LinuxFest Northwest is an annual

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

conference and expo held in

Bellingham, Washington Bellingham ( ) is the most populous city in, and county seat of Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It lies south of the U.S.–Canada border in between two major cities of the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver, British Columbia (locat ...

. It is a Saturday and Sunday weekend event held in late April or early May. The event is dedicated to discussion and development of the

Linux operating system 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 ...

and other

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

projects.

Event description

LinuxFest Northwest is a free event, focused on generating interest in Linux and other Open source software projects. During the event, conference attendees listen to several presentations and make contact with several companies and non-profit organizations that share an interest in open-source software. The event raises money through a raffle and by charging commercial vendors a donation fee for their booths. This allows the festival to stay free for all who wish to come while raising enough money to fly in popular speakers.

Location

Linuxfest Northwest is held in Bellingham, Washington, about 80 miles (128.75 km) north of

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

and 50 mi (80 km) south of

Vancouver, B.C. Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the city, up from 631,486 in 2016. The ...

The location is primarily chosen because the facilities are donated by

Bellingham Technical College Bellingham Technical College (Bellingham Tech or BTC) is a public college, public technical college in Bellingham, Washington. Although it awards some bachelor's degrees, it primarily awards associate degrees. Campus events *Linuxfest Northwest ...

. There have been discussions in the past to move the festival south to Seattle, however no local groups have taken on the task.

History

LinuxFest Northwest originated as "Linuxfest", held by th
Bellingham Linux Users Group (BLUG)
The first 'fest' was held in 2000, but was mainly advertised as a local Bellingham event. In 2003, the fest was expanded to a regional event, advertising as far south as Seattle and

Tacoma, Washington Tacoma ( ) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, Washington, Olympia, and northwest of Mount ...

, and north to Vancouver, British Columbia. Until 2006, it was a full day on Saturday. In 2007 it was expanded into a 2-day weekend event. The 2020, 2021, and 2022 conferences were either cancelled or moved online in response to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

Previous featured speakers

; 2010 * Brian "Krow" Aker — Drizzle * Jesse Keating — Fedora Developers conference * Brian Alseth — ACLU Technology and Freedom ; 2009 * Joe Brockmeier — Building Packages, Distros, and More *

Jon "maddog" Hall Jon "maddog" Hall (born 7 August 1950) is the board chair for the Linux Professional Institute. Career The nickname "maddog" was given to him by his students at Hartford State Technical College, where he was the Department Head of Computer Sc ...

— How Free and Open Source Software will have World Domination * Jesse Keating — What's under the hat? A sneak peek at Fedora 11! *

Seth Schoen Seth David Schoen (born September 27, 1979) is senior staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a technology civil rights organisation, and has been actively involved in discussing digital copyright law and encryption since the 1 ...

— Information security discovers physics * "Monty" Widenius — AskMonty & Black Vodka ; 2008 * Brian "Krow" Aker — Caching via libmemcached * Joe Brockmeier — A Look at KDE4 * Mel Chua — OLPC: Education in the classroom worldwide * Brian Hatch — Network Protocols Illuminated * Jesse Keating — Fedora 9 Sneak Peek * Rob Lanphier — Hijinks and tomfoolery on the 3D Internet ; 2007 * Brian "Krow" Aker — How Sites Scale Out * chromatic — The Present and Phuture of Parrot * Crispin Cowen — Securing Linux Systems with AppArmor * Karl Fogel — 3 Centuries of Open Source & Copyright * Jesse Keating — One Laptop Per Child * Allison Randal — Parrot: a VM for Dynamic Languages * Karen Sandler — Software Patents ; 2006 * Tim Bray — Open Problems in Network Computing * Greg DeKoenigsberg — Fedora and Community Building * Charles Ditzel — Twelve Reasons To Use NetBeans * George Dyson — Turing's Cathedral * Jim McQuillan — The Linux Terminal Server Project * Danny O'Brien — Incoming! What's on the EFF's Radar ; 2005 * Brian "Krow" Aker — State of the Dolphin *

Chris DiBona Chris DiBona ('cdibona', born October 1971) was the director of open source at Google from August 2004 until January of 2023. The open source team at Google oversees license compliance and supports the open source developer community through pro ...

— Google Open Source Update * George Dyson — Von Neumann's Universe * Chuck Gray — Impact of Linux * Brian Hatch — The Command Line is for Everyone! * Dee-Ann LeBlanc — Linux for Dummies ; 2004 * Charles Ditzel — Java 2004 : Java and Linux * Chuck Gray — Linux Solutions for Business * Brian Hatch — Linux Security * Dee-Ann LeBlanc — Bringing Mainstream Games to Linux *

Rasmus Lerdorf Rasmus Lerdorf (born 22 November 1968) is a Danish-Canadian programmer. He co-authored and inspired the PHP scripting language, authoring the first two versions of the language and participating in the development of later versions led by a grou ...

— PHP from the Source * Chris Negus — Fedora/Red Hat Troubleshooting

References

External links

LinuxFest Northwest
- Official Website
LinuxFest Northwest 2007 Looms
{{bellingham Linux conferences Recurring events established in 1999 Bellingham, Washington