linux.conf.au 2007

One interesting talk was Jono Bacon's discussion of Jokosher, a relatively new entrant into the crowded field of audio recording and editing tools. Jono wanted a simple and useful tool to help in the creation of podcasts and his particular variety of frenetic metal music, but the currently-available studio tools were rather intimidating in their complexity. So he made a new one, giving a lot of thought in the process to how it might actually be used. Jokosher features a simpler waveform display, large buttons (easy to hit by a standing guitarist), tools which don't clutter the display when they are not relevant, etc. Version 0.2 is usable; there is a 0.9 release coming soon. Your editor has not yet had a chance to play with Jokosher, but it's on the list for that mythical day (always next month) when he has some free time.

Virtualization was a hot topic at the event - registrations for the associated miniconf exceeded those for the Debian miniconf, the first time Debian has ever been upstaged. During the main conference, Rusty Russell, Jeremy Fitzhardinge, Zachary Amsden, and Chris Wright all got together to present the Lguest, Xen, and VMI technologies. It was good to see that many developers from competing projects (competing for business as well as for developers and mindshare) having fun together on stage, even if the short time slot did not allow for the conveyance of a great deal of technical information. Given the level of interest in Lguest, it really should have had a session of its own. An unexpected lesson from this session concerned the hazards of leaving a popup-enabled IRC client running on a network-connected laptop during a presentation. One does not normally expect one's slides to turn into a real-time wiki. The audience is to be commended for its restrained and tasteful use of this new communication path.

The kernel miniconf was well attended - to the point that it displaced Debian from the largest room. Your editor attended a panel session where various topics of interest were discussed. On Xen: "crap is good - it shows you how not to do stuff." The ongoing maintenance of 2.6.16 was described as "mostly irrelevant" and "a nice try." The developers expressed their general happiness with the new development model, and Linus Torvalds claimed that there would only be a 2.7 kernel when some smart new hacker wrests control of the kernel away. David Miller noted that he does miss the old development kernels, however; it is harder now to make major changes which break things for long periods of time. There was also a session on suspend and resume where a couple of laptops were made to work - with Linus, at one point, getting up and jumping into the process.

Open Day

A true high point of the conference was "Open Day," a sort of exhibit populated by people doing truly interesting things with Linux and more. The event was open to the public, with the hope that children, in particular, would attend. The display of enthusiasm, ingenuity, and just plain fun was breathtaking; it was an expression of the spirit which infuses the entire conference. Open Day showed off games (TuxRacer, Stepmania, Wesnoth, etc.), a home-made Segway-like device, serious amateur rocketry, the Qtopia Green Phone, Blender, MythTV, and much more. RepRap was worth the price of admission by itself; RepRap is a 3D printer which can create its own parts - and which is powered by free software, of course.

The reaction from participants and attendees was strong - it is hard not to be swept away by that many people passionately doing amazing things. Open Day is a great addition to the LCA program; hopefully next year's conference will do it again.

Andi Kleen talked about the "generations" of kernel hackers and how well they work with the development process. The Janitor Generation does useful work, but there needs to be better ways of graduating janitors to more complex projects. The "login name tree" generation created a proliferation of specialized kernel trees - useful before the arrival of BitKeeper, when the patch submission process was much more lossy. The "Russian mathematician" generation will be familiar to anybody who watches the kernel lists; Andi suspects that some of them are actually a room full of hackers working under a single name. The "deadline generation" has been brought about by the new kernel development process: there is now significant pressure for maintainers to get their patches in during the brief merge window period. Andi complains that kernel development used to be more relaxed before the merge window came into existence. The "bugmaster generation," alas, does not exist yet; it's an opportunity for somebody to become famous.

The final keynote was presented by Kathy Sierra, who is, perhaps, better known in the Java community. She talked about how to create passionate users - those who will put free software on their desktops and get their friends to do it as well. The ideas presented are the sort which seem obvious after the fact (help users "suck less" at what they do, provide "levels" like games do to reward increasing expertise, make a supportive community), but, all together, they make a compelling picture of how we can develop more empathy for our users and bring more people in. The talk was well received, and rightly so.

Linux.conf.au hit some interesting milestones this time around. At some 800 attendees, it was by far the largest LCA event yet. Even more significant is the fact that a full 10% of those attendees were female. Any community which feels that 10% female participation is worthy of celebration clearly has some ground to cover yet, but that's where we stand. 10% is a step in the right direction and a base from which the community can work to fully include a group of people whose energy and perspective is sorely needed.

It is hard to imagine an event better suited to bringing people into our community in general. Your editor has attended quite a few Linux and free software events on a number of continents, but there are few which bring together the combination of serious technology, community, and flat-out fun found at LCA. The LCA formula, which involves a fresh group of volunteers running the show with guidance from past veterans, does well at preserving a successful model while bringing in new energy and ideas. The result is one of the most vibrant, vital, and (increasingly) important free software events anywhere on the planet. Your editor hopes to be lucky enough to report from LCA2008 (to be held in Melbourne) next year.

[Postscript: one of the standout performances in this nearly flawlessly run conference is the group, led by Silvia Pfeiffer, which recorded the presentations. Recordings hit the web site while the conference was still open, and the rest are being added quickly. See the program page to view the talks - in free formats, of course.]