Bird-of-a-Feather Sessions

We have a great slate of bird-of-a-feather (BoF) sessions on Thursday evening! However, there are still a few BoF slots left, so proposals are still welcome here. First come, first served!

LPC closing party on the water

The Linux Plumbers Conference will have its closing party on Friday, August 21 at the Palisade Restaurant at Elliott Bay Marina on the waters of Puget Sound. Buses will be leaving from the Sheraton around 18:00 for the 15-minute journey to the restaurant. The evening will start with a champagne and seafood tower reception in the courtyard overlooking the marina. It will include shrimp, lobster, and oysters, along with plenty of vegetarian choices. There will be a buffet inside the restaurant after that with entrees including sushi (with vegetarian selections), salmon, risotto, and steak. All of that will be followed by dessert and coffee. There will be local wine and beer selections and all of the food will be locally sourced as much as possible.

It should make for a fabulous evening, with great views (perhaps even of Mount Rainier), and excellent company. We look forward to seeing you on Friday.

How to find Room WSCC 3AB

This year, because of space constraints, the single Wednesday Microconference track (for LLVM in the morning and the Development Tools Tutorial in the afternoon, see schedule for details) is happening offsite at the Washington State Convention Centre (WSCC).  Breakfast will still be at the Sheraton, but the rest of the Microconference will happen over at WSCC in room 3AB.  To get there from the Sheraton, take the escalators down to the ground floor, exit at the corner of Pike and 6th Avenue. Turn right on to Pike, cross 7th Avenue, continue a little way up Pike then turn right into the Convention Centre. Room 3AB is up the escalators on the third floor.

 

Wifi

Wireless in the Washington State Convention Centre is on a different system.  Unfortunately it’s portal based, not WEP key based, so we can’t hide the difference.  The portal details are

SSID: Exhibitor Internet

Which is an open network, then browse to any page and enter the login at the prompt:
USER ID: linux
Password: seattle

Thursday night reception for LPC

Thanks to the generous sponsorship of Intel, the Linux Plumbers Conference is pleased to announce that there will be an additional social event this year. On Thursday August 20th, we will be gathering at the Seattle Rock Bottom Brewery—just a short walk from the conference venue and hotel—for drinks and dinner in a relaxed setting. The evening’s event will be showcasing local beers, wines, and spirits, but some of the more standard items (like single-malt scotches and cocktails) will also be available.

Since there will be various BoFs and extended microconferences going later in the evening on Thursday, the event has been structured to accommodate that. The event will not have a buffet and will, instead, provide food made to order. It will run until midnight and dinner orders can be placed up until 23:30, so folks can show up any time and still get the food of their choice, hot and fresh. That said, if we all order right at the 18:00 start, the waiting time may get long. So, if you aren’t working late, a walk around Seattle (perhaps after popping in for a drink) would work well to put some space around the food orders. The Rock Bottom is a large venue with lots of tables for discussions and the like, so continuing a conversation there, rather than at the venue, will work out well.

We look forward to seeing everyone at the Rock Bottom on Thursday!

Microconference schedule now available

The Linux Plumbers Conference starts in less than three weeks and so the schedule for Microconferences is now available!  Looking forward to seeing you all there!

General Registration is now Closed

We’re pleased to announce that thanks to overwhelming support, interest in Linux Plumbers Conference has exceeded expectations.  The downside is that the conference is now officially full. Originally we were going to post a warning today, but a sudden surge of corporate registrations caught us off guard, so we had to close immediately.

If you still haven’t registered but would like to participate, contact us. We are running a waiting list on a first come first serve basis but with priority given to people who have accepted microconference topics. You could also try to use one of the sponsors tickets if your employer can provide one to you.

We look forward to seeing you in Seattle for a memorable conference.

Graphics Microconference Accepted into 2015 Linux Plumbers Conference

Although the Year of the Linux Desktop has yet to arrive, a surprising number of Linux users nevertheless need graphics support. This is because there have been a number of years of the Linux smartphone, the Linux television, the Linux digital sign/display/billboard, the Linux automobile, and more. This microconference will cover a number of topics including atomic modesetting in KMS, buffer allocation, verified-secure graphics pipelines, fencing and synchronisation, Wayland, and more.

For more information on this important topic, see the wiki page.

Thermal Microconference Accepted into 2015 Linux Plumbers Conference

In stark contrast with decades past, thermal issues in computer systems now means much more than fans and heat sinks, and this microconference looks at some of the things that are now handled in software. The topics include the thermal framework, handling of temperature sensors, and different approaches to handling overtemperature conditions, ranging up to and including closed-loop control. Of course, software that is not tested can be assumed not to work, and the best way to ensure that testing happens when needed is to automate it, so automated testing of thermal subsystems is also on the agenda. Coordination with userspace is useful in order to determine how best to shed computational load, as is coordination among multiple cooling devices.

For more information on this important new-to-Plumbers topic, see the wiki page.

File and Storage Systems Microconference Accepted into 2015 Linux Plumbers Conference

Despite having been in production use for many decades, file and storage systems are very active areas, and have retained the ability to provide many new-technology surprises. This year’s edition of the File and Storage Systems Microconference will look at improved error reporting, filesystem-level encryption in traditional filesystems, SMR drives, online fsck, persistent memory, smart block-layer support in traditional filesystems, better interoperability of and support for NFS and Samba, userspace filesystem innovations, and much else besides.

For more information on this topic, see the wiki page.

Boot, Init, and Config Microconference Accepted into 2015 Linux Plumbers Conference

The combination of security issues, kernel tinification, and a renewed concern about fast boot has intensified focus on system boot, initialization, and configuration, so much so that there is now a Linux Plumbers Conference Microconference focused on these topics.

In addition to secure boot and minimizing size and bloat, this microconference will delve into a number of topics related to boot speed. These topics include tuning systemd for embedded systems, optimizing and/or delaying memory initialization, deferring initcall-based initialization, introducing parallelism and multicore earlier in boot, speeding up early-boot I/O, pre-loading known configurations, speeding up installation, and of course improved timing and tracing analysis earlier in system startup. In short, the fast-boot work has definitely moved into the sub-second realm. A final bonus topic is better configuring for cloud- and container-based workloads.

For more information on this topic, see the wiki page.