This is terrible. I'd love to help but I'm broke at the moment. I will try to donate later this year.

IMHO, the OP (upnort) needs to maintain this thread such that the _real_ financial support links (for want of a better term) are up to date and reach the _real_ person that requires the support. Failing that, and I do realise that the OP may not be able to do that for various real life reasons, the mods should step in and make a sticky with Pat's up to date support link(s).

For the record I donated USD$20 to the paypal link that cost me a ~20% premium thanks to paypal.. not ideal.

Best regards to all and do not let best intentions cloud your judgement!

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interesting, I had about 12% fee, what is better than Patreon who put 25% taxes on each donation (for where I live)
but I think for other paypal donation I had no fee, I wonder how this works, maye because I donated in US $ and not my local currency? or is the paypal me different form others, like Eric or the shop has

I donated 50 EUR via PayPal and paid 1.99 EUR fee.

I think your sarcasm-detect needs rebuilding.

EDIT: or maybe mine does. I can't tell anymore.

Dear Pat,

Been using Slackware since 1998. Sad to hear you and your family are in so much trouble now.
My Paypal donation is sent. I will try to make monthly donations.
Keep up the good work. Don't hesitate to reach out to us, the Slackware users.

Greetings from Belgium,

David

Thanks for all your work Pat. Really sad/enraged by how you have been treated by the store.

Both my wife and I have been using Slackware since version 3.6 and have had a subscription since version 10.1 (still have the CDs/DVDs on a shelf next to each other looking neat!). We will probably cancel it if nothing goes to you though, although it would be nice to still get the merch from somewhere (Slack tshirts help us identify our tribe in a crowd!<3)

Anyway, we have sent you a little something to your paypal account and will look at using which ever donation mechanism you chose.

Cheers from the UK.

Greg & Em

TL DR: Happy to donate using Paypal, but will use whatever payment channel works best for Pat. Would like to find a way to donate with a smaller fee. Correction to my earlier comment.

Long version and correction:

Started the Paypal.me donation with the intention of an immediate payment, then a followup once the permanent payment channel was set up. Paypal was going to put a >25% fee (more than the website says applies for Canadian payor to US Paypal.me payee in USD), so I killed it for now and will try again a bit later, or all via the permanent channel.

EDIT: Wrong. I read the Paypal formula wrong and thought the fee was in a different currency. Still 20%. Paypal formula = fixed fee + % + currency fee. Yes, 3 terms.

I’ve used Paypal and Paypal.me in several currencies to several countries, and only twice now have had weird transactional things happen (one of which was later fixed - we’ll see about this latest one.)

So I would be happy using Paypal to get money to Pat - I would say get money to him again, but now don’t know if my previous Slackware store donations will ever make it to him :-( Getting it out there that Paypal sometimes (rarely) seems to do weird things, so you have to keep an eye on them, but I’ve also seen them fix a weird thing. I’ll ask them about this one and if their answer could be of use to anyone here, I’ll post it.

But Pat, if you choose a different way, I’ll set up to use that.

I guess it’s semantics whether “donation” is really the best word. To me it feels like my “donation” is small compensation for the great value I get from it. Although since it is freely offered, I guess that’s the definition of donation.

And practically, as pointed out by a previous poster, legally (and maybe tax-wise) it might be cleanest for Pat that money going directly to him not be considered payment for services or a product. But I’m not a lawyer or a finance guy, and I’m not American, so what do I know? A foundation type setup might be a different story.

TKS

Donated.

German Linux-centric media are reporting as well:

http://www.pro-linux.de/news/1/26132...rigkeiten.html
http://www.linux-magazin.de/news/gel...hmen-betrogen/

To be honest, I found this whole design of giving Slackware money trough buying something from the shop a little odd right from the beginning. I don't need physical media, never bought Slackware or other GNU/Linux distros on them - unless you count this CD-ROMs which are enclosed with Linux paper magazines.

I think crowdfunding a project directly or donating to it directly is a more honest way. Maybe crowdfunding on a regular basis, like Eric suggested in his blog, would be the best solution.

Another one would be to ask the Linux Foundation to support Slackware, at least partially. People may argue, that Slackware is a niche distribution nowadays. But I think it is still important enough: I have no idea on how many servers Slackware is runnnig, but not too long ago I made a comparison of (free available) Unix/Linux distros suitable for servers regarding the life cycle.

• Debian: 5 years (3 yrs. main support and 2 yrs. LTS)
• Ubuntu Server: 5 years (3 yrs. main support and 2 yrs. LTS)
• CentOS: 7 years
• OpenSuse: 3 years
• FreeBSD: 5 years
• Slackware: approx. 7 to 9 years (13.0 was supported for 9 years, 13.37 for 7 years. 14.0, released 2012, is still supported)

Important security updates are still coming in for Slackware 14.0, and with high steadiness. In my opinion this makes Slackware one of the most (if noth THE most) reliable enterprise-grade GNU/Linux distro for servers. Hell, it even beats RedHat/CentOS with that support time frame. Sure, it is not official, but looking at the table at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slackware#Releases it shows, that Slackware in it's entire history hasn't gone anything below 5 years of support.

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Donated. And will continue to donate.

When I first came to Linux 15 years ago, I tried out a number of distributions before settling on Slackware. I've always enjoyed its stability and dependability and I thought I was doing the right thing by signing up for a subscription at the Slackware Store. I, too, have canceled that subscription and will be donating directly to Pat whenever a new release is made. Ironically, I kind of liked having the shiny discs every now and again when a new version would come from the store, but I am horrified to learn that he was getting so little of the money I had spent.

I've been where Pat is and far worse - having had to live out of my 1965 Chevy van for a year - but Pat really is in even worse than I was as he has a wife and child and as we can all see now, as bad as that is, he still puts his heart into his *other* child also, Slackware. He refused to abandon it.

For someone with that kind of courage, the Linux community as a whole needs to stand up and step up and help out, not just Slackware users. I sure hope more than just we users do send donations and sign up when he decides which monthly payment thing to use is figured out.

Now, onto other things...I *think*, donations through PayPal can be sent as a *gift* and they won't be taxed. There's something like that as I also use it that way to pay for things I get from eBay (for example) so I don't have to pay that damned tax.

I'm kind of leaning toward that Liberapay thing too, after reading a little about it and seeing it is more of a 'for the little guy' type of business, but if Pat goes for Patreon, I'll do that, whichever he chooses.

I still like DVD's. Yes, USB sticks are a lot nicer, but I sure do hope DVD's and BD's don't go away too soon yet...at least not until I can afford the nice *big* sticks that can hold the 61 (25GB/BD) BD's full of movies I own at the present time (average 20 movies per BD, each movie average 800MB).

People coming to this thread or seeing Slackware a little more now because of this situation, will want to buy a DVD or something, but now that the store is a No Fly Zone, where can they get Slackware?

If they're in a situation like me, where I have a satellite connection and am stuck to so many GB's per month (the one I can afford allows 10GB/mo), downloading an .iso can get problematic. So people will still need to be able to get a DVD somewhere. For those who can't download easily, perhaps pointing them to places like OSDisc.com, where they can get a Slackware DVD for around $6. It won't hurt Pat in any way since he's not getting money anyway from the store (or at least not until he's certain they've changed their ways!), but we don't need to shut out any way for anyone wanting to get Slackware at present. Anyone getting the idea I'm pitifully trying to explain here?

Okay, how else can we help? I have an Ultra VX500 power supply and lots of connection cords for it that you can have Pat.

I also have a TP-LINK N750 (model TL-WDR4300) router if you want it.

I also have a HP-6735B laptop, with a 120GB HDD. It has Windows 7 on it (I've turned of *everything* that even *thought* it might try to 'auto anything' (especially installing windows 10) on it), no webcam. I got it used a couple years ago because I didn't undertsand what Virtualbox was or how to use it and had some old ('98, etc!) games I missed playing, so got it for the Windows (ugh! shudder). Now that I have VirtualBox on my Slackware system, I don't need the laptop anymore. It's got scratches and marks and a few panel doors missing on the bottom of it (luckily though the things they covered are screwed in and won't fall out just because there are no panel doors on them!), no battery (way too expensive!!). Everything works, you'll just need to install Slackware on it so you can use it for work in some way. It's old as dirt, but any extra computer has *got* to be some kind of help, no? If anything, you can use it as a test system for seeing if new versions of Slackware install on it or not before sending it out to the public, heh heh.

These things I have are yours, just holler at me via a PM here (please, bite back thinking this is 'charity', stay proud, sir, and hold your head high still and know that this is just no different than a friend helping a friend. These things are doing *me* no good sitting here gathering dust, and even though they may be slightly old, I'm sure you can use at least the laptop for something constructive). So, PM me and give me an address to send them to.

Oh, and I've been using Slackware since 10.x, I've not liked hearing anything about 'systemd' and that sound thing it has now, but I'll still support Pat as I use Slackware 14.1 til I just can't anymore.

I also have donated to Patrick. I don't use Slackware anymore but I did in past. I still read posts on this forum though. There are some very insightful posts very often. You guys make a very interesting community the likes I have not found on other forums.

Just saw this thread. I will check in every now and then. Once you get a system set up, I will contribute. I hate PayPal. Hopefully you an get some kind of working store set up for 15's release.

@Volkerdi: have you managed to set up a patreon account?

Rent a post office box and let us know the address.

I want Volkerd to continue.

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