LHS Episode #021: OSCON 2009 Update 2

OSCON 2009 Update #2 by Russ, K5TUX

Wednesday:

• “Btrfs: A new Linux file system”, presented by Valerie Aurora of Red Hat.

• Btrfs (B-Tree file system) is a possible replacement for Linux ext3 and ext4 filesystems.

• Features:

• seamless integration with multiple underlying devices, similar to LVM

• built-in checksumming

• on-the-fly snapshots

• (An interesting interview with Valerie is at Linux Magazine. -Ed.)

• “The Linux Defenders: Stop the Trolls, Protect Linux, Further Innovation”presented by Keith Bergelt of Open Invention Network.

• A discussion of freedom, intellectual property, prior art, and software development. The Open Invention Network buys software patents to protect them and not exploit them as a revenue stream.

• “Building a Private Cloud with Ubuntu Server”presented by Rick Clark and Søren Hansen of Canonical.

• Virtualization using Eucalyptus.

Thursday:

• “Why It Is Hard To Be Fast”presented by representatives from Intel.

• A discussion of the reasons why the pace of improving computer speed has slowed over the past few years.

• “The Role of Users in Open Source Projects” presented by Stormy Peters of the GNOMEFoundation.

• A discussion of why users are important to an open source project and how they can be more involved.

Friday:

• “The Art of Klingon Programming” presented by Paul Fenwick (Perl Training Australia)

• A hysterical talk about programming Perl in the Klingon language. (Unfortunately, we cannot find a link to the slides. -Ed.)

• Walking tour of The Tech Museum of Innovation.

• A behind the scenes look at the development of the museum exhibits. All of the technology used for the exhibits was developed with open source tools.