Interview with Eric Hameleers: Why You Should Try Slackware

vinegaroon · 09-02-2009, 11:01 PM

Very interesting and informative.
Slackware rocks

Nylex · 09-03-2009, 12:37 AM

I enjoyed that too. Eric's becoming quite the star these days

. Thanks Bruce!

etienne · 09-03-2009, 01:33 AM

Thanks for the link Bruce.
A very informative interview...

mcnalu · 09-03-2009, 02:10 AM

Great interview Eric - and thanks for your efforts on slackware - I appreciate them every day!

You may be interested to know that I've managed to get slackware out of my home and into my work environment supplanting windows and ubuntu/mint. More subscriptions/donations to slackware are the result.

agentdcooper · 09-03-2009, 02:47 AM

thanks bruce! very good read, thanks so much eric, rworkman, and the rest of the slackware team! hooray, I be reading this on my slackware64 box right now... I must admit, I am sooo happy with it! imo it's the best release yet =)

job well done, with the interview and the release

Yalla-One · 09-03-2009, 02:53 AM

Eloquent and to the point, Eric! A great piece of Slackware marketing! Any hope you can get a link on Slackware.com's "Press Clippings" section? ;-)

-y1

rvdboom · 09-03-2009, 04:15 AM

Yep, very good! Thanks for the link and thanks, Alien Bob, for the 64bits port!

H_TeXMeX_H · 09-03-2009, 05:03 AM

Very informative, I didn't know exactly how slackware64 came to be ... most interesting to find out.

Another special thanks to Eric for making it possible, I think both he and Pat and the rest of the team made a good decision.

Quote:

We decided on a “template” for the scripts and then I began adapting them one by one with the goal of unifying the scripts for x86 and x86_64 architectures. Pat was sceptical about this at first, but in the course of the 13.0 development cycle he got sold on the concept because indeed, it pays off in the end when you can build both your ports from the same set of sources. We intend to carry it further even, because our two other ports (for S/390 and ARM platforms) are converging to the same source tree as well.

That is also a great idea IMO, if it can be done. That would make slackware even more accessible to those on other architectures, however it will likely not have as great an impact as slackware64 ... I'm sure there were many people who didn't switch to slackware because it didn't have official 64-bit support (or at least many more than the rest of the architectures).

allend · 09-03-2009, 09:02 AM

Quote:

There is of course a speed increase for computational applications. For the majority of users however, a 64-bit OS will not make a huge difference in their experience of Linux.

One thing I do appreciate with Slackware64 is the significantly shortened boot time.

Congratulations to Eric on the fine interview and the deserved recognition. I hope that the appreciation from users provides some recompense for the pain.

tfrei · 09-03-2009, 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GrapefruiTgirl

I enjoyed reading that!

Of course most Slack users are accustomed to seeing your name inside Slackware scripts, ChangeLogs, etc., but the interview has the effect of (how to best describe it?) sort of figuratively 'putting a face to the name.'
Some plain English conversation, as a small & welcome diversion from the usual context where we see your name: "<package-name> upgraded to..", or "Thanks to Eric Hameleers.."

Thanks Eric

Thanks Bruce, for posting the link.
Sasha

I concur with GrapefruiTgirl. The interview also brought to mind the human touch behind the total Slackware experience. I'm thinking of people like Eric, of course, but also Robworkman and mrgoblin and many more. These people always seem to have the time to offer their help to people just getting in to linux via slackware. Thanks to everybody. Pat V., of course, does a fair amount too.

Nille_kungen · 09-03-2009, 10:24 AM

Thanks Bruce for the link and Alien Bob for the interview and Christopher Smart for an interesting article.
I liked it allot

Linux.tar.gz · 09-03-2009, 10:33 AM

We love you Eric !!!

Anonymo · 09-03-2009, 10:59 AM

Who is Eric Hameleers? *runs*

Congrats, you convinced me again.

sahko · 09-03-2009, 11:05 AM

I was surprised i got this in my RSS feed reader only from Eric's blog this morning.
Furthermore since the previous of authors articles made it to most of the daily Linux sites i get feeds from.
No, this is not a conspiracy theory. It just seemed wierd.

This made it at LWN: http://lwn.net/Articles/350608/rss in the afternoon.

Very nice interview, i kind of wish Eric wasn't so sleepy and got into much more detail...

Alien Bob · 09-03-2009, 12:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sahko

i kind of wish Eric wasn't so sleepy and got into much more detail...

At least there is a lot of material left untold... good for another in-depth interview perhaps ;-)

Eric