Bdale Garbee to keynote LCA

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Debian Guru to Keynote Linux Conference

linux.conf.au, Australia's premier open source conference, have announced their third keynote
speaker for 2013. Bdale Garbee is best known for his pioneering work with Debian, and for open
source community-building efforts with the Linux Foundation, Freedombox, and Software in the Public
Interest (SPI). He is a regular presence at linux.conf.au, wowing many recent conference-goers with
his rocketry exploits and other hobby activities turned into open source projects.

Bdale made his first contribution to free software in 1979, and has extensive experience in
hardware design, Unix internals and embedded systems. He recently retired from long service as HP's
Chief Technologist for Open Source and Linux, and now serves as President of Software in the Public
Interest, and on the boards of directors of the Linux Foundation and the Freedombox Foundation. In
2008, Bdale became the first individual recipient of a Lutece d'Or award from the Federation
Nationale de l'Industrie du Logiciel Libre in France.

The keynote speech, titled "The Future of the Linux Desktop", is inspired by Bdale's observation
that free software has been less successful in the traditional desktop and notebook markets than in
many other contexts. After a long period of optimism, it is becoming less and less clear when "the
year of the Linux desktop" might happen, if ever! Bdale will discuss how and why he thinks we ended
up in this situation, and offer thoughts on how the Linux desktop software community might refocus
on building a compelling Linux desktop environment. 

For more information on the talks scheduled to be presented at linux.conf.au this year, visit
https://linux.conf.au/programme/schedule. 

= About linux.conf.au =
linux.conf.au showcases the best of open source and community-driven software and hardware, and
it's coming to the Australian National University from 28 January to 2 February, 2013. The
conference provides a great opportunity for open source developers, users, hackers, and makers to
share their ideas and further improve their projects.

= Contact =
Michael Still (Conference Director)
+61 2 6140 4546
media@lca2013.linux.org.au