Have you ever wondered who are the people behind Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware,..? Stop wondering and have a look at faces behind popular Linux Distros.

Penguin as logo/mascot for Linux was discussed first in early 1996 by several people in the linux-kernel mailing list. The idea of such mascot came from Alan Cox first. Among many other suggestions made by different people there were parodies of other operating system logos, sharks or even eagles.

After my positive experience of Debian it was time to move on and this time I chose Slackware 12 to try out. I didn't know anything about Slackware going into it and I certainly didn't know what I was getting myself into, "fools rush in" as they say. I certainly did. Slackware was an effort to say the least, I spent a couple of days with it. So, here's what happened on my Slackware adventure...

An opinion piece that tries to provide a contrast between 'the Debian way' and 'the Slackware way' when it comes to distribution management and keeping consistency with upstream projects.

Well folks, it's that time to announce a new stable Slackware release again. So, without further ado, announcing Slackware version 12.1!

The last time I looked at Slackware was nearly seven years ago; version 7.1 was thrown my way by a magazine and I was asked for a review. My usage of the distribution had ended early in 2000 when I moved to Debian after using Slackware 4.0 and then 7.0 for about a year.

What if Linux were not free? Would people still use it? Would it generate as much excitement online? What if the right…no, the privilege…to use Linux came only at a monetary cost money? And that’s a lease, not a sale mind you. What if the product was not intellectually free? How many people would jump on the bandwagon then?

I’ve been a fan of Beryl for some time - using in on my Ubuntu, Debian Etch and Slackware distro machines. (see my article Desktop Time Wasters for images of my original Debian box with beryl.) I’ve always done this with source compiles on Slackware, and packages on Ubuntu and Debian.

"Setting up a new workstation is the easiest time to choose a new GNU/Linux distribution. Having just installed Fedora 7 on my laptop so I’d have an RPM-based system available for my work, I seriously considered ending my five-year endorsement of Debian on my workstation. Perhaps I should follow the crowd and go to Ubuntu? Some other DEB-based distribution?