Interview with Patrick Volkerding of Slackware

frankbell · 06-15-2012, 11:13 PM

I shan't repeat what the others have said. I will simply point out that very early in the interview Pat was quoting Lao-Tzu. Later he quoted Einstein.

'nuff said.

Laodiceans · 06-16-2012, 08:59 AM

Thanks Pat!

Thanks all people that works on my fav linux distro of all time!

I made some donations to the project.

Could be a better way to support the project??

Maybe selling hardware with Slackware on it? Like low cost laptops etc...!

SCerovec · 06-16-2012, 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ya`akov

I first programmed computers in 1973 as a
summer job while studying undergraduate
Honors Physics and Russian at UVIC.
I programmed in Machine and Assembly
language for two Digital Equipment
computers (PDP-11/05 and PDP-11/40) in the
Basement of the Physics building, running
RSTS-11 (Resource Sharing/Time Sharing)
and subsequently the (inferior) RT-11

To interface more serial terminals to
the PDP-11s, a South-West Technical
Products 6800 microcomputer was inserted
as a serial port exchange. I wrote a
cross-assembler for the 6800 CPU
(similar instruction set to PDP-11)
in BASIC in order to write the software
for this project. At the time, serial
ports for the SWTPC were approximately
Ten Dollars, whereas serial ports for
the PDP-11s cost several Hundred Dollars.
To add more serial ports, it was necessary
to strap two of these SWTPC microcomputers
back-to-back - one machine had no CPU - it
was only used because more serial ports
could be added.

At the time, I had my own personal PDP-8/m
minicomputer, which I programmed in Assembler
running DOS and OS/8, which were both loaded
from paper tape on ASR-33 teletypewriters.

***

After moving to Vancouver in 1979, I programmed
at UBC/Triumf for PDP-11s in Machine and Assembler
and then VAX-11s in Assembler for the Nuclear
Physics community. I acquired some IBM-PCs
(all Clones, actually) and ran MS-DOS and then
Software Landing Systems (SLS) Linux. SLS Linux
was authored on Lodge Street, which was about
half way from where I lived on Saanich Road
on my trip to my Piano Teacher on Quadra Street
in Victoria, B.C.

I since moved to Slackware (forget the exact date)
and have continued with it ever since, even though
I have tried (and abandoned) distributions such as

Red Hat, SuSE, etc.

I am now using Slackware 13.37 (why drop Hebrew?)
is it anything to do with www.arabeyes.org see

/usr/share/X11/xkb/keymap/xfree86

- Яаков

As a suggestion, please remove the

Linux 4 keyboard layout limit (google)

which was fascistly imposed in recent
updates to the following xfree86 file

/usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base

in Slackware 13.37

Phew!
half way down that post I figured the man will ask for driver support or why it ended (PDP)

as I read on, it landed nicely on where we all stand now (both legs on Slackware)

Ya`akov · 06-17-2012, 07:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SCerovec

Phew!
half way down that post I figured the man will ask for driver support or why it ended (PDP)

as I read on, it landed nicely on where we all stand now (both legs on Slackware)

I only have one foot left - יעקב

Laodiceans · 06-18-2012, 12:01 AM

I saw a interview with Linus!

He talks about Android and why it worked so fine.
Because it is already installed on devices!

A Slackware low cost hardware could be a good ideia!

mcleprechaun · 06-18-2012, 07:20 AM

Great interview! It makes me realize how weird I am because I stayed with Slackware since the install was so easy I have tried the others but nothing can replace Slackware.

arnuld40 · 06-18-2012, 02:17 PM

Hi,

With LQ's agreement, MrSpackMan (http://requiescant.tuxfamily.org) and I tried to translate in French this great interview for "Da Linux French Page" readers. After a week of collaborative work, the result is available here : http://linuxfr.org/news/traduction-d...xquestions-org

Thank you for your comments, especially if you can improve some parts.

Alain

SCerovec · 06-22-2012, 04:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ya`akov

I only have one foot left - יעקב

A war veteran? Sorry to hear that?

Otherwise, great post (I enjoyed it really).

3dBdown · 06-25-2012, 08:15 PM

I think this (quite apparently) candid interview further reveal how the fruit of his efforts expose a quintessentially near-perfect engineering mind set at the helm.

The "new" box running 13.37 did seem a substantial shift from my sole previous implementation, which still runs 3.1 from a Walnut Creek copy. (Like our "B.D.F.L.", change occurs only when warranted here.)

And its so much more fun knowing some of the back story.

Thank you, great read.

jdifslack · 06-28-2012, 03:17 AM

Thanks to Pat and all the developers for your amazing work.

Switched to Slackware more than 10 years ago, and not moving away from that 'confort zone'.

Cheers,
jdif

stureedy · 07-24-2012, 07:21 AM

Thanks for the interview! I'm ready for the AMA on reddit -)

jazzi · 07-24-2012, 08:56 PM

Pat, maybe you're not rich but you're building something that will be memorized in the human history.

- You are who YOU are!
- You're happy/comfort with the project, we'll be happy too.

@Jeremy, thanks for your work and guys thanks for all your questions to help dig out a real PAT world.

One of the best ways to say THANK YOU, I think, is making a donation here.

-
jazzi

++++++++++++
You are a warrior
Fearless !!!
With the dream

You are friend
Havn't met though
You are my friend
++++++++++++

eminx · 08-15-2012, 06:14 AM

Thanks for interview and thank you Pat for all work on Slackware!

jespinal · 09-02-2012, 08:18 PM

Excellent interview. It's good to have this kind of insights.

About the CMS for the Slackware.com website, in order not to reinvent the wheel and have something maintainable without having to invest too much time on it, he could use WordPress with the custom theme I did for Slackware-Es[dot]com .

If someone here knows how to contact him (I don't), he/she might ask him about it. I could put the theme on a tar.gz file in order to be downloadable. I would also send the DB dump and website files (so he might have take a look at what plugins are being used).

Anyways, just let me know in any case.

dugan · 09-02-2012, 10:13 PM

@jespinal: I've emailed him an offer to do the exact same thing. He chose instead to just update the existing website to the point where it would run on a modern host.