by 
Slackware Linux creator Patrick Volkerding remembers that it’s been 30 years since he announced the first stable release of what turned out to be the world’s oldest surviving Linux distribution.
That’s right, on July 16th, 1993, Patrick Volkerding announced Slackware Linux 1.00 as the first stable release of an independently developed GNU/Linux distribution as a “complete installation system designed for systems with a 3.5″ boot floppy”.
Slackware Linux’s first stable release was largely based on the Softlanding Linux System (SLS), one of the first Linux distributions released back in 1992 with the motto “Gentle Touchdowns for DOS Bailouts”, but Patrick Volkerding has been enhancing and modifying it substantially with its own package manager.
Back in the year 2000 when I first started with Linux, Slackware Linux was very hard to install. I remember that I had to go to a local printing shop to print the installation manual, which I still have to this day, because there were no smartphones or tablets back then and I didn’t have two computers to follow the tutorial online.
Those were the days when I fall asleep on the couch installing Slackware Linux. I still can’t believe it’s been 30 years since Slackware was made, but in the end, I remember that I never used Slackware Linux as my daily driver.
Today, Slackware Linux is still actively developed and it’s a very powerful Linux distribution. The latest release, Slackware Linux 15.0, was announced in February 2022, powered by the long-term supported Linux 5.15 LTS kernel series. Slackware also offers a rolling-release version called Slackware-current where you can find more recent kernels and packages.
We wish Slackware a happy 30th birthday and here’s to many, many more!
Last updated 10 months ago
