In the early days of Linux I think most of the users were like this, and as time has moved
on and various distributions have focused on different markets, the profile of the average
Linux user has changed quite a lot. Most of today??™s commercial Linux distributions seem
to target a user who wants to administer his machine with a point-and-click interface much
like Windows. Slackware and other lower-level distributions serve a different niche??”users
who don??™t mind a learning curve if it means the operating system will stay out of their way.
Today, Patrick is still the Project lead and maintains complete control over Slackware??™s features and
release schedule. In this arrangement, Patrick can choose the features to include, and he doesn??™t
add features that don??™t suit him (even popular ones).
Q: How would you characterize the Slackware development process?
A: Most of what I do is research??”trying to figure out where Linux is going so I can make
(I hope) sane choices about what to implement. There's not really a core development
team (which really streamlines the development process by sidestepping the usual timewasting
squabbles that usually happen in any official development hierarchy). But I get a
ton of help from people who e-mail me with problems or suggestions that lead to an
upgrade or fix somewhere in the system.
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