The Free Lecture Program for LinuxTag 2011 reinforces the event’s position as the leading conference on Linux and open-source software in Europe. The LinuxTag Association’s website already lists over 200 talks and workshops to be held during the four-day event.
LinuxTag’s Program Committee of nine volunteers has chosen from hundreds of proposals, selecting talks in 25 key thematic categories, including open source software in the data center, in cloud management, in ITSM and in enterprise applications. System engineers and administrators will find all the latest information in lecture tracks devoted to security, IPv6, databases and virtualization. Programmers and software engineers will get all the news on Java, software development, web frameworks and web applications. Newcomers to the Linux world and “mere” users of the free operating system can hear the latest about distributions, desktop environments and productive shell use.
Nils Magnus, the LinuxTag Association’s Event Coordinator, said, “We’re delighted that the quality of the topics submitted keeps getting better. Our speakers propose topics that LinuxTag’s visitors can put into practice, and report on the latest innovative developments. LinuxTag is able to offer an interested audience understandable knowledge of fundamentals for practical use, as well as topics from current research and prospects of technologies that are on the way.”
Highlights: Open Source Software Goes to the Moon
Petra Kuhfuss, Project Leader for LinuxTag, emphasized the remarkable bandwidth of the lecture program: “On all four days of the fair and conference, our visitors will hear exciting talks by expert speakers on topics such as the latest scientific developments in lunar landing missions: Google has announced the Lunar X Prize, for which teams will compete by sending an unmanned vehicle to Earth’s natural satellite. Two of these teams will be presenting their scientific projects at LinuxTag.” Robert Böhme, scientific member of the Part-Time Scientists team competing for the Google Lunar X Prize, will report in a talk titled “QNX as a Real-time OS for Embedded Hardware” on the progress made by the team of 70 researchers and engineers from all parts of the world. The international project team plans to put a rover on the Moon and transmit live images back to Earth by the end of 2012. Another team competing for the Google Lunar X-Prize is c-base Open Moon. Marten Suhr will present his team’s approach: their moon rover c-rove will use open-source software, and will travel at least 500 meters on the lunar surface. Suhr is working on the rover’s 3D CAD design.
Trends and Faces: International Keynote Speakers
The list of speakers at LinuxTag 2011 is headed by Wim Coekaerts, Vice President of Linux Engineering at Oracle. His keynote will examine the continuing development of Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 as a multi-platform virtualization program under an open-source license. VirtualBox lets users run several guest operating systems simultaneously for more versatile or more efficient use of desktop or mobile computers. VirtualBox runs on many host operating systems, including all common Linux distributions as well as Windows, Mac OS X and Oracle Solaris. Bradley M. Kuhn is Executive Director of the Software Feedom Conservancy, a home for free, libre and open-source software (FLOSS) projects. The American expert kicks off the FLOSS track with an overview of the field and its pioneering outlook for the future. Steve Coast, the founder of the free cartographic project OpenStreetMap, reports on the project’s origins and development.
Critical and Practical: Clouds and Virtualization in Business
The talk of the IT industry is about clouds. In spite of their many advantages in regard to scalability and efficient utilization of resources, some IT decision-makers are hesitant to offload business-critical data and processes. Peter H. Ganten, founder and CEO of Univention, surveys the obstacles to a broader adaptation of Clouds, presents the pradigms of companies and government agencies, and reports on the fundamental importance of open-source software. Other questions include how users can make optimum use of cloud computing with the development model of open-source software, and what opportunities there may be in parallel use.
Administrators are meeting the need for quickly available, highly adaptable computation power with virtualization. Because of the multitude of different application scenarios, a number of talks deal in detail with the theme of virtualization: Feargal Mac Conuladh for one will describe how the native Linux virtualization system KVM and Qemu can be used to provide uniform desktops. The virtualization expert Gerd Hoffmann offers an introduction to the pertinent protocol, SPICE.
To what extent open-source software can be considered an enterprise-class alternative is the question that will be examined by Michael Kienle, CEO of it-novum and a board member of the Open Source Business Foundation. Kienle presents many case studies to illustrate how business processes are implemented with SAP ERP and open-source software.
“Smart Minds — Intelligent Solutions,” the title of a talk by Dr. Karl-Heinz Strassemeyer, the chairman of the industry association Linux Solution Group, promises to give resonance once again to the success of the open-source sector. Always a sparkling wit, Strassemeyer will treat his listeners to words of wisdom: “In the future, the computer will be the user’s intelligent partner. So the user had better be smart.”
Hard Facts and Technical Knowledge for Admins and Developers: From Apache 2.4 to PandaBoard
This year’s LinuxTag introduces a new format for system administrators and managers: the Admin Updates. Visitors learn the latest facts on basic packages such as Postfix 2.8, Samba 4, MySQL 5.5 and Apache 2.4. Designed for admins, these talks focus on changes and new features. In addition, the Admin Best Practices track explains how business users can organize the reliable performance of important tasks with Linux, such as troubleshooting and monitoring with Nagios.
Users interested in building their own multimedia devices can learn from Koen Kooi how to use video hardware acceleration on an experimental board with an economical OMAP 4 CPU. Kooi’s colleague Nipuna Gunasekera von Texas Instruments offers a complete introduction to the PandaBoard, and will be giving away boards to visitors with novel ideas. The fourth day of the conference, Saturday, May 14, will see presentations by practical DIY developers: Jörg Pleumann, for one, will talk about his model trains, powered not by steam, but by his own Linux software. Hector Martin’s presentation promises to be spectacular: his software controls a laser projector that he uses to draw figures in the air.
Full Spectrum of Linux Topics
Over 140 other speakers will shed light on the inner workings of the open-source movement, compare business models, and report on how companies and developers manage successful projects. The Free Lecture Program also includes time-honored LinuxTag traditions such as the Security Track and a whole day devoted to kernel development, with Linux developers on hand to answer the questions from the audience in the Kernel Kwestion session, a LinuxTag invention. And of course, the program wouldn’t be complete without the Hacking Contest and the Distro Battle.
About LinuxTag
LinuxTag is Europe’s leading exhibition and conference on everything to do with Linux, open-source systems, and free software. The four-day event has been held regularly since 1996, and at the Berlin fairgrounds since 2007. LinuxTag presents current developments for professional users, decision-makers, developers, newcomers and the community. In addition to the free lecture program and the Business and Government Conference, specially aimed at for companies and government agencies, LinuxTag also includes an exhibition by projects and businesses in the open-source sector. LinuxTag is organized by the non-profit LinuxTag Association, and carried out in cooperation with Messe Berlin GmbH. For more information visit: www.linuxtag.org