Schedule of openSUSE Conference

the openSUSE Conference kicks off in less than 6 weeks! The conference Paper Committee has been receiving and judging a lot of presentation proposals and while there is still time to send in papers, a number of sessions has been confirmed already. In this article we will present you some of these sessions!

Community and Project

The Community and Project track gathers talks around openSUSE and community activities, quoting the CfP page: “including but not limited to project governance, marketing, artwork, ambassador reports, collaboration with other FOSS communities and other topics”.

[caption id=”attachment_16090” align=”alignright” width=”212”] Find the geeko[/caption]

Currently accepted talks will introduce local openSUSE communities, intro the new ambassador and merchandising programs and discuss Free and open in general.

One particularly interesting subject will be openSUSE statistics. It is given by Athanasios Ilias “zoumpis” Rousinopoulos, student and Greek openSUSE ambassador from Spain (long story…) and Alberto “aplanas” Planas from the openSUSE team. They will each talk about numbers in a different area. Zoumpis is a MSc student doing research on doing quantitative analysis on communication in Free Software projects. He has studied the openSUSE repositories, mailing lists and bugzilla and extracted information from them. He will analyze the activity of the openSUSE community with interesting graphs and statistics!

Alberto has been working on measuring statistics before, during and after the openSUSE release. How many downloads does openSUSE have, how many installations? And where do these numbers go? This gives interesting insights in where we, as a community, are going and what options we have before us.

Geeko Tech

An interesting array of speakers will give attendees insight into the inner workings of openSUSE during the great workshops and talks on the Geeko Tech track. Although it often seems that openSUSE works by an act of magic, reality is that there are very dedicated developers behind it. Here is a snippet of sessions dealing with the more technical aspects of openSUSE.

Starting with the Open Build Service, Henne Vogelsang will deliver a two-part masters workshop on how to get your packages processed by OBS. Ranging from the conception of new packages to updates for older releases, Henne will show the way.

Making sure that openSUSE stays stable is important for a good User-distribution relationship! What started as a way to improve quality for the final release of openSUSE by Bernhard Wiedemann became a important project to improve development of openSUSE. Through his mighty Perl scripts openQA is able to provide information to users about the state of openSUSE’s stability during development. A workshop and a talk dealing with the subject will teach attendees to use openQA to find and report issues and build further test cases, helping make sure that we all have the best openSUSE available.

Other talks include Lars Vogdt presentation of openSUSE’s infrastructure, showing what’s behind building and serving a Linux Distribution; a review of what openSUSE can do to make a tastier Raspberry Pi, making sure that openSUSE’s installations are secure and how you can carry server virtualization through OpenStack in the size of a flash drive.

Surely there is a great variety for those tech enthusiasts who would like to find out more about openSUSE development. Do not miss out on these fantastic presentations!

OpenWorld

For this area we invite other FOSS projects to share their work and collaborate with the openSUSE community. Submissions are not limited to technical content, you may choose to talk about your favorite pet project such as building a boat, a robot, or anything else you care about.

Two prominent and disrupting Window Manager presentations make their way into the conference. The MATE desktop with the latest changes and features will join the illumined Enlightenment Desktop in two great presentations about their awesomeness. Since the inception of drastic changes to the most popular window managers Gnome and KDE, many have sought to find alternatives that sit better with individual needs. MATE attempts to bring back a traditional Gnome 2 experience even after Gnome moved their packages to version 3. Enlightenment being an old classic in the bunch but always with fresh and daring ideas makes its appearance on stage with great ideas on how to show speed and a polished system to manage your files.

[caption id=”attachment_14838” align=”alignright” width=”300”] Cafe allowed a sneak-peek into a talk room[/caption]

The Open World track helps you learn as well. Every morning Jos Poortvliet will teach you improved presentation skills and coupled with the presentation by Salih on how to evangelize Linux this becomes the perfect combo for those looking to help make more openSUSE adepts.

For those looking to dig deep into code, there will be sessions on Geeko Run, a game based on Javascript, talks on MYSQL 5.6, Puppet, Ruby, logical volumes, kernel hacking (centered around USB 3), and much, much more. Those attempting to make the grade will be pleased to know that LPI certifications will be available at the conference. You will not have to travel to a certification location, this time LPI comes to you and there will be exam rooms where you can pass your exam!

Now go and book!

The conference is soon but if you have not booked yet - there is still time. Go, prepare!