Patrick Volkerding or mr. Slackware

It all started in 1973. An ordinary child named Patrick and his class went on an excursion to the computer department of North Dakota State University.

“The room where they kept the cars totally amazed me - a lot of big, noisy cars with flickering lights everywhere. And rows of large drives with disc plates. One of the system operators showed me how to play StarTrek on Dec Writer - a teletype-like terminal. It was an instant addiction. ”

Patrick Volkerding, interview with linuxjournal.com

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Addiction is addiction, and in 1973 computers were large, and the Internet was slow and neither the student nor his parents could afford to buy a computer. That is what made Patrick interested in electronics - it was more accessible and no less interesting.

After the release of the first personal computers, such as the TRS-80 , Apple II and Atari 400/800 , the sales shops became Patrick's permanent habitat. The owners allowed him to hang around here and use the machines, and in return received small programs with advertisements for the store or something similar, which resulted from the study of Patrick BASIC.

At the age of 14, Patrick still got a personal PC. It was an Apple II Plus with a 300 AppleCat baud modem. It was installed unix-like OS, not even resembled Linux. At that time, these were very popular models. This car served him faithfully until 1990.

Education

In computer engineering, Patrick came in '85 to Boston University. After two years of study, 1 year he was released in connection with the transfer to MSU. In total for 8 years, in 1993, Patrick received a bachelor's degree in computer science from the Minnesota State University Moorhead.

Entertainment

The main entertainment for Patrick is his work - Linux. He just likes doing it. This is peculiar to professionals. To keep up with technology and time, to improve your big entertainment project is one of the greatest pleasures.

But not only computer technology world is limited. Before Linux began to take away most of the time, Homebrew Digest and rec.crafts.brewing were the main online habitats for Patrick. He loves to make his own beer. In the earlier versions of the distribution, you could even find recordings with requests, if you liked the distribution, send Volkerding a bottle of local beer.

Patrick plays the guitar and is a fan of The Grateful Dead . In the summer of 87 and 88 years. He drove for a group in all states in his 67 Firebird Convertible. Had a lot of portable filming equipment in order to shoot as much as possible the group. He has been to more than 75 of their concerts.

“I'm still waiting for Jerry Garcia to invite me to the stage: ^)”

Patrick Volkerding, interview with linuxjournal.com

How Slackware Hardened

Patrick first heard about Linux, sometime in late 1992, from a friend named Wes, at a party in Fargo, North Dakota. He remembered Linux only when he needed to find a LISP interpreter for the project. So was downloaded one of the versions of the distribution of Peter MacDonald SLS .

“In fact, I never intended to create my own distribution kit. My AI professor wanted me to show him how to install Linux in such a way that he could use it on a home machine and share it with some graduate students who did a lot of work in LISP. So we went to the lab and installed the SLS version of Linux. ”
Patrick Volkerding, interview with linuxjournal.com


Within a few weeks, everything that was needed was fixed in the installed OS, and the professor had a logical desire to make sure that with subsequent installations of Linux on machines, the OS had the same corrections that it has now. This gave a start to the project. Patrick fixed the original SLS installation scripts, fixed bugs, added automatic installation of shared libraries and a kernel image. I edited the description files, made them more informative and generally went through all the software packages, eliminating all the bugs I saw, ported new versions of the software packages. At the start of the work, the future distribution, then just the hack version of SLS, had a kernel of 0.98pl4, and at the end of the work and putting it to the professor - already 0.99pl9. By that time, Patrick in his build SLS overtook the original distribution in half of the packages, and made many corrections in the second half. The differences between SLS and Slackware have become more than cosmetic.

In May-June 1993, after adding the C 4.4.1 library and the 0.99pl11A kernel to the distribution package, the system became much more stable and network operations improved. Friends from Minnesota State University persuaded Patrick to put the distribution on FTP, but thinking that a new version of SLS would be released, Patrick was waiting. Over the course of a few weeks, a lot of people online asked about a new SLS release with corrections. Then a letter with the subject “Someone wants an SLS-like 0.99plA system?” Went to the network. And there were a lot of answers.

Patrick was allowed to create anonymous FTP on the old 3b2 , which was bent very soon, after the announcement of the archive. Those who managed to download Slackware 1.0, left good reviews on the network and the reputation of the distribution was not long in coming. Patrick was offered disk space at ftp.cdrom.com.

And once the moment came when Peter MacDonald woke up and demanded distribution rights for installation scripts taken from SLS, instead of looking at the example of Slackware to fix SLS as Volkerding wanted. Patrick completely rewrote the installation scripts for Slackware and after such a volume of work done, he realized that he was not going to give up.

Title

The name Slackware was suggested by a friend of Patrick JR "Bob" Dobbs . Slack - means lazy, negligent, loose, relaxed, sluggish, and also loafing. Many said that the name has a negative connotation, but Patrick liked the name. What he called Slackware was really a hack version of SLS. He was not going to make public the distribution. But when I posted it on FTP, I left the name. At first, he didn’t want people to take the distribution so seriously.

“Anyway, in my opinion it sounds better than Microsoft, is it not? : - ^) "

Patrick Volkerding, interview with linuxjournal.com


To this day, Slackware distributions come out consistently once a year. Truth once stability almost broke ...

Last post?

On Thursday, November 16, 2004, a letter was sent to the network with the headline "Last Post?" In which Patrick said that he was seriously ill and doctors were at a loss to make a diagnosis. The letter described in detail the symptoms, the history of the disease and please help with the diagnosis. Volkerding had every chance not to release version 10.1, the development of which he had dreamed of starting. But fortunately and everyone's joy, on December 20, a letter was published “Slackware Changelog Notice !!” In which Patrick reported that upon returning to California, he began to feel much better.

Now Patrick Volkerding lives in California with his wife Andrea Volkerding and daughter Brian Cecilia Volkerding (born November 22, 2005).
He is the author of books Linux Configuration and installation, Linux system commands, and just a good person who made a huge contribution to the world of OpenSource and continues to do it. Thanks to him.