Slackware

But Unraid isn't a driver.

It's a whole Slackware-based operating system.

It boots.

It has its own kernel, its own userland, its own web management stack.

Yeah.

I mean, I-- going back to the beginning, I started in the '90s with the Slackware Bible that I probably got at a Sam Goody or who knows what.

Yeah.

Um, and then I started volunteering in the Fedora Project right around Fedora Core 3, and, uh, Red Hat hired me about 19 years ago.

I've had a good time here.

Yeah.

I'm now remembering downloading the entire alphabet of floppies off the internet for Slackware.

Uh-

Security, of course, is always a top priority, and this week saw a raft of security updates across the Linux landscape.

Major distributions including ARM Linux, Debian, Fedora, Oracle, Red Hat, Slackware, SuSE and Ubuntu have each pushed important patches.

These updates span everything from the Linux kernel and tool chains to desktop applications and libraries, keeping the wider open source ecosystem resilient against new and ongoing threats.

If you're a system administrator, now's the time to review your update policies and make sure your machines are patched.

It was just if you plugged it in, it was on the internet, and it was sitting in my office.

I mean, this is Slackware before 1.0.

This is .99 patch 14 is what I, I think I loaded on this machine with floppy disks.

If anybody doesn't know what that is, look it up on Wikipedia or something, like it's a concept of how we used to move media.

I think we're all three wrong, including myself.

I totally forgot about Slackware because it hasn't changed at all.

Well, I mean, that would imply that peaking in high school that has kind of dropped off the clip.

Slackware is exactly the same.

Exactly the same for the last decade.

I mean, yeah, I think there's a difference between the categories of peaked in high school and just what was the one on the bench? Most likely to show up 20 years reunion unchanged.

Yeah.

Like here's the thing though.

if not the latest and greatest Linux kernel that's in that Rev7.

Can you explain a little bit what's significant about that, like what the advantages are? Because, right, we may be able to go back and dig up an old copy of, I don't know, Red Hat 5 or Slackware, whatever would be appropriate to a mid-90s ThinkPad and install that.

What's better about having a distro like this that's using the newer kernel?

I could imagine some advantages in terms of if you wanted to host something on hardware or even just understanding how system calls have changed, you know, that kind of thing.

Well, and then support for those modern packages, like the, the modern Pearl, because a lot of the, if you are trying to install newer software, it's not going to, it's not going to like a rev two or three.

Yeah.

There might've been changes to in Pearl that like, if I'm a modern, if I know modern Pearl and I'm used to X, Y, or Z paradigm, and that's not present in the, the, the Slackware shipped Pearl or whatever was, was contemporary to the time.

I'm imagining people coming up with some cool and unique things, and you can extend that to any language you want.

Security-wise, the past week brought a flurry of essential updates from leading distributions keen to protect users from recently discovered vulnerabilities.

Major distributions, AlmaLinux, Debian, Fedora, Red Hat, Slackware, Suze and Ubuntu, all rolled out patches spanning everything from databases and web servers to system utilities.

This rapid response showcases the power of the open-source security model, where distributed expertise and transparent processes allow for swift action when threats are discovered.

My advice? Don't wait.

Like, there's a lot of projects in the first world which were started, like, around about the same time.

Like, Debian and Slackware, I think they're, like, a month apart.

If I remember correctly.

I want to say it's, like, August and September or something.

Um...

Yeah, Debian started in August 93, and then Slackware...

Slackware was...

July.