Registration for Linux Plumbers 2023 is about to open towards the end of this week.
I’m sure everyone is excited! Remember that we tend to sell out rather fast. So you better hurry.
Registration to open soon
2023-06-14 – 09:04
CFP Open – Refereed Track Presentations
2023-04-02 – 13:41
The Call for Refereed Presentation Proposals for the 2023 edition of the Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) is now open. We plan to hold LPC in Richmond Virginia on November 13-15, 2023.
Submitters should ideally be able to give their presentation in person, although presenting remotely will be possible if necessary. Expectation is that the presentation will be done live in either case, to maximize audience interaction. Please see our website or social media for regular updates.
Refereed Presentations are 45 minutes in length and should focus on a specific aspect of the “plumbing” in a Linux system. Examples of Linux plumbing include core kernel subsystems, init systems, core libraries, windowing systems, management tools, device support, media creation/playback, and so on. The best presentations are not about finished work, but rather problem statements, proposals, or proof-of-concept solutions that require face-to-face discussions and debate.
The Refereed Presentations track will be running throughout all three days of the conference.
Linux Plumbers Conference Program Committee members will be reviewing all submitted proposals. High-quality submissions that cannot be accepted due to the limited number of slots will be forwarded to organizers of suitable Linux Plumbers Microconferences for further consideration.
Submissions are due on or before 11:59PM UTC on Sunday, August 6, 2023.
Preliminary Dates and Location for LPC2023
2023-02-02 – 16:18
The 2023 LPC PC is pleased to announce that we’ve begun exclusive negotiations with the Omni Hotel in Richmond, VA to host Plumbers 2023 from 13-15 November. Note: These dates are not yet final (nor is the location; we have had one failure at this stage of negotiations from all the Plumbers venues we’ve chosen). We will let you know when this preliminary location gets finalized (please don’t book irrevocable travel until then).
The November dates were the only ones that currently work for the venue, but Richmond is on the same latitude as Seville in Spain, so it should still be nice and warm.
LPC 2022 Attendee Survey Summary
2023-01-06 – 17:15
We had 206 responses to the Linux Plumbers survey in 2022, which, given the total number of in person conference participants of 401, and virtual participants of 320, has provided high confidence in the feedback. Overall there were about 89% of those registered, either showed up as in person or virtual. As this was the first time we’ve tried to do this type of hybrid event, the feedback has been essential as we start planning for something similar in 2023. One piece of input, we’ll definitely be incorporating for next year is to have separate surveys for in person and virtual attendees! So a heartfelt “thank you” to everyone who participated in this survey and waded through the non relevant questions to share their experience! 
Overall: 91.8% of respondents were positive about the event, with 6.3% as neutral and 1.9% were dissatisfied. 80.1% indicated that the discussions they participated in helped resolve problems. The BOF track was popular and we’re looking to include it again in 2023. Due to the fact we were having our first in person since the pandemic started, we did this event as a hybrid event with reduced in person registration compared to prior years, as we were unsure how many would be willing to travel and our venue’s capacity. The conference sold out of regular tickets very quickly after opening up registration though, so we set up a waiting list. With some the travel conditions and cancelations, we were able to work through the daunting waiting list, and offer spots to all of those on the list by the conference date. Venue capacity is something we’re looking closely at for next year and will outline the plan when the CFP opens early this year.
Based on feedback from prior years, we videotaped all of the sessions, and the videos are now posted. There are 195 videos from the conference! The committee has also linked them to the detailed schedule and clicking on the video link in the presentation materials section of any given talk or discussion. 72% of respondents plan to watch them to clarify points and another 10% are planning to watch them to catch up on sessions that they were not able to attend.
Venue: In general, 45.6% of respondents considered the venue size to be a good match, but a significant portion would have preferred it to be bigger (47%) as well. The room size was considered effective for participation by 78.6% of the respondents.
Content: In terms of track feedback, Linux Plumbers Refereed track and Kernel Summit track were indicated as very relevant by almost all respondents who attended. The BOFs track was positively received and will continue. The hallway track continues to be regarded as most relevant, and appreciated. We will continue to evaluate options for making private meeting and hack rooms available for groups who need to meet onsite.
Communication: The emails from the committee continue to be positively received. We were able to incorporate some of the suggestions from prior surveys, and are continuing to look for options to make the hybrid event communications between in person and virtual attendees work better.
Events: Our evening events are feeling the pressure from the number of attendees especially with the other factors from the pandemic. The first night event had more issues than the closing event and we appreciate the constructive suggestions in the write-in comments. The survey was still positive about the events overall, so we’ll see what we can do make this part of the “hallway track” more effective for everyone next year.
There were lots of great suggestions to the “what one thing would you like to see changed” question, and the program committee has met to discuss them. Once a venue is secured, we’ll be reviewing them again to see what is possible to implement this coming year.
Thank you again to the participants for their input and help on improving the Linux Plumbers Conference. The conference is planned to be in North America in the October/November timeframe for 2023. As soon as we secure a venue, dates and location information will be posted in a blog by the committee chair, Christian Brauner.
That’s a wrap! Thanks everyone for Linux Plumbers 2022
2022-12-03 – 04:55
Thank you to everyone that attended Linux Plumbers 2022 both in person or virtually. After two years of being 100% virtual due to the pandemic, we were able to have a very successful hybrid conference, with 418 people registering in-person where 401 attended (96%), and 361 registered virtually and 320 who actually participated online (89%), not counting all those that used the free YouTube service. After two years of being 100% remote, we decided to keep this year’s in-person count lower than normal due to the unknowns caused by the pandemic. To compensate for the smaller venue, we tried something new, and created a virtual attendance as well. We took a different approach than other hybrid conferences, and treated this one as a virtual event with an in-person component, where the in room attendees were simply participants of the virtual event. This required all presentations to be uploaded to Big Blue Button, and the presenters presented through the virtual platform even though they were doing so on stage. This allowed the virtual attendees to be treated as first class citizens of the conference. Although we found this format a success, it wasn’t without technical difficulties, like problems with having no sound in the beginning of the first day, but that’s expected when attempting to do something for the first time. Overall, we found it to be a better experience and will continue to do so in future conferences.
We had a total of 18 microconferences (where patches are already going out on the mailing lists that are results of discussions that happened there), 16 Refereed talks, 8 Kernel Summit talks, 29 Networking and BPF Summit track talks, and 9 Toolchain track talks. There were also 17 birds-of-a-feather talks, where several were added at the last minute to solve issues that have just arrived. Most of these presentations can still be seen on video.
Stay tune for the feedback report of our attendees.
Next year Linux Plumbers will take place in North America (but not necessarily in the United States). We are still locking down on locations. As it is custom for Linux Plumbers to change chairs every year, next year will be chaired by Christian Brauner. It seems we like to have the chair live in another continent than where the conference takes place. We are hoping to find a venue that can hold at least 600 people, where we will be able to increase the number of in-person attendees.
Finally, I want to thank all those that were involved in making Linux Plumbers the best technical conference there is. This would not have happened without the hard work from the planning committee (Alice Ferrazzi, Christian Brauner, David Woodhouse, Guy Lunardi, James Bottomley, Kate Stewart, Mike Rapoport, and Paul E. McKenney), the runners of the Networking and BPF Summit track, the Toolchain track, Kernel Summit, and those that put together the very productive microconferences. I would also like to thank all those that presented as well as those who attended both in-person and virtually. I want to thank our sponsors for their continued support, and hope that this year’s conference was well worth it for them. I want to give special thanks to the Linux Foundation and their staff, who went above and beyond to make this conference run smoothly. They do a lot of work behind the scenes and the planning committee greatly appreciates it.
Before signing off from 2022, I would like to ask if anyone would be interested in volunteering with helping out at next year’s conference? We are especially looking for those that could help on a technical level, as we found running a virtual component along with a live event requires a bit more people than what we currently have. If you are interested, please send an email to contact@linuxplumbersconf.org.
Sincerely,
Steven Rostedt
Linux Plumbers 2022 Conference chair
Linux Plumbers Conference Free Live Streams Available
2022-09-12 – 08:26
As with previous years, we have a free live stream available. You can find the details here:
LPC 2022 Open for Last-Minute On-Site Registrations
2022-09-02 – 15:07
Against all expectations, we have now worked through the entire waitlist, courtesy of some last-minute cancellations due to late-breaking corporate travel restrictions. We are therefore re-opening general registration. So if you can somehow arrange to be in Dublin on September 12-14 at this late date, please register.
Virtual registration never has closed, and is still open.
Either way, we look forward to seeing you there!
LPC 2022 Evening Events Announcement
2022-08-31 – 09:49
Linux Plumbers Conference 2022 will have evening events on Monday September 12 from 19:30 to 22:30 and on Wednesday September 14, again from 19:30 to 22:30. Tuesday is on your own, and we anticipate that a fair number of the people registered both for LPC and OSS EU might choose to attend their evening event on that day. Looking forward to seeing you all in Dublin the week after this coming one!
LPC 2022 Schedule is posted!
2022-07-29 – 15:50
The schedule for when the miniconferences and tracks are going to occur is now posted at: https://lpc.events/event/16/timetable/#all
The runners for the miniconferences will be adding more details to each of their schedules over the coming weeks.
The Linux Plumbers Refereed track schedule and Kernel Summit schedule is now available at: https://lpc.events/event/16/timetable/#all.detailed
The leads for the networking and toolchain tracks will be adding more details to each of their schedules over the coming weeks, as well.
For those that are registered as in person, you are free to continue to submit Birds of a Feather(BOF) sessions. They will be allocated space in the BOF rooms on a first come, first serve basis. Please note that the BOFs will not be recorded.
We’re looking forward to a great 3 days of presentations and discussions. We hope you can join us either in-person or virtually!
Microconferences at Linux Plumbers Conference: Rust
2022-07-09 – 13:50
Linux Plumbers Conference 2022 is pleased to host the Rust MC
Rust is a systems programming language that is making great strides in becoming the next big one in the domain.
Rust for Linux aims to bring it into the kernel since it has a key property that makes it very interesting to consider as the second language in the kernel: it guarantees no undefined behavior takes place (as long as unsafe code is sound). This includes no use-after-free mistakes, no double frees, no data races, etc.
This microconference intends to cover talks and discussions on both Rust for Linux as well as other non-kernel Rust topics.
Possible Rust for Linux topics:
- Bringing Rust into the kernel (e.g. status update, next steps…).
- Use cases for Rust around the kernel (e.g. drivers, subsystems…).
- Integration with kernel systems and infrastructure (e.g. wrapping existing subsystems safely, build system, documentation, testing, maintenance…).
Possible Rust topics:
- Language and standard library (e.g. upcoming features, memory model…).
- Compilers and codegen (e.g. rustc improvements, LLVM and Rust, rustc_codegen_gcc, gccrs…).
- Other tooling and new ideas (Cargo, Miri, Clippy, Compiler Explorer, Coccinelle for Rust…).
- Educational material.
- Any other Rust topic within the Linux ecosystem.
Please come and join us in the discussion about Rust in the Linux ecosystem.
We hope to see you there!
