Patrick Volkerding , an American programmer of German descent, also known to many as El Hombre (“The Man”), is the founder and main developer of the Slackware Linux distribution . He earned his BS in Computer Science from Moorhead State University in 1993 , the same year that the first version of Slackware was released.
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 1 The Slackware Linux project
- 2 Personal life
- 2 External links
Biographical synthesis
Born on October 20 , 1966 in the United States .
The Slackware Linux project
Patrick Volkerding has run Slackware with the help of several volunteers and testers. Volkerding releases new versions of Slackware generally once a year. As of 2011, Patrick is still the project leader and has full control over Slackware’s features and the release schedule. Because of this, he can choose the features to include and discard the ones that don’t suit him even though these are very popular.
Personal life
The continued development of Slackware was in serious jeopardy when in 2004 Patrick fell ill with a rare lung infection which seriously affected his physical performance. This caused distribution development to stop for the most part. Fortunately, he recovered and returned to the project.
Patrick Volkerding is currently married to his wife Andrea, and they have been parents since November 22, 2005, of their first daughter named Cecilia.
He is known for being a great beer drinker demonstrating it in the first versions of Slackware where he begged his users to send him a bottle of beer from his city in appreciation of his work.
