FOSDEM 2005 in Brussels, Belgium
DEVELOPER MEET
The annual winter meeting of Europe’s open source developers took place February 25-27 in Brussels, Belgium. Again the event was a mustn’t miss for thousands of contributors to free projects and a welcome opportunity for developers to exchange ideas outside the borders of their own communities.
In the fifth year since its inception, the FOSDEM (Free and Open Source European Meeting) developer conference remains true to its principles: free, as technical as possible, and only as commercial as needs be. This concept continues to draw increasing numbers of developers from all over Europe and the US. The big guns were all there; for example, Alan Cox, who has returned to kernel development after a break, Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales, Richard Stallman, Theo de Raadt from Open BSD, KDE founder Matthias Ettrich. The organizers talked of 3,500 attendees, but arrived at this figure by adding the attendees from both days. Realistically, the figure is somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 participants, as the majority attended both days.
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
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 is Available
Linus Torvalds has announced that the latest kernel has been released with plenty of core improvements and even more hardware support.
-
Kali Linux 2025.3 Released with New Hacking Tools
If you're a Kali Linux fan, you'll be glad to know that the third release of this famous pen-testing distribution is now available with updates for key components.
-
Zorin OS 18 Beta Available for Testing
The latest release from the team behind Zorin OS is ready for public testing, and it includes plenty of improvements to make it more powerful, user-friendly, and productive.
-
Fedora Linux 43 Beta Now Available for Testing
Fedora Linux 43 Beta ships with Gnome 49 and KDE Plasma 6.4 (and other goodies).
-
USB4 Maintainer Leaves Intel
Michael Jamet, one of the primary maintainers of USB4 and Thunderbolt drivers, has left Intel, leaving a gaping hole for the Linux community to deal with.
-
Budgie 10.9.3 Now Available
The latest version of this elegant and configurable Linux desktop aligns with changes in Gnome 49.
-
KDE Linux Alpha Available for Daring Users
It's official, KDE Linux has arrived, but it's not quite ready for prime time.
-
AMD Initiates Graphics Driver Updates for Linux Kernel 6.18
This new AMD update focuses on power management, display handling, and hardware support for Radeon GPUs.
-
AerynOS Alpha Release Available
With a choice of several desktop environments, AerynOS 2025.08 is almost ready to be your next operating system.
-
AUR Repository Still Under DDoS Attack
Arch User Repository continues to be under a DDoS attack that has been going on for more than two weeks.