Presentation topics at Ontario GNU Linux Fest 2009

KDE 4.3 was released in August, 2009, the most recent update to the KDE 4 series. It is a community effort geared towards daily computer users and developers and comes complete with a set of software packages including those for graphics, multimedia, programming, networking, education and gaming. KDE 4 and a wide variety of additional applications are available for Linux, Unix, MacOS X, and Windows under Free Software licenses. KDE 4 will be introduced with a live demonstration of many of the features of KDE on Linux, starting at the basic elements of the KDE Plasma desktop and using KDE to do file management and web surfing. This is followed by a whirlwind tour of many of the applications that are unique to KDE. Emphasis will be placed on introducing the concepts and features of KDE that will be foreign to users coming from other operating systems, and demonstrating the wide ecosystem of available KDE software.

While somethings require luck and timing, nothing happens unless we make an effort to be present when people are gathering. In this presentation we'll cover techniques you can use while we discuss actual events. Answering the question... How did one seemingly random meeting result in Rochester Institute of Technology students being some of the first to receive FOSS development course work as part of their formal education?

Ruby on Rails gives web developers an interesting combination. Ruby is a very flexible language that allows very compact and readible source code. Rails add a framework that allows the developer to focus on the value adding features of a web application without being slowed down by re-inventing boring details again and again. This presentation will be hands-on allowing partipants to follow the creation of an example application.

Developers write documentation. Technical authors write manuals. But in a perfect world, your users read software self-help guides. Consumers expect documentation to reflect the sophistication of the software they are using, and will abandon an application if they cannot easily find the answer to their problems. If we really want world domination of free and open source software, we need to have the self-help guides worthy of our code. In "Self Help Guides for World Domination" we'll take a look at the strategies and tools needed for really awesome documentation.

Imagine a world where documentation actually helped you to find an answer, or solved one of your problems. If that sounds like a pipe dream, it's because you've had to struggle with too much crap documentation. Technical writing can be fun and accessible, but more importantly, it can be truly useful. By analysing how people use software, and where they stumble, we can drastically improve the experience our users have with our software documentation. Creating relevant documentation needs a little more than just a scraping of code comments though--and this talk will show you how it should be done.

Open source tools for writing documentation are very sophisticated, but generally our mastery of them quite simply sucks. Whether they are using DocBook, Mallard or DITA, many projects have opted for very powerful markup languages for their documentation, but often use only a fraction of what the tools can do. Other projects have opted to go with Web-based content management systems and have failed to create a cohesive self-help experience for users. You will learn how to effectively use these common tools for creating and maintaining collaborative documentation. Real examples will be pulled from open source projects.

If you've been wanting to help make the user experience better for your project, this talk is a must-see.

This talk provides tips for improving your self-promotional skills and you'll learn how tooting the horns of your colleagues can help you network. Topics include: getting ahead by getting outside your comfort zone, imposter syndrome, the fine line between assertiveness and aggressiveness, networking by drawing positive attention to colleagues, and daily affirmations for women in tech.

The LAMP Stack is the basis of the vast majority of successful and interesting web sites and web services.

• What is LAMP
• Why LAMP
• Some applications running LAMP (Drupal, Joomla, Zope/Plone, Django)
• Some sites running LAMP (Slashdot, Digg, ...etc.)
• The L we all know and love
• The A and alternates (lighttpd, ngnix)
• The M (MyISAM, InnoDB)
• The Ps (PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby [not a P!]) Focus more on PHP
• Installing LAMP
• Different ways of running PHP
• Performance considerations
• Security considerations

Apache Qpid is an enterprise grade messaging solution with a proven track record and a growing community. It is currently in live production in several large scale financial institutions. Qpid is a multi language implementation of the AMQP protocol (www.amqp.org) with brokers in c++ and java and clients in c++,java,python,ruby and c#. It provides infrastructure for scalable, reliable, secure, low latency messaging that can be used in a myriad of applications not just enterprise messaging. From a community aspect it is one of the first open source projects to receive a substantial contribution from Microsoft. Recently Microsoft contributed a WCF client and provided substantial support by way of funding developers to work on a windows port of the c++ broker. It has a growing community with contributions from large organizations, academic institutions, individual contributors and google summer of code students ..etc. This talk will provide an overview of Apache Qpid and discuss how it could benefit your community project or your organization using examples. It will also cover how to get hold of the bits and better yet how to become a contributor.

Apache CouchDB is a document-oriented database written in Erlang. It is not a normal RDMS (like PostgreSQL and MySQL) but stores it's information in JSON documents that can be accessed though a RESTful HTTP API. It is similar to Amazon SimpleDB, Google BigTable, and Lotus Notes. Similar to Notes it allows for the creation of applications (written in HTML and JavaScript) that can interact with the data, CouchApps.

How is Linux like the Ramones? And why can't we be more like the Beatles? Linux is a critical success, but it's time to crack the Top 40 and take it all the way to the top of the (desktop) charts.

Unix Philosophy #12, Rule of Repair: "When you must fail, fail noisily and as soon as possible." This applies to both code and culture; when someone gets stuck and hollers for help, they are helping their community find and fix a participation process bug. However, the new contributor on-ramp pipeline is particularly tricky to debug; potential participants often struggle in silence, giving you no indication of their presence, let alone why they were unable to begin working with your project community. We'll go over some common blockers that quietly prevent students (and other new contributors) from beginning to participate in open source, and how to fix them no matter who you are.

Beginners enthusiastically welcomed - this talk is for everyone who's ever wanted to contribute to open source as well as everyone who's ever wanted to help someone else get started. It took me over 6 years of banging my head against a solitary wall to figure out how to contribute back to open source (and it's been worth it); here's how to figure out (or help someone figure out) the same thing in 99.999% less time.

So, you've heard of BSD but haven't tried it yet.

Or perhaps you used it years ago and are wondering what has since changed in the BSD world. This talk will introduce the BSD family of operating systems. We'll start with a bit of history, a comparison of the BSD projects, a description of the BSD release engineering process, and an overview of the BSD license. We'll then cover the main differences between BSD and Linux from an administrative and end-user point of view. This will be followed by an overview of some features which aren't available on non-BSD systems.

My presentation is both a call for the Ontario government to act socially responsibly and adopt F/OSS whenever possible and an examination of the obstacles to that both here and abroad as I know them.

Operating Systems are naturally sticky - so why should one invest the time to evaluate another?

Consider these issues:
• Your file system is out of space - how easy is it to add more capacity?
• Performance is sub-par - how do you troubleshoot?
• Services are failing - how to you diagnose the problem?
• One application is starving the others of network bandwidth - how do you impose some limits?
• Even your mom has the root password to the system - why?

The presentation addresses the features in OpenSolaris that help solve these (and other) problems. Specifically we will look at the Zettabyte File System, DTrace, the Service Management Facility, Crossbow and RBAC using demonstrations where possible.

The Information Technology group at the Department of Family Medicine, McMaster University developed OSCAR in 2001. It is a fully functional Electronic Medical Record (EMR) that is currently supporting all the academic teaching units within the department and many other large and small clinics across Canada. OSCAR has been certified by OntarioMD under the Physician IT Program. Its ongoing development is being supported by a large group of developers from Brazil, Australia, USA and Canada. MyOSCAR is a Personally Controlled Health Record, an adaptation of the MIT/Harvard Indivo project (http://indivohealth.org). Information can flow freely between OSCAR and MyOSCAR thus allowing patients to participate in managing his/her own health care.

This talk is a brief overview of what tools are available for Linux/Unix systems for securing and monitoring the system. It is geared towards people setting up a Linux server on a network. The tools covered range from built in features of Linux to packages available from repositories to packages from third parties. Basic security practices are also covered. While most of this talk covers tools and topics familiar to experienced system admins this overview is critical to anyone contemplating putting a server on the Internet. Don't wait until you get hacked to start thinking about security.

Join Marcel as he takes you through a rogues gallery of user-friendly Linux distributions distributions. You'll discover what sets one distribution apart from the other while enjoying a casual, stress-free tour of the various desktops. You'll also learn about popular applications and how these can help ease the transition from that other OS. An essential presentation for anyone considering Linux or trying to ease a loved one from the clutches of proprietary operating systems.

The SciNet Consortium represents scientific researchers from the University of Toronto and the affiliated research hospitals and provides high-performance computing resources to the Canadian research community. The SciNet GPC- iDataplex system, which runs Linux, is #16 on the TOP500 List of the world's top supercomputers. Learn about how IBM and the University of Toronto's SciNet Consortium built Canada's most powerful and energy efficient supercomputer.

One of the co-developers of Dolphin Smalltalk said: Smalltalk is dangerous. It's a drug. My advice to you would be to don't try it. It could ruin your life. Under the guise of showing you how to make web pages with the open source version of Smalltalk - Squeak - I will speak warmly about the benefits of the first object oriented language: closures; continuations; and, everything being an object. The first sample is always free...

Many developers have not had the time to investigate the new GPLv3 suite of licenses in depth, and understand the differences between the GPLv3-based and the GPLv2-based licenses. This talk will help developers and users to better understand the improvements in GPLv3, LGPLv3, and AGPLv3.

Specifically, this talk will cover the changes in the patent provisions, improved license compatibility, improved source code provision terms, the internationalization of GPL and many other changes, large and small, throughout the license. Additionally, the new exception format and the Affero clause in AGPLv3 will be discussed.

This session will discuss multiple case studies where small business customers have deployed Open Source VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol - or internet telephony) solutions based on Asterisk to reduce expenses, increase flexibility and solve specific business problems. We will discuss real-world deployments and compare these to proprietary telephone system options. Information will be presented in a format that is appropriate for both technical and business mindsets, and plenty of time will be available for questions. Hawaiian shirts are optional, but not required.

Digital content is the lifeblood of any business in the information economy and companies ignore the care and feeding of electronic content at their own peril. ECM (Enterprise Content Management) could be one of the hottest areas of open source in 2010 and beyond. Attend this session to learn about the fundamentals of ECM - why the technology matters and why business users care about it. Learn the basics of content lifecycle management, what compliance means to information management professionals and why the time is right to change some of the perceptions about open source for business applications.

There's a DIY electronics revolution going on, and it's powered by free software. The hardware is cheap, easy to find, and easy to program. It's also a great way to get kids learning the basics of electronics, and the joys of participating in the open source software community. In this talk, Leigh will cover how to introduce kids to the Arduino microcontroller platform and to participating in the community around it on the web, mailing lists, and IRC.

In our current troubled economy, there are even more compelling reasons to use Linux and Open Source solutions. This presentation will discuss how Linux and Open Source can reduce costs, be "green", and still provide for mission-critical levels of availability and performance.

Netbooks are all the rage lately and there are a plethora of choices of what to run on your netbook. In this talk I will demo the newest versions of the Ubuntu Netbook Remix and the Ubuntu Moblin Remix and highlight the features of both environments. This talk is meant for people who might be new to Linux and want a glimpse of what's happening with netbooks.

SugarCRM is the world's leading provider of commercial open source CRM software, available in both an On-Demand and On-Premise version and comes with a GPLv3 license. What most people don't realize is that SugarCRM is also a very extensible and easy to use business application platform. In this talk we'll explore the platform and what all it provides, and show how easy it is to customize it from the GUI as well as through writing PHP code.

For only $149 (US), you too can get into the world of embedded Linux computing with the ARM-based Beagleboard. Speaker Rob Day will give an overview of the board, plus demonstrate it running at least one of the Angstrom and Android operating systems.