Bernhard Rosenkränzer (born February 18, 1977) is the founder and main developer of Ark Linux (later merged into

OpenMandriva OpenMandriva Lx is a Linux distribution forked from Mandriva Linux. It is maintained by the OpenMandriva Association. History Origin of the distribution OpenMandriva Lx is a community Linux distribution. Originally an offering of Mandriva Linu ...

) and a contributor to various other

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

projects such as

KDE KDE is an international Free software movement, free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-know ...

and

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed), Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise ready LibreOffice) a ...

. To many in the Linux community he is known as "Bero", a concatenation of the first two letters of his given and surnames. His primary interest and work focus is in getting

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

and

ready for the desktop. Rosenkränzer entered

RWTH Aachen University RWTH Aachen University (), also known as North Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Technical University of Aachen, University of Aachen, or ''Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hoch ...

in 1998, where he studied computer science. Before he started classes, he optimized

Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux was a widely used Commercial software, commercial Open-source software, open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. R ...

by creating his own Linux distribution known as "BeroLinux". During his studies, he started working for Mandrake Linux (later known as

Mandriva Mandriva S.A. was a public software company specializing in Linux and open-source software. Its corporate headquarters was in Paris, and it had development centers in Metz, France and Curitiba, Brazil. Mandriva, S.A. was the developer and mainta ...

). Rosenkränzer later accepted an offer to work for Red Hat Linux as a

package developer. However, he quit the job due to differences with Red Hat about the future of KDE in Red Hat. Rosenkränzer also invented an improved system for satellite television distribution to schools in

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

. Until 2019, Rosenkränzer worked at

Linaro Linaro is an engineering organization that works on free and open-source software such as the Linux kernel, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), QEMU, power management, graphics and multimedia interfaces for the ARM family of instruction sets and im ...

, an organization dedicated to improving

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between the ...

processors. He also used to work for ROSA Laboratories, a company delivering their own custom brand of

Mandriva Linux Mandriva Linux (a fusion of the French distribution Mandrake Linux and the Brazilian distribution Conectiva Linux) is a discontinued Linux distribution developed by Mandriva S.A. Each release lifetime was 18 months for base updates (Linux, syste ...

for the Russian government. As part of this work, Ark Linux has been merged into

. After leaving

, he turned his side project, an Open Source company calle
LinDev
(short for LINux DEVelopment), into his main business. LinDev is currently involved with building the

Eclipse Foundation The Eclipse Foundation AISBL is an independent, Europe-based not-for-profit corporation that acts as a steward of the Eclipse open source software development community, with legal jurisdiction in the European Union. It is an organization suppo ...

'
Oniro
Embedded operating system and works with

Ampere Computing Ampere Computing LLC is an American fabless semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California that develops cloud native server microprocessors (CNPs). Ampere also has offices in: Portland, Oregon; Taipei, Taiwan; Raleigh, North Carolina; B ...

on ARM based Linux servers. In 2012, he has been involved with speeding up Linaro's Android builds by modifying

Bionic (software) Bionic is an implementation of the standard C library, developed by Google for its Android operating system. It differs from the GNU C Library (glibc) in being designed for devices with less memory and processor power than a typical Linux system. ...

and making better use of the toolchain. In 2017, he was the first to build and demo working prototypes of

AArch64 AArch64 or ARM64 is the 64-bit extension of the ARM architecture family. It was first introduced with the Armv8-A architecture. Arm releases a new extension every year. ARMv8.x and ARMv9.x extensions and features Announced in October 2011, AR ...

based desktop and laptop machines.MACCHIATOBin based DIY ARM Desktop, DragonBoard 820c based DIY ARM Laptop
CNXSoft - Embedded Systems News, October 3, 2017. He is currently the president of the

Association.

Notes

External links

Interview with Bernhard Rosenkraenzer about Ark Linux
by Eugenia Loli, OS News, March 13, 2003.

by Marc Duerner, ProLinux, July 10, 2003.

Desktop Linux, March 24, 2003.
Article and video about the aarch64 desktop and laptop projects
CNXSoft — Embedded Systems News, October 3, 2017.
Linaro WebsiteOpenMandriva WebsiteROSA Laboratories Web site
— A Russian Linux developer company
LinDev web site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosenkranzer, Bernhard Free software programmers RWTH Aachen University alumni Living people 1977 births