Talks | Ohio LinuxFest 2009
Talk Descriptions
We're proud to have a strong selection of talks this year, from the highly technical to simply fun. Come hear about the internals of Linux, exciting tools and toys in the Open Source worlds, what you can do for Open Source -- and what Open Source can do for you!
Keynote Talks
Morning Keynote Saving the Economy with Linux Shawn Powers
Free health care, free stimulus money, free cash for clunkers -- and yet as a nation we seem to be tied to expensive, proprietary software. Shawn preaches, evangelizes, and even laments about how as Linux users we can effectively change the way our nation and world look at technology. While certainly Linux is free, the process of integration isn't. Money invested in the process, however, would go to working people, not huge corporations. Highlighting the strengths and weaknesses Linux faces on its path to world domination, Shawn discusses some practical ways we can all help fix the economy, one byte at a time.
Evening Keynote A Surfeit of Sophistication Dr. M. Douglas McIlroy
Hidden complexity in the service of simplicity is no vice. But one's heart sags in the face of complexity that bubbles to the surface in hundred-page "man pages" and thousand-line makefiles.
Software advances more often by sophistication (complication for the benefit of congoscenti) than by simplification (making powerful technique accessible). Unix began as a great example of the latter, but its proliferation into Linux/Gnu mainly illustrates the former.
Sophistication, unfortunately, is the easy way to get noticed, while simplification is often subliminal. As an unabashed cheerleader for the underdog, I will try to redress the imbalance by looking at some incidents large and small of the the tug-of-war between these two poles.
Friday Talks
Linux, Enterprise Security and the Blame Game by Michael Hansell
This talk is about the cycle of how security is done in the enterprise environment, as well as where Linux fits into
that environment. We will also cover the frustrations that managers feel when trying to integrate, and why there's a need to have a solid entity to blame.
Editing Video on Linux with Blender by Klaatu
HOWTO edit video in Linux using Blender, how to construct a successful workflow for multimedia, how to analyze and understand video codec problems, and choose the best output for delivery. Cake will be served.
Journey into Ruby on Rails by Jon Daniel
For awhile there Ruby on Rails really seemed like the new hotness, but
after reality set in some started to question if they had really made
the right decision. In this talk we'll learn about a developer's
journey into finding a way to build a solid Ruby on Rails deployment
system. How what at first seemed so simple and so straight forward
turned into a winding path of decisions (and a few dead ends).
Podcasts! hosts and listeners unite! featured podcasters will be: Dave Yates from Lotta Linux Links, Aaron Newcomb from The Source video cast, Everyone from TLLTS, Klaatu from Hacker Public Radio and Linux Cranks, threethirty from TLLTS and Linux Cranks, Russ Wenner from The Techie Geek, and lots of podcast listeners! Bring old hardware and software you might have to swap and trade or give away for the First Annual Techie Geek Tech Gear Swap Meet! ZOMG!!!
Open Street Map by Richard Weait.
OpenStreetMap.org creates and provides free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them. The project was started because most maps you think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive, or unexpected ways.
This presentation will introduce you to the breadth and depth of OpenStreetMap and related projects. You will learn why you should care about maps, how OpenStreetMap is beating every other map, and see some of the amazing things that are being done with OpenStreetMap data and software. The presentation will bring those with little or no OSM experience up to speed quickly and show how to use OpenStreetMap to make the maps you need.
This topic and presentation is suitable for those with no previous Linux experience as well as the Linux regulars. You can even bring your non-programming friends and colleagues to this presentation if they have any interest in maps, GPS, neighbourhood advocacy, hiking, cycling, snow sleds or geocaching.
Saturday Talks
Be A Wonk! Open Source, Government
Policy, and You by Patrick
Wagstrom
Decisions made by 70 year old men who have never
used a computer affect you. Whether made by government,
corporations, or anyone else, technology policy decisions frequently
make life more difficult for Open Source developers and users alike.
This talk will discuss a selection of policy issues and explain
how you can get involved and shape the debate at the local and
National levels.
BSD For Linux Users by Dru
Lavigne
This talk will discuss the differences between BSD
and Linux from an end user's point of view and introduce some of the
cool features available on BSD systems.
Building a Community Around Your
Project by Jorge Castro
Last year my friend Ryan Paul started the gwibber project, a
client for Twitter/identi.ca for GNOME. Together we nurtured and grew
a community around the project, but learned some tough lessons about
how to run a project that no one ever tells you until you screw it up
yourself. In this session I will talk about crossing that chasm from
hobby to a healthy open source project - including things to avoid
and things to experiment with.
Drupal Kickstart by Doug Vann.
Warner Brothers, NASA, The White House, Harvard, Popular Science Magazine &
others use Drupal to deliver their message.
LEARN: Terminology & Startup tips to get your 1st site developed. Why Drupal won the overall 2008
Open Source CMS award and the Best PHP Open Source CMS. Different Ways to Install Drupal How Content is structured and Created. Essential
modules for beginners. Interacting with the community and getting
support. How Drupal makes you look like a rockstar to your clients. Q&A
Session.
Talk to Doug about Drupal before the event on our forums
Getting Started in Free and Open
Source by Cat Allman
Cat Allman will present this talk for beginners who are
interested in getting involved with free and Open Source software but
don't know where or how to start. We cover the basics of: - Ways to
participate - How to chose a project and get started - Dos and don't
of joining a community
The overall focus is on encouraging people to
get involved successfully with the project of their choice.
How I Learned to
Stop Worrying and Love PXE Booting by Eric
Wolfe
This presentation is all about the boot loader,
syslinux, and its network-boot cousin, pxelinux. Throw away all
your unreliable floppy utilities, and trade them in for a menu-driven
network bootable library of utilities. Resize partitions with
PartedMagic; reset Windows passwords with chntpw; wipe hard disks
with Darik's Boot and Nuke; boot DOS-based utilities with FreeDOS
floppy images; perform Kickstart installs of RHEL, Fedora, and
Ubuntu.
How To Use Open Source to Pay For a College Education
by Elizabeth Garbee
No matter what manner of higher learning institution one might apply
for, that education represents a significant monetary investment. In
this talk, Elizabeth will explain how you can go about helping to pay
your way through school using completely open source software. She will
describe how becoming involved in the open source community has helped
ready her for a college environment, the scholarships she is currently
applying for, and how she is tackling each one with a different set of
entirely free software applications.
The Importance of 1969
by Peter Salus
In January 1969 the planning that resulted in the Internet and the Web was begun.
At the end of that year, on December 28, Linus Torvalds was born. Join Peter
as he tracks that year and the influences that have brought us to Columbus.
An Introduction to GNOME 3.0
by Paul
Cutler
Paul Cutler of the GNOME Foundation will introduce
users to GNOME 3.0, currently scheduled to be released in March,
2010. GNOME 3.0 features an innovative new user experience in
GNOME Shell, a new way to access and manage your documents using
GNOME Zeitgeist, and a number of improvements in the developer
platform.
Legalities of FOSS From a Hacker's
Perspective by Tom 'Spot'
Callaway
Commonly misunderstood, software licensing is an
important part of ensuring that your Free Software is able to be
widely used and hacked on. In this presentation, I'll go over some of
the common licenses and licensing mistakes, as well as discussing
some legal scenarios and conditions that complicate the world of
FOSS. In addition, I'll explain why Fedora has made some of the
choices it has made, concerning legal exclusions and actions.
Linux Boot Process by Daniel
Washko
This talk will cover the Linux boot process from post
to login, highlighting the differences between distributions and how
to identify problem areas. Related scripts to initialize hardware and
services will be explored. Past and current technologies will be
reviewed and future enhancements and replacements will be commented
on.
OpenSIM: Open Source 3D Worlds
by Sean Dague
Like the idea of
SecondLife but want to be in control of the environment? Then OpenSim
(http://opensimulator.org) is for you. OpenSim is an open source 3D
Application Server that you can easily use for all these tasks. Out
of the box it provides a VW like experience, and it can be easily
modified for building custom 3D interfaces. This talk will give a
brief overview of OpenSim, demo it in action, and show some ways you
can extend OpenSim for your own purposes.
Open Source Software + Community
Workshop = Democratized Design by Alexander
Bandar
Coupling open source software to increasingly
sophisticated at-home manufacturing machines can empower individuals
with the capacity to design and create new products. Combined with
the ability to distribute engineering plans and the marketplace of
ideas available online, this has the potential to accelerate the
evolution of design itself. When people can design and produce
products for practical and entertainment use, in a democratized, DIY
manner, society is improved.
Programming for the Young and the
Young at Heart by Mike Badger
Learn why Scratch makes an ideal language to teach your children
(8 and up), your students, or yourself the basics of programming by
creating games, interactive stories, and multimedia projects. Scratch
uses a fun, accessible environment that's as easy as dragging and
dropping blocks. We'll create a sample project that demonstrates the
'basics' of Scratch. We'll also connect a webcam and a sensory board
to use real-world input for our project.
Python for Linux System
Administration by Vern Ceder
This talk will demonstrate why Python is an excellent language
for Linux system administration. We will work through examples
showing how to use Python to manage users, resources and backups and
how to make Python connect to other systems via ssh. We'll also see
how Python's syntax and layout make it easier to understand and
maintain than most languages, meaning that you can do more sooner. A
brief guide to books, mailing lists, tutorials, and other resources
will also be provided.
Shared Destiny: 40 Years of Unix, 40
Years of VM, and How They Came Together by David
Boyes and Scott Courtney
As
UNIX was being born at Bell Labs, the VM operating system was being
born at IBM. Though mainframe Linux is a comparatively recent
phenomenon, VM and UNIX share common roots that are subtle but deep,
with a rich heritage of open source code, community involvement, and
developer passion. Scott Courtney and David Boyes explore the history
of VM that led it to be such a fine platform for Linux, and how UNIX
and UNIX tools evolved in the mainframe hardware environment in the
decades before Linux.
So You Think You Can Dance? Samba in
the Real World by Don
Vosburg
Samba is a terrific file sharing project - but how
well can you dance? Hear real world examples of hot to swing with
Samba. We will explore integration with existing networks, or
standing up your own Samba domain. The emphasis will be on creating a
practical Samba server environment, and making it robust as well.
Look for some strong tips, a few tricks, and a start on best
practice. Demonstrations will be shown as well.
reStructuredText: Plain Text Gets
Superpowers by Catherine
Devlin
Write a document, just once, in plain text. Enjoy all
plain text's benefits - speed, simplicity, searchability,
codeability, choice of editors, version control. Now, from this
single plain text source, automatically generate
beautifully-formatted webpages, presentations, .PDFs, auto-indexed
documentation trees, and more. It's time you learned
reStructuredText!
Sysadmins' Rosetta Stone by
Mackenzie Morgan
"There's
more than one way to do it," the Perl mantra, is true in the
wider Linux world too. What's a Red Hat Certified Engineer to do when
handed a Debian machine with its unorthodox runlevels? What's a
Debian or Ubuntu admin to do when they encounter Red Hat's
/etc/sysconfig/ directory? This talk aims to demystify the
differences between The Debian Way and The Red Hat Way for the
average system administrator.
Taking the Sting Out of
the OWASP Top 10 with Mutillidae by Chris
Teodorski
The OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project)
Top 10 List is a consensus based list of the most prevalent and
critical web application security flaws. The document is a great
resource for web application developers and people charged with web
application security. Reading about the top 10 vulnerabilities is one
thing, experiencing and exploiting them first hand provides a whole
new level of insight into how they work and how you can prevent
introducing them into your web application. Unfortunately, unless
you've been specifically tasked with penetration testing an
application, it can be difficult (and illegal) to get some real hands
on experience with these flaws and vulnerabilities.
For my talk, I will examine the OWASP Top 10 and the open source and deliberately vulnerable web application Mutillidae (and others if time allows) to see how the web application developer and security tester can use Mutillidae to practice their skills and at the same time learn how the top 10 work and how to prevent them.
The Ubuntu Kernel by Peter
Graner
This talk is an overview of the Ubuntu Linux Kernel.
Topics covered are: team composition, development process,
distributed & collaborative development model, feature &
version selection process and an open Q&A session.
Understanding Debian by Bdale Garbee
The community of contributors to the Debian distribution and its many
derivatives play a substantial role in the Free Software world. As one
of the project's longest-serving contributors, in this session Bdale
will share his observations about why Debian has been so successful, and
some challenges for the future. Learn how you can benefit either by
participating in Debian directly, or by applying lessons learned from
Debian history to other open source projects.
Developing for non-x86 targets using QEMU by Rob Landley and Mark Miller
Emulation allows even casual hobbyist developers to build and test the
software they write on multiple hardware platforms from the comfort of their own laptop. QEMU is rapidly becoming a category killer in open source
emulation software, capable of not only booting a knoppix CD in a window but
booting Linux systems built for arm, mips, powerpc, sparc, sh4, and more.
This panel covers application vs system emulation, native vs cross compiling
(and combining the two with distcc), using qemu, setting up an emulated
development environment, real world scalability issues, using the amazon
cloud, and building a monster server for under $3k.