Berlin, 16. May 2012 – Anyone who asks about the trends of the Open-Source-Season should look at the free lecture program of the LinuxTag. In about 200 lectures, almost all content about current topics related to Linux and Open Source is going to be included. Particularly exiting will again be the direction the keynotes of the lecture program are pointing. At the 18. LinuxTag from 23. Until 26. May it will be about far more than just the new developements in the technological area. It will also be about the contribution of Open Source to community work and civic participation. That the LinuxTag 2012 is far more political than its predecessor is evident with the first keynote on Thursday.
Policy and Citizens: Regain trust with Open Source methods?
Jimmy Schulz, Chairman of the project group “Interoperability, standards and Open Source” of the Commission of Inquiry about internet and digital society in the German Bundestag, has already in the past frequently took a stand to Open Source topics. In his keynote at the LinuxTag 2012, the FDP-parliament deputy wants to continue the thought in the 15 years ago held, legendary lecture “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” by Eric S. Raymond. The US-American had held his essay about the pros and cons of Open Source software for the first time on the 22. May 1997 on the fourth international Linus congress in Würzburg. Jimmy Schulz admits at the key word “Democracy 2.0”: “Policy has in the past years experienced a general loss of confidence. With its new ways of the digital participation, the parliaments and parties try to regain the trust they once lost. They do not only draw on OS software but also on the methods of their development.”
Jimmy Schulz is going to give his keynote on Thursday, 24. May 2012, 12 p.m. in Room London (Hall 7.1).
Compiler extension for transactional memory speeds up parallel programs
Modern CPUs have more and more core. To exploit the concentrated processing power, it requires an appropriate coordination at the access to the memory – a classical bottleneck in the programming. Modern supercomputers such as IBMs Blue Gene drew a lot of power from the concept transactional memory, while the numbers of cores can access it at the same time, as long as there are no conflicts. Since this spring, this modern technology is also announced for future intel-chips of the Haswell-series.
To make this milestone not only available for special programs, changes in compilers and standard libraries are required. Ulrich Drepper, maintainer of the GNU C Standard Library Glibc, is going to tell about the changes in the GCC 4.7 in terms of transactional memory and provides guidance for developers as they use this technology profitably in his lecture, for the first time in front of a large audience.
Ulrich Drepper: “I am confident, that this interesting new technology is not yet ‘on the radar’ of many people. The LinuxTag is a suitable forum for me to inform interested parties. However, it is not just about the information. It is also a large gathering of volunteers, who feel they belong to a group of people who create something meaningful. Since this group is physically scattered very far, there must be occasions like the LinuxTag, so they can focus.”
The Keynote by Ulrich Drepper is taking place on Friday, 25. May 2012 at 12 p.m. in Room London (Hall 7.1).
The Future of User-Interfaces is not only in the technology: Qt5
The third keynote of the LinuxTag 2012 is concerned with the outer skin of Linux applications, the user interface. For over 15 years many applications have been driven by a tandem: The KDE-project builds, since its foundation, strongly on the UI-library Qt. By a Norwegian company developed and later bought by Nokia, Qt is today driven further as an Open Source project under the concept of Open Governance. In this respect, the upcoming Qt version 5 is both in terms of community involvement, as well as in terms of technical challenges a milestone and includes many fundamental changes.
Lars Knoll, employee at Nokia, is chief maintainer in the library. For him, the LinuxTag has a very personal significance: “The LinuxTag 1998 was the first Linux conference I participated in. In it I see one of the most important events where the Linux community meets”, explained the chief developer and current manager.
He is supported by Corneilus Schumacher, president of the KDE association. The desktop KDE has all along been a symbolic companion of the Qt-library. He welcomes the new participation model at Qt: “With the, under the Open Governance model developed, verison 5, the KDE community can, for the first time, directly participate in Qt. This gives many new possibilities for KDE software on the desktop and beyond”, said Schumacher and announced to discuss the future of the Linux desktop. 13 years ago, it was also for him the entrance to the developer community. Ever since, he has remained faithful to the event. He describes the LinuxTag as an enormous catalyst for the KDE developers, who can thereby keep in touch with their users.
Date of this keynote: Saturday, 26. May 2012, 12 p.m. also in Room London (Hall 7.1).
LinuxTag-keynotes as the culmination point of Open Source trends
The, by the LinuxTag association appointed, program committee consists of Open Source experts, which have put together the enormous lecture program and the keynotes. Nils Magnus, chairman of the program committee, puts great emphasis on the selection criteria: “We invest, together with our main speakers, much time and effort into the compilation of the presentations. This does not include size of the company or marketing budget, but novelty- or specialty-effect for our visitors.” The high satisfaction values in visitor surveys about the lecture program are evaluated as evidence that it pays off to both the extensive selection process and the ongoing development of this format by Magnus.
About the LinuxTag
The LinuxTag is Europe’s leading exhibition and conference on topics relating to Linux and Open Source. The four-day event has been taking place since 1996, annually on the Berlin fair grounds since 2007. It offers updates for professional users, decision makers, developers, beginners and the community. The LinuxTag association is the ideal host for the event and is doing so alongside with the Messe Berlin VLC. For more information pelase visit http://www.linuxtag.org/2012/en.html.