DebConf23 https://debconf23.debconf.org/ took place from 2023-09-10 to –17 in Kochi, India.
Four employees (three Debian developers) from NetApp had the opportunity to participate in the annual event, which is the most important conference in the Debian world: Christoph Senkel, Andrew Lee, Michael Banck and Noël Köthe.
DebCamp
What is DebCamp? DebCamp usually takes place a week before DebConf begins. For participants, DebCamp is a hacking session that takes place just before DebConf. It’s a week dedicated to Debian contributors focusing on their Debian-related projects, tasks, or problems without interruptions.
DebCamps are largely self-organized since it’s a time for people to work. Some prefer to work individually, while others participate in or organize sprints. Both approaches are encouraged, although it’s recommended to plan your DebCamp week in advance.
During this DebCamp, there are the following public sprints:
- Debian Boot Camp: An introduction for newcomers on how to contribute to Debian more deeply.
- GPG keys 101: Get your keys ready for DebConf’s key signing party: An introduction to PGP/GPG keys and the web of trust, primarily targeting those new to Debian who don’t have a GPG key yet.
In addition to the organizational part, our colleague Andrew also attended and arranged private sprints during DebCamp:
- Debian Installer hacking: Debian installer is a complex project with multiple components. We had an on-site d-i hacker, Alper Nebi Yasak, who guided us in addressing issues specific to zh_TW locale users in the Debian installer.
- LXQt/LXDE hacking session: LXQt and LXDE are lightweight desktop environments for Linux users. Our colleague Andrew Lee leads the LXQt team in Debian and also provided assistance to the LXDE team in the absence of their original team leader from Ukraine.
It also allows the DebConf committee to work together with the local team to prepare additional details for the conference. During DebCamp, the organization team typically handles the following tasks:
- Setting up the Frontdesk: This involves providing conference badges (with maps and additional information) and distributing SWAG such as food vouchers, conference t-shirts, and sponsor gifts.
- Setting up the network: This includes configuring the network in conference rooms, hack labs, and video team equipment for live streaming during the event.
- Accommodation arrangements: Assigning rooms for participants to check in to on-site accommodations.
- Food arrangements: Catering to various dietary requirements, including regular, vegetarian, vegan, halal, gluten-free (regular, vegetarian, vegan), and accommodating special religious and allergy-related needs.
- Setting up a conference bar: Providing a relaxed environment for participants to socialize and get to know each other.
- Writing daily announcements: Keeping participants informed about ongoing activities.
- Organizing day trip options.
- Arranging parties.
Conference talks
The conference itself started on Sunday 10. September with an opening, some organizational stuff, GPG keysigning information (the fingerprint was printed on the badge) and a big welcome to everyone onsite and in the world.
Most talks of DebConf were live streamed and are available in the video archive. The topics were broad from very technical (e.g., “What’s new in the Linux kernel”) over organizational (e.g., “DebConf committee”) to social (e.g., “Adulting”).
Schedule: https://debconf23.debconf.org/schedule/
Videos: https://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2023/DebConf23/
Thanks a lot, to the voluntarily organized video team for this video transmission coverage.
Lightning Talks
On the last day of DebConf, the traditional lightning talks were held. One talk in particular was noticed, the presentation of extrepo by Wouter Verhelst. At NetApp, we use bookworm-based Debian ThinkPad’s. However, in a corporate environment, non-packaged software needs to be used from time to time, and extrepo is a very elegant way to solve this problem by providing, maintaining and keeping UpToDate a list of 3rd-party APT repositories like Slack or Docker Desktop.
Sadya
On Tuesday, an incredibly special lunch was offered at DebConf: a traditional Kerala vegetarian banquet (Sadya in Maralayam), which is served on a banana leaf and eaten by hand. It was quite unusual for the European part of the attendees at first, but a wonderful experience once one got into it.
Daytrip
On Wednesday, the Daytrip happened and everybody could choose out of five different trips: https://wiki.debian.org/DebConf/23/DayTrip
The houseboat trip was a bus tour to Alappuzha about 60 km away from the conference venue. It was interesting to see (and hear) the typical bus, car, motorbike and Tuktuk road traffic in action. During the boat trip the participants socialized and visited the local landscape outside the city.
Unfortunately, we had an accident at one of the daytrip options. Abraham a local Indian participant drowned while swimming.
https://debconf23.debconf.org/news/2023-09-14-mourning-abraham/
It was a big shock for everybody and all events including the traditional formal dinner were cancelled for Thursday. The funeral with the family was on Friday morning and DebConf people had the opportunity with organized buses to participate and say goodbye.
NetApp internal dinner on Friday
The NetApp team at DebConf wanted to take the chance to go to a local restaurant (“were the locals go eating”) and enjoyed very tasty food.
DebConf24
Sunday was the last day of DebConf23. As usual, the upcoming DebConf24 was very briefly presented and there was a call for bids for DebConf25.
Maybe see you in Haifa, Israel next year.
https://www.debconf.org/goals.shtml
Authors: Andrew Lee, Michael Banck and Noël Köthe
Last weekend, DebCamp, which is the pre-event of the largest Debian conference worldwide – DebConf, started.
This years DebConf will take place in Taiwan from July 29th to August 05th.
After we already took part in this years MiniDebConf in Hamburg, we are now also going to visit Taiwan to attend the DebConf, also because credativ is sponsoring the event this year.
Even if the flights last 16 hours on average, the anticipation of the colleagues is already great and we are very curious what the event has in store for its visitors.
Lectures, Talks and BoFs
Meanwhile the packed lecture program has been published. There will be around 90 presentations in 3 tracks on the following 8 topics:
- Debian blends
- Cloud and containers
- Debian in science
- Embedded
- Packaging, policy, and Debian infrastructure
- Security
- Social context
- Systems administration, automation and orchestration
Many of the presentations can even be streamed. The links are as follows:
- https://debconf18.debconf.org/schedule/venue/1/
- https://debconf18.debconf.org/schedule/venue/2/
- https://debconf18.debconf.org/schedule/venue/3/
We are especially looking forward to the SPI BoF (Software in the Public Interest – Birds of a Feather) and the DSA BoF (Debian System Administrators – Birds of a Feather), in which our colleague and Debian sysadmin Martin Zobel-Helas participates.
Job Fair
For us at credativ, the Job Fair is of particular importance. Here we meet potential new colleagues and hopefully many visitors interested in our company. If you want to have a chat with our colleagues: Noël, Sven and Martin will be available for you at the Job Fair and on all other days of the event.
In addition to exciting discussions, we of course hope for one or two interesting applications that we will receive afterwards.
The Job Fair takes place one day before DebConf18, on 28 July.
Daytrip and other events
Of course there will also be the “Daytrip” this year, which will show the conference visitors the surroundings and the country. Participants have a whole range of options to choose from. Whether you want to explore the city, go hiking, or hold a Taiwanese tea ceremony, there should be something for everyone.
In addition to the daily breakfast, lunch, coffee break and dinner, there will be a cheese-and-wine party on Monday 30 August and a conference dinner on Thursday 2 August. Our colleagues will attend both events and hopefully have some interesting conversations.
Debian and credativ
The free operating system Debian is one of the most popular Linux distributions and has thousands of users worldwide.
Besides Martin Zobel-Helas, the credativ employs many members of the Debian project. Also our managing director, Dr. Michael Meskes, was actively involved in Debian even before credativ GmbH (1999) was founded. This also resulted in a close and long-standing bond with the Debian project and the community for credativ.
This article was originally written by Philip Haas.