of those bad boys and they are spraying junk EVERYWHERE. Ruining that lovely handcrafted directory structure that I just spent months getting just right.

        My personal favorite package managment tool has always been zip/pkzip. Undo the zip into the directory and your ready to rock. For some reason tar+gzip always ticked me off, but thats just me :). In the readme there is usually a list of things you must have to make it work. A decent .ini or .configure file goes a long way. Registry/central settings have gone the wrong way and have created a sort of settings hell, to go along with the file/dll hell.

        Unfortunatly we have traded a more 'complex' way of managing computers. For a 'central repository' of configuration managment. The cental repository was very prommising. But it ended up being a large pile of files and settings that are even harder to keep up with. Which is a shame.

        Also to me getting rid of something should be as simple as removing the directory. Where did this 'uninstall' metaphore come frome?!
    • Slackware's package management is less sophisticated than RH or Debian, but it works! I've borked my Debian system more than once. I didn't do much fiddling with RH because it's known to break easily. I fiddle with Slackware all the time and I've never broken it. I DID break X-Windows once, but I was able to fix it without reinstalling the SOB.
  • Man, it's good to see that name again, it's been awhile like an old friend. The first linux I ever used was slack 3.1

  • Get Slack (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Ramuh ( 153125 )
    i started using linux a little over two years ago. i went to linuxworld [linuxworld.com] 2000 in nyc and came home with free copies of several distrobution's cds. i went cold turkey off of windows and into redhat [redhat.com]. after about a month, i realized that i wasn't really learning much from redhat.
    that night i decided i was going to find a distro that i liked. i installed everything (suse [suse.com], turbolinux [turbolinux.com], debian [debian.org], conectiva [slashdot.org]). finally, i installed slackware [slackware.com] an was amazed at its simplicity. it was remarkably voodoo-free. there were no crazy scripts to confuse me, everything made sense.
    now i use debian. i forget when or why i made the switch. i still love slack, but i'm hooked on debian's package management and software availability. slackware is the best distro to *learn* linux on. it forces you to do things yourself, and that's important. it's not quite as hardcore as linux from scratch [linuxfromscratch.org], and i've heard crux [www.crux.nu] and gentoo [gentoo.org] are similar, but slack will always hold a special place in my heart.

    Thanks Pat.

  • Once you go Slack, you never go back (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sp4c3 C4d3t ( 607082 ) on Sunday October 06, 2002 @12:28PM (#4397519)
    I've been using Slack for about 2 years now. I've tried various other distributions (Mandrake, Red Hat, Debian, Gentoo), but I just love Slack so much I can never leave it. It's the way Linux was meant to be... I know exactly where everything is, and my filesystem isn't dirty like with the rest of the distros.

    I'm glad to see something like this getting some press... keeps me knowing that Slack is still going strong, despite what some trolls like to say. (Slackware has no money left!)

    On a side note, who needs a package manager? I never use packages, except when installing the distro... compiling is better :B. I guess Joe Sixpack isn't really into that idea, but hey, Slack's not for everyone.
    • My Linux addiction began with Yaggdrasil (spell?) back in 94, followed then quickly by Slackware 2.0... Been a Slacker since. All my servers are Slacked... However, just so to also stay in touch with the "masses", on one of my laptop I have installed RedHat 8 (using for this post), and Mandrake on the other... If it were not for Slackware, I would never have dared installing another distro. Nor would I have dared with other Ux-es: AIX, hp-ux, Solaris, and SCO.

      Thanks Slack for getting me off the WinDoze bandwagon.... now only if distro to distro upgarding could become a bit simpler.....;)

  • The Age keeps a table of the 5 most viewed articles and as of Monday morning it reads:

    1. The Linux distribution that's always in the black
    2. Holly's semi-nude baptism of fire
    3. ...

    For some reason, I found that very funny.

    Geoff.
    --
    NP: Porcupine Tree - Stars Die-The Delerium Years 1991-1997 [Fadeaway]

  • Patrick, your Linux distribution got me truely interested in the OS a few years ago, and recently I decided to use it as my exclusive desktop OS. Slackware is just perfect! It is lean and fast, and everything just makes sense. I love 8.1, and am really excited about 9.0. You'll always have my $40 when a new release comes out. 8.1 really did it for me, totally outdoing 7.x (which got me started). You are the man! Keep up the good work! My Linux using friends and I all love Slackware.
  • I started using Slackware very early on, tried many other distro's alwais came back.

    Many Linux enthousiasts around me told me to move to a "modern" or "better" distro, I never did, eventhough I did look around.

    Looking at the posts here, I'm really happy that there are so many happy Slackers with me ;-)

    It really is a nice distro, and I still would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about Linux.

  • By the way, I can hardly feel sorry for you... All last night I had to listen
    to her tears, so great they were redirected to a stream. What? Of _course_
    you didn't know. You and your little group no longer have any permissions
    around here. She changed her .lock files, too.
    -- Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the private life of a Linux nerd

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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