LinuxCon 2009 Wrap-Up: The Continuing Benefits

The first LinuxCon may be over, but the knowledge and community shared at the conference will be around for a long time.

Expert sessions, informative keynotes, and multiple opportunities to kick back and socialize with Linux consumers of all stripes–these marked the flavor for LinuxCon. Attendees appreciated the balance of learning and information they got from the sessions–feedback from those I (unscientifically) surveyed was overwhelmingly positive, and I was asking for all comments, not just the good.

Some of the highlights of the conference include:

• Jim Zemlin’s opening keynote, which showcased the important numbers that surround the Linux ecosystem, such as 2,700,00, the number of lines of code added to kernel in the last year according to the recently updated “Who Writes Linux” paper from the Linux Foundation; 10,923, the number of lines of code added to the Linux kernel every day; and 5,547, the number of lines deleted every day.
• The relevation of the Fake Linux Torvalds’ identities: Dan Lyons, the ghost behind FakeSteveJobs and currently a Newsweek reporter; Matt Asay, CNET open source blogger and VP of business development at Alfresco; Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, former reporter and currently community manager for openSUSE; and Jono Bacon, Community Manager, Ubuntu. Followers of the FLT tweets voted Matt Asay as the most popular impostor.
• There are three big areas of opportunity for Linux in the near future: cloud computing, mainframe, and Linux’ future on the desktop. That was the main message of Monday’s keynote from IBM’s Dr. Robert Sutor.
• The hugely popular Linux kernel roundtable, an all-star line-up of Linux kernel developers who gave their take on what’s right–and what’s wrong–with the Linux kernel today. The panel’s members, Jon Corbet of LWN.net, Chris Wright from Red Hat, IBM’s Ted Ts’o, Novell’s Greg Kroah-Hartmann, and Linus Torvalds, founder of the Linux kernel, manned the stage to answer questions from panel moderator James Bottomley of Novell as well as many questions from the audience.
• It wasn’t all work: the well-attended Linux Foundation bowling party at Grand Central Bowling raised money for Defenders of Wildlife. The event was a big success, with teams comprised of friends old and new who banded together for a common cause. A lot like open source, come to think of it. Attendees raised $3,000 for the Defenders of Wildlife charity. Check out the video highlights.
• Brockmeier tapped into his pro DJ expertise music to entertain and inform the audience about how Linux can be perceived through the lens of rock and roll. Best comparison? Debian as The Velvet Underground.
• Addressing the LinuxCon attendees in his Wednesday keynote on “The Freedom to Collaborate,” HP Open Source & Linux Chief Technologist Bdale Garbee announced the launch of a new HP-sponsored web portal for supporting non-commercial Linux distributions and described the value of collaboration for businesses who use open collaboration.
• Speaking before a combined session of LinuxCon and the co-located Linux Plumber’s Conference, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth drilled home the concepts of cadence, quality, and design in the Linux development ecosystem, particularly cadence.

These events are just the tip of the iceberg for all of the great sessions hosted at LinuxCon. Alfresco’s Matt Asay had a stellar panel debating the real costs of Open Source, Intel‚Äôs Dirk Hohndel provided details of the exciting Moblin project; and Noah Broadwater, VP Information Services, Sesame Workshop gave great details about how Sesame deployed SUSE Linux.

Attendees at LinuxCon were the first to hear news about a new Moblin-based netbook coming to the market. On Wednesday that news was confirmed: at the Intel Developer’s Forum in San Francisco, Dell, Canonical, and Intel announced the availability of a Moblin v2-based netbook model, the Dell Inspiron Mini 10V. The 10V will run Canonical’s Moblin Netbook Remix and went on sale September 24.

There were quite a few giveaways, too. Qualcomm gave away Android-based phones to some lucky folks and Novell had a drawing for Chumby devices.

Words simply fail me at the outrageous Jeremy Allison as Steve Ballmer, host of the Linux Foundation Quiz Show. As always, he knows how to make this event one of the most popular spectacles in the entire Linux community.

And the whole thing was capped off by a tremendous end-of-show reception sponsored by Intel at McCormick and Schmicks. Outstanding food in a gorgeous setting near the event site.

There’s good news, too, for those who could not attend LinuxCon: You can register to view many conference sessions for $49. You can archive and pause the material to review at your leisure. Highlights include:

• Keeping Open Source Open–a look at patents, trolls and our friend in Redmond with Zemlin and Keith Bergelt from the Open Invention Network.
• Novell’s James Bottomley explained how to contribute to the Linux kernel and why it makes economic sense.
• John Ellis from Motorola on How to Manage Open Source Compliance and Governance in the Enterprise.
• Kernel developer Chris Wright from Red Hat examined KSM: A mechanism for improving virtualization density with KVM.

The wealth of knowledge gained by LinuxCon attendees will greatly benefit the community-at-large, because there are great new technologies right around the bend, and attendees have a great edge on capitalizing on that future.