FOSDEM 2010: Marketplace for Distros
At FOSDEM 2010 in Brussels, software that was declared dead was resurrected (Hurd), known combatants sat down at the same table (openSUSE, Fedora and Debian) and almost forgotten entities raised their hands again (openSUSE for PowerPC).
In contrast to last year's FOSDEM, visitors searched in vain for a lecture series by the major distros. Instead, organizers set things on a common track: "It was exciting to find out how other projects maintain their servers," said Klaas Freitag of openSUSE. "We run our Open Build Service from a central computing center, while other distros spread their computers across the entire world." Other talks concerned themselves with the need for, and relationship with, upstream maintainers or with issues surrounding community management. In one talk, former head of Fedora Max Spevack explained to those present at "Fedora Governance" what held the project together internally.
But not only the mainstream got heard. A few visitors were amazed about an operating system making a recurrence, when Olaf Buddenhagen asserted that "The Hurd lives." The Berliner worked on Hurd for his master's thesis while still in school. Likewise, KVM kernel developer and Novell worker Alexander Graf wants to reanimate openSUSE for PowerPC. Because he's employed to port the KVM Linux virtualization technology, he'd be happy to offer the distro with the Gecko to the Power platform, he told Linux Magazine Online: "If I can find a few comrades-in-arms to help me, it can be done by openSUSE 11.3. The KVM extensions for it are already completed."
Related content
-
FOSDEM Video: Micro Distro Summit
Nils Magnus of Linux Magazine Online pulled together the heads of three Linux distros for an interview and put them in a video: openSUSE's Joe Brockmeier, Debian's Steve McIntyre and Red Hat's Max Spevack.
-
FOSDEM 2009
More than 5,000 people gathered in Brussels for FOSDEM 2009. Attendees learned to guard their in-demand netbooks, and representatives from major open source projects explained the agendas for upcoming releases.
-
Fosdem 2010
A friendly atmosphere during a geek interpretation of square dance; a free exchange of technical ideas; praise from veterans: Fosdem, the volunteer-organized conference in the heart of Europe, has many faces.
-
KDE OBS Generator Builds KDE Packages for Various Distros
Building distro-specific packages is not one of the strengths of most developers. The KDE OBS Generator should solve this problem with the help of openSUSE Build Services.
-
FOSDEM 2007
On February 24 and 25, around 4,000 geeks gathered in Brussels, Belgium, for the Free and Open source Software Developers European Meeting (FOSDEM).
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
EndeavorOS Mercury Neo Available
A new release from the EndeavorOS team ships with Plasma 6.3 and other goodies.
-
Fedora 42 Beta Has Arrived
The Fedora Project has announced the availability of the first beta release for version 42 of the open-source distribution.
-
Dash to Panel Maintainer Quits
Charles Gagnon has stepped away as maintainer of the popular Dash to Panel Gnome extension.
-
CIQ Releases Security-Hardened Version of Rocky Linux
If you're looking for an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that is hardened for business use, there's a new version of Rocky Linux that's sure to make you and your company happy.
-
Gnome’s Dash to Panel Extension Gets a Massive Update
If you're a fan of the Gnome Dash to Panel extension, you'll be thrilled to hear that a new version has been released with a dock mode.
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.