Characterizing the Slackware Community
Like many other successful Linux distributions, Slackware was started by a strong-minded individual
who created the kind of Linux system that suited him. Slackware users are generally people
who pretty much agree with him.
The Slackware Creator
Patrick Volkerding started Slackware in 1993 as a Linux distribution to use for himself and his
friends. He was kind enough to answer some questions I had about Slackware, and I want to share
his answers with you here.
Patrick originally used a Linux distribution called SLS Linux (named after Soft Landing Linux, the
company that made it).
Q: Why didn??™t you just contribute to SLS instead of starting your own distribution?
A: I tried. By April of 1993 I had collected a huge list of bugs in SLS, along with the fixes for
most of them. Plenty of people tried to get these to Peter MacDonald (SLS??™s author/maintainer)
but the bugs in SLS (many of which were quite obvious) never seemed to get fixed.
Of course, I??™d started work on my patched version of SLS with no plan to try to launch a
lasting distribution. I figured I??™d get it online and SLS would fix the issues, and that might
just be that. SLS was a great distribution and isn??™t given enough credit for all the ideas that
started there.
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