Happy 24th Anniversary
Today marks the 24th anniversary of Slackware since it was released on 1993.Currently, Slackware is the oldest Linux distribution still actively maintained single-handed by Patrick Volkerding himself with lots of help by the Slackware Core Team and also contributors all around the world who suggested a lot of ideas and patches, mostly in LQ.
Twenty four years of constant maintaining a Linux distribution is not an easy thing, especially when the user base is growing with lots of new ideas and requests. Patrick keep firms on his philosophy while maintaining Slackware throughout all these years. That's why you will feel familiar when you install a new version of Slackware since the installation method and how the system is configured doesn't really change on every releases. I remembered my first Slackware Linux installation was in 2002 and at that time, i was just testing several few Linux distributions out of my curiosity. I started to use Slackware Linux as my main operating system in 2005 and since then i never moved on to another distributions.
Many people doubt that Slackware has future when systemd is adopted by many upstream project and distributions, but Slackware Linux stands still and keep using the old init system which works out-of-the-box. Patrick doesn't just just follow others in introducing new packages into the core packages, but he evaluates the maintainability and stability of each packages in the repository. This way, he can keep Slackware supported for a long time. While other Linux distributions provide LTS support, Slackware doesn't have LTS label. Instead, Patrick keep supporting older Slackware releases as long as possible with his strict policy of updating only due to security vulnerabilities or special circumstances exception. Slackware 13.0 which was released in 2009 is still supported up to now and still there's no sign of EOL yet (That is around 8 years already). The last EOL was given to Slackware 8 - 12.2 in December 2013 and it reached 11 years of support for Slackware 8. That's almost twice than LTS support by other distributions.
I'm happy to use Slackware Linux and big thanks to Patrick Volkerding for creating this great product. I appreciated the warm community surrounding Slackware where we work to improve Slackware Linux in many ways by creating projects that complements Slackware Linux. I'm looking forward for more contributions to Slackware Linux from the communities.
Happy Anniversary Slackware Linux!!!
Twenty four years of constant maintaining a Linux distribution is not an easy thing, especially when the user base is growing with lots of new ideas and requests. Patrick keep firms on his philosophy while maintaining Slackware throughout all these years. That's why you will feel familiar when you install a new version of Slackware since the installation method and how the system is configured doesn't really change on every releases. I remembered my first Slackware Linux installation was in 2002 and at that time, i was just testing several few Linux distributions out of my curiosity. I started to use Slackware Linux as my main operating system in 2005 and since then i never moved on to another distributions.
Many people doubt that Slackware has future when systemd is adopted by many upstream project and distributions, but Slackware Linux stands still and keep using the old init system which works out-of-the-box. Patrick doesn't just just follow others in introducing new packages into the core packages, but he evaluates the maintainability and stability of each packages in the repository. This way, he can keep Slackware supported for a long time. While other Linux distributions provide LTS support, Slackware doesn't have LTS label. Instead, Patrick keep supporting older Slackware releases as long as possible with his strict policy of updating only due to security vulnerabilities or special circumstances exception. Slackware 13.0 which was released in 2009 is still supported up to now and still there's no sign of EOL yet (That is around 8 years already). The last EOL was given to Slackware 8 - 12.2 in December 2013 and it reached 11 years of support for Slackware 8. That's almost twice than LTS support by other distributions.
I'm happy to use Slackware Linux and big thanks to Patrick Volkerding for creating this great product. I appreciated the warm community surrounding Slackware where we work to improve Slackware Linux in many ways by creating projects that complements Slackware Linux. I'm looking forward for more contributions to Slackware Linux from the communities.
Happy Anniversary Slackware Linux!!!