10th Anniversary of SBo Project

This week (5th of June) marks the tenth anniversary of SlackBuilds.org.

AlienBOB wrote a detailed post in his blog about the birth of the project and how he become one of the admins at that time. It should give users a nice history about how it all started. I also want to share some background how i become one of Slackware user and now one of the admin in SBo project.

I started to use Slackware in 2005 when i couldn't get Mandriva 2005 working properly on my first laptop (Acer Travelmate). The installation went well, but it always ended in a kernel panic situation. I described them on my first post to this blog in 2006 (took me several months to decide to make a new blog that discuss my daily live with Slackware). I used Slackware 10.2 at that time.

I remembered those times when i still had to do "./configure; make; make install" on every packages i wanted to install on my laptop. It was pretty challenging at the beginning, but it become more and more complicated when some packages need patches or any other treatment to get it build properly. Later i found out about LinuxPackages and started to use their binary packages. It was working well until i learn more about Slackware's philosophy and the risk of taking binary packages from unknown third party site. That's where i reached SBo project. It was a great resource for newbie like me and i had been using it since then to build packages i need.

It took me 5 years before i made my first contribution to the SBo project in 2010. It was guvcview and Erik Hanson was the admin who approved it. Since then i started to maintain more packages.

In late 2013 during Slackware 14.1 development cycle, Robby Workman contacted me whether i was willing to go online in IRC. I fired up my IRC client and he asked me to join the project as one of their admin. I was honored because this opportunity is not available to everybody. Almost the same condition as in G.I. Joe movie in 2009:

You don't ask to be part of SBo admin. You get asked.

My first commit as an admin was in 2013-11-13 (Thanks to GIT that tracked all changes in the repository) for PyOpenSSL and finally Slackware 14.1 repository was published in November 26 by Heinz along with the introduction of me as one of their admin.

It's been a nice 2,5 years working with the SBo admins and community to grow the script collection in our repository while maintaining it's quality from time to time. We couldn't done it without the support from many Slackware users worldwide.

Big thanks to all Slackware users out there and HAPPY 10th BIRTHDAY to SBo Project. Get bigger and better!!!