How To Survive LinuxCon

I’ve frequently been accused of packing too much into our Linux Foundation events, making it nearly impossible to choose one session without missing other “must attend” ones. At this accusation, I proudly raise my hand and say, “Guilty as charged.” But by admitting guilt, I am not admitting repentance. While Angela and Craig have ensured enough lunch, break and networking time, LinuxCon is a testament to the same Linux Foundation strategy of packing every session with great speaking talent and interesting Linux and open source topics. One look at the LinuxCon schedule and you will see we really haven’t changed at all.

But I’m here to help. I’ve put together my top “can’t miss” sessions, events and features of LinuxCon. Follow this, and be sure sure to hydrate, and you should be able to survive:

• The Linux Kernel Roundtable: Straight from the Source. Those of you who have attended Linux events in the past know that it‚Äôs virtually impossible to see the man himself, Linus Torvalds, speak. We‚Äôre lucky enough to get him to participate in this great panel with a killer round up of leading maintainers from the Linux kernel. With James Bottomley moderating and other great panelists like Greg KH and Arjan van de Ven, this is going to be interesting and standing room only, so get there early.
• A Musical Guide to the Future of Linux: Joe ‚ÄúZonker‚Äù Brockmeier. ‚ÄúWhy is Linux like the Ramones? Can Linux be the Beatles instead? An interactive presentation looking at where we are, and where we should be going next.‚Äù This session proves to be fun and thought provoking. Hopefully it will have some music, too.
• Implementing Enterprise Linux on x86 servers: Benefits, Challenges, and Things You Don‚Äôt Know That May Hurt You: Vinod Kutty, Chicago Mercantile Exchange.¬†¬† The CME is one of the world‚Äôs largest exchanges, and it runs on Linux. Vinod is an expert at the high data volumes, high performance and highly mission critical infrastructure of the CME. This should be a can‚Äôt miss session for anyone running an enterprise data center.
• Bowling for Penguins: Save the World, Have some Drinks and Challenge your favorite developer to a Bowl Off. Penguins may resemble bowlings pins, but in our case we are bowling for them, not with them. All that learning is sure to get you thirsty so Angela has put together a way you can create a team, have some drinks and raise money to save the penguins.
• Write a Real, Working Linux Driver: Greg KH. In this in depth tutorial, participants will get hands on instruction from the head of the Linux Driver Project on how to write their driver for Linux.
• The Online LinuxCon Community. In my experience, the best part of a conference is connecting with people face-to-face. We‚Äôre offering a special service to Linuxcon registrants to allow them to create their own custom schedule, connect with attendees ahead of time to schedule meetings or just start an email dioluge and be sure to make the most of their time at the conference. This is a fantastic service that I urge you all to use.
• Keeping Open Source Open: With OIN‚Äôs Keith Bergelt and our own Jim Zemlin. There is much interest in fighting patent trolls and large companies who threaten Linux with their patent portfolios. In this session, hear from the two leaders in the movement to protect Linux and keep open source open.
• The LinuxCon Wellness Lounge. I wasn‚Äôt kidding about ‚Äúhow to survive.‚Äù Attendees can make use of massage, yoga and other health services to keep them going though the conference. (Especially useful for those continuing on to Plumbers!)

I hate to end there since there is so much else going on. If you’re a Novell customer or interested in what they’re doing, there is a whole track to keep you up-to-date on Suse, Suse Studio and more. If you’re a Moblin or netbook fan, there is a keynote and many other sesions on Moblin and embedded/netbook development topics like power savings and a new connection manager for embedded devices. Enterprise customers have cloud computing, virtualization, containers, the Kernel Report and a great keynote from IBM’s Bob Sutor. Anyway, you get the idea.

We are counting down the days until Linuxcon (just about 6 weeks to go!), and hope to see you all there. If you’d like to register click here. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at amanda (at) linuxfoundation dot org.