Textbook of Linux

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 extreme conservatism: BSD-style init, manual dependency handling, minimal configuration tools, and packages that are basically tarballs with install scripts. The argument is that these "deficiencies" force a user to actually understand their system.

For over thirty years Volkerding has been essentially the sole maintainer — releases appear when they are ready, sometimes years apart, and follow the tastes of one person with deep expertise in what makes a Unix system coherent. The distribution has survived two near-death moments (including a serious illness of Volkerding's in 2004) and is now funded by Patreon-style donations.

Slackware influenced nearly every early Linux user who went on to build something else — SUSE started as a German Slackware derivative; many distribution maintainers and kernel developers learned Linux on it.