Whatever Happened to R. Workman?
 

Whatever happened to Mr. R. Workman?
It looks like his site hasn't been updated since December 2020?
http://rlworkman.net/pkgs/
I hope all is well.
:)

It seems !
https://git.slackbuilds.org/slackbui...225b38fb340e7d

Another link: https://git.rlworkman.net/slackpkg/

Thanks marav, this made me smile :)

I sold a few dozen, at the time ;)

Knowing that the core Slackware teams puts their effort into developing the distro and letting their decisions speak for themselves has always made me feel better about the stability of the project as a whole.

I'll keep on Slackin' till the day the changelog goes stale. And even then I might just fork it and keep going...

Absolutely agreed on "stability of the project as a whole".

Regarding "changelog going stale" and "forking" I wonder about that rather a lot. An aging distro can be kept vital for awhile just by upgrading the kernel but at some point gcc and glibc libaries become a stumbling block. Lately, actually for the past few years, I occasionally experiment with altering/upgrading and downgrading old releases to get a feel for what works and what doesn't.

For example, several years ago I installed Trinity on what was originally 14.0 that later was upgraded to 14.2. Then, lately, I began to wonder if it would have been possible to just install KDE 3x from say 12.2 on 14.0. With only a few gotchas it worked. It doesn't work on 15 without many hoops to jump through, but I imagine it may be possible.

So whether here, in PM or any other means (but I'd prefer many voices) I'd like to know what you (and any others so interested) consider "forking" to be and how you might go about it. I find this very fascinating, so thanks in advance for bringing it up.

The only thing I found odd about the install of 15.0, was grub is in Slack, and yes, we all know it's been Lilo Country! LOL

BUT, after all these years, and now grub in the installation, I assumed that if an end-user picked grub over lilo the setup would take you through having grub installed and configured, so once you were done with the install of Slack, you simply booted into it.

WELL, that is not the case, I had to put the USB stick back in chroot slack and mount it and then go through installing it, what a pita.

I love you PAT, but really LOL

Anyhow I'm a Slacker, I know the drill, been Slacking it since Slack 7.x version, a little over 20 years, but come on, all these years waiting on 15.0 and I had chroot to boot, hey it rhymes LOL!

Let's get back on topic. Mr. Workman is a busy working man with a wonderful family. As a retired teacher I know what Robby's life is like as a high school Science teacher. I'm grateful for his ongoing contributions to Slackware. :)

If the topic really interests you, a good place to start is by looking at the Slackware forks that do exist and what they try to achieve. It might also be helpful to look back at Slackware's origin story since Slackware itself is the ultimate example of what a software fork looks like.

As mentioned by others this probably isn't the best thread for that discussion :)

All is well, and I still do some stuff (mostly) behind the scenes -- day job plus extra responsibilities there plus some side work keep me on my toes...
Thanks for the concern :-)

Just FTR I did offer user's choice for any responses and it was not my intent to hijack the thread despite that we already had the answer which has now been thankfully and utterly confirmed by the man himself! :)

Thank you, Robbie for all your exemplary work in Slackware and I'm very pleased that all is well and meant zero disrespect as I hold you in high regard. I actually figured these are the sorts of things that interest you as well, that probably got you started in the first place.

FWIW and to those vaguely interested I have played with lots of forks and frankly most of them I've tried, try to make Slackware more like the mainstream alternatives and I have no interest in that, since the main thrust of that is package management and i'm completely happy with pkgtools. If anything I'm more interested in other fundamentalist systems like BSD and Haiku.

Linus has mentioned his mild disappointment that the diversity of Linux has led to Flatpack and AppImage (massive portable self-contained binaries) but that's evolution for you. I'm pretty confidant Slackware will outlast me and it's all the Linux I want and I've tried hundreds. The only gripe I have ever had with Slackware was not Patrick's unfettered choice, that of being forced to cave in to pulseaudio as required not optional, and that's pretty minor in my book.

Same. I've tried some of the forks and I prefer to use the real deal. There is no substitute for Slackware. I also have a fondness for the BSDs. :)
It is good to hear that Robby is prospering.