b. 1966, Minnesota · Sole maintainer of the Slackware Linux distribution
Also known as: Volkerding
Patrick Volkerding released the first version of Slackware Linux in July 1993, making it the oldest Linux distribution still in active development. Slackware is distinctive for its conservative design: BSD-style init, manual dependency handling, and packages that are tarballs with install scripts.
Volkerding has remained essentially the sole maintainer of Slackware for over thirty years.
Related people: Ian Murdock, Mark Shuttleworth
Discussed in:
- Chapter 2: A History of Unix and Linux · The Linux Explosion: 1993-2005
