Days and nights at FOSDEM 2009
Belgian Holiday
More than 5,000 people gathered in Brussels for FOSDEM 2009. Attendees learned to guard their in-demand netbooks, and representatives from major open source projects explained the agendas for upcoming releases.
FOSDEM 2009 organizers recently gathered the European open source developer community to Brussels (Figure 1). Information and notebooks were in such demand that at least two participants reported their devices stolen. Kernel developer and current CTO of the Linux Foundation, Ted Ts'o, was one of the unfortunates.
Ts'o was prepared for the mishap, however, and had a backup notebook with which he demonstrated the advantages of, and road map for, the new ext4 filesystem to the more than 5,000 participants. The new filesystem expands the ext2 and ext3 formats and is still able toread them. Copying an ext3 to a newly installed ext4 allows a faster filesystems check, according to Ts'o. New data structures called extends facilitate the speed increase as they address an array of blocks instead of individual accesses.
Most presentations and workshops were organized largely independently by a mere two dozen projects. Nonetheless, organizers covered a large spectrum of topics, albeit with variable content depth.
In a keynote, for example, Mark Surman of the Mozilla Foundation gave a vague account of the effects of the netbook surge and Mozilla's goal to help customers explore the Internet. Bdale Garbee, Chief Debian at HP, might have tabulated the many innate qualities of the distro, but shied away from announcing its next release. Later on, Steve McIntyre not only announced Kurt Roeckx as the new Debian project secretary, but finally revelaed the project's plan to release Lenny on Valentine's day.
With more than a dozen concurrent developer rooms, the event was a success despite the persistence of previous years' worrisome air quality and the fact that real technological advancements were presented in a somewhat subdued context (Figure 2). Mark your calendars for FOSDEM 2010.
Conf Talk
We talked to the heads of three major Linux distros during the conference. OpenSUSE's Joe Brockmeier, Debian's Steve McIntyre, and Red Hat's Max Spevack explained their agendas for upcoming releases as well as the projects' philosophies. Although the representatives from Debian and Red Hat's Fedora share philosophies, representatives from openSUSE and Fedora see more eye-to-eye on technological terms. The three interviewees discussed what differences they see in their distros, how they can work together, and what their organizations can contribute. See the video interview online [1].
Infos
- Anika Kehrer, Nils Magnus: "FOSDEM Video: Micro Distro Summit": http://www.linux-magazine.com/online/news/fosdem_video_micro_distro_summit
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Canonical Releases Ubuntu 24.04
After a brief pause because of the XZ vulnerability, Ubuntu 24.04 is now available for install.
-
Linux Servers Targeted by Akira Ransomware
A group of bad actors who have already extorted $42 million have their sights set on the Linux platform.
-
TUXEDO Computers Unveils Linux Laptop Featuring AMD Ryzen CPU
This latest release is the first laptop to include the new CPU from Ryzen and Linux preinstalled.
-
XZ Gets the All-Clear
The back door xz vulnerability has been officially reverted for Fedora 40 and versions 38 and 39 were never affected.
-
Canonical Collaborates with Qualcomm on New Venture
This new joint effort is geared toward bringing Ubuntu and Ubuntu Core to Qualcomm-powered devices.
-
Kodi 21.0 Open-Source Entertainment Hub Released
After a year of development, the award-winning Kodi cross-platform, media center software is now available with many new additions and improvements.
-
Linux Usage Increases in Two Key Areas
If market share is your thing, you'll be happy to know that Linux is on the rise in two areas that, if they keep climbing, could have serious meaning for Linux's future.
-
Vulnerability Discovered in xz Libraries
An urgent alert for Fedora 40 has been posted and users should pay attention.
-
Canonical Bumps LTS Support to 12 years
If you're worried that your Ubuntu LTS release won't be supported long enough to last, Canonical has a surprise for you in the form of 12 years of security coverage.
-
Fedora 40 Beta Released Soon
With the official release of Fedora 40 coming in April, it's almost time to download the beta and see what's new.