Linux is key to driving innovative new technology as well as business models. It's shaking up the established view of which operating systems should be used for what workloads, while slipping quietly under some very cool new applications. In this talk, Bob will focus on three areas of great opportunity as well as challenge for Linux: the accelerating market for cloud computing, Linux as a significant operating system for mainframes, and the hope for Linux on the desktop.

Aggressive corporations and and Patent Trolls are an ever-growing threat to global innovation. IP aggregators purchase low-quality patents and use them as leverage to hijack potential revenue and profits from technology companies, our largest economic driver. Aggressive corporations use low-quality patents to harass technology innovators to sign onerous license agreement, or to stifle growth in new products and services. This causes entrepreneurs to reconsider launching companies, while small and large firms alike devote more of their time and resources to defending their IP rights.

Join Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation and Keith Bergelt, CEO of Open Invention Network (OIN) as they discuss the latest patent challenges to Linux, including the TomTom case and initiatives like Linux Defenders; a joint offering of OIN and the Linux Foundation, that are enabling open source and Linux developers, distributors and users to focus on their core business.

This talk will cover why open source and cloud computing are a natural complement. It will discuss how open source helps cloud architecture, software licensing, and innovation better than proprietary alternatives. It will also address why cloud economics favor open source-based infrastructure. The audience for this presentation is application architects, project managers, and IT management. Technical expertise required is low to medium, though awareness of common application architectural and infrastructure issues is necessary.

Who would have thought. Two years ago Linux on the client had been declared dead, buried and forgotten. Right now there are announcements and promises and demos everywhere. And even some products.

Suddenly Linux on mobile devices (and therefore, clients) is the hot topic and everyone wants to be the father of the pretty baby. So what is it that people should look for? And what should they be afraid of?

And of course, why do we think that Moblin is shining in this crowded field - and why should you care.

The Linux kernel forms the heart of any Linux distribution. Instead of hearing from vendors and packagers, in this session you can hear directly from the lead maintainers of the Linux kernel on its past, its present and where we go from here.

The cost, flexibility and scalability benefits of virtualization are undeniable. Also undeniable are the systems and network management challenges created by the virtual data center. Cautionary tales abound, examples of organizations that have not just figured out how to manage their virtualized environments, but how to use management to maximize their performance and availability are few. Audience members will learn tricks and tips to putting virtualization into production to achieve greater flexibility, including best practices for creating a virtualized architectu and how to manage it. To../bilder/linuxcon will include how to evaluate virtualization management tools, common misperceptions and pitfalls to avoid, and techniques for streamlining application-level management. The intended audience includes system administrators and Web operations managers (including developers who wear the operations hat as well). Attendees should have at least some experience with virtualization.

Supercomputers are like cars. Everyone talks about the new one but you've still got to clean up the old one and get rid of it. One of the items in getting rid of a supercomputer is wiping the disk drives. Ever thought about what it takes to wipe over 7,000 disk drives? Sanitizing this many disk drives from EMSL last supercomputer, MPP2, is a tale fraught with peril and politics. Hear this tale of comedy, tragedy and triumph as told by its lead player, Gary Smith.

Why is Linux like the Ramones? Can Linux be the Beatles instead? An interactive presentation looking at where we are, and where we should be going next.

The Multi-Source Development Model: The Future of Linux (Tim Yeaton) Linux and the open source community, spurred by the ubiquity of the Internet, have profoundly and irreversibly changed both the process and economics of software development. However the widespread use of Linux has created licensing, security, and process challenges for developers and organizations committed to using open source software at the scale necessary for commercial success. In this presentation Tim Yeaton will discuss how development organizations can realize the breakthrough economics and increased velocity of innovation afforded by using Linux while mitigating associated licensing and security risks. Attendees will receive a high-level introduction to the multi-source development model - arguably the future of Linux - a model that combines open source and proprietary code, enabling developers to build better software more quickly and cost-effectively through collaboration, improved programming processes and code re-use. Mr. Yeaton will supplement his comments with data on open source lincesing and language use trends, and provide an analysis of the cost avoidance organizations can realize through the use of Linux in mixed-source development.

The Linux Kernel today is recognised as one of the most valuable commodity resources freely available to industry. However, getting value out of the kernel for a specific industrial situation often involves putting value in (at least in terms of time commitments and possibly code from engineers). This talk will discuss (with examples) why sending contributions upstream makes economic sense, how contribute most efficiently, and how to make a contribution which benefits both the general kernel (to make it acceptable) as well as your specific industrial situation. This talk will include some technical details, but should be at a high enough level to appeal both to managers and developers at companies considering (or adopting) an open source strategy.

In a time of tight IT budgets, open source has attracted much attention due to its cost advantages. Detractors to the adoption of open source technology often preach on the 'hidden' costs of open source. While it is true that open source technology is rarely ever truly free, claims as to the hidden costs of open source are often lessons in hyperbole. Some claim that while the initial costs of open source are lower, the long-term costs are higher due to support, consulting maintenance and indirect prices paid in reduced functionality. This session will identify areas that enterprises can legitimately expect to shave IT costs with open source, and where they can't.

How do you track open source usage within the corporation? How do assure that software that you import into the company complies with your open source license policy? When is indemnification an appropriate part of an open source contract? Join John Ellis - Director and Esteban Rockett - Senior Counsel, as they discuss how Motorola handled these issues while developing the Motorola Corporate Open Source Review Board.

How do you get past incremental change to real transformation with open source? Most conventional advice focuses on just one dimension at a time: people, process, business or technology. To get breakthrough results, you need to view these dimensions as part of an integrated whole, and consciously address two or more of them simultaneously. Using examples from Enterprise IT experience, we'll explore how you can tap your organization's strengths in a variety of ways to achieve these goals. The audience for this session includes technical leaders as well as managers who want to drive change through open technologies, processes, communities, and business models. The session will discuss approaches that can be used by people in a variety of roles.

This talk will discuss the history of the Ext4 File System, its new features, and suggestions for how to migrate to using it in your data center.

Utilizing Linux, OpenSource, and virtualization, Sesame Workshop delivers its award-winning, dynamic websites, and digital distribution channel.

Today's on-demand oriented world presents real challenges to media companies trying to deliver quickly to multiple channels. At any given time, Sesame is working on 5 major digital projects from assisting Military Families staying in touch with their deployed servicemen and women to teaching children about global citizenry. To rapidly build, test, and deploy these projects, Sesame had to adopt an agile and inexpensive platform. To compete with the major for-profit companies, Sesame Workshop turned to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with integrated Xen Virtualization, Alfresco, and Liferay to stay competitive and relevant.

Pundits and business executives alike are predicting gloomy economic times for the foreseeable future. But when the talk turns to Linux and open source, suddenly the mood brightens. There is an unspoken assumption that Linux adoption will accelerate in a recession as cost factors predominate. But is Linux truly "recession-proof"? What factors are driving or hindering adoption? At LinuxCon, Novell's Linux leader will discuss the results of a recent market survey, co-sponsored with IDC, which confirms that an average of 50 percent of IT executives are planning to increase their adoption of Linux server and desktop technologies this year because of the economic downturn. As more and more businesses seek to cut technology acquisition and operating costs, they find the ability of Linux to leverage existing software and hardware technologies without expensive and time-consuming upgrades particularly beneficial. Markus Rex, Acting Senior Vice President and General Manager of Novell's Open Platform Solutions business unit, will discuss the survey's findings in detail, as well as what he believes they reveal about the state of the Linux market.

The future of Linux and the open source ecosystem that surrounds it depends on our ability to deliver compelling user experiences. But where does innovation really come from, and are we at risk of losing one of our greatest collective strengths? Come learn why "being open source" alone isn't enough. The models of collaboration we choose can have a profound effect on the success or failure of our projects... who gets to participate, and when, and why does it matter?

The Linux Kernel is developing at a rapid pace. More and more features are added to the kernel. This leads to growth of the kernel binary (kernel bloat) but also to an increased cache footprint as well as higher complexity in critical code paths. The common experience is that the kernel becomes slower as time progresses. Faster hardware is needed to offset that effect.   The increase in cache footprint and complexity also leads to OS monitoring tasks such as the execution of the timer interrupt to become more invasive. The time the processor is taken away from the application during a scheduling cycle grows and so does the CPU cache use of the OS. This causes disturbances in the execution path of applications. The effects can be drastic for low latency dependent applications.

KVM allows Linux to be a hypervisor, running many virtual machines on a single physical host.  In a modern virtualization environment, with high core count boxes, efficent cpu scheduling, and efficient I/O paths, memory can easily be the limiting factor to the number of virtual machines a single physical machine can host.  KSM provides a software mechanism for increasing virtual machine density without adding extra memory to the host.  KSM is code running in the Linux kernel scanning the memory of all the virtual machines running on a single host, looking for duplication and consolidating.  In fact, duplication is quite common since these virtual machines may be running identical or at least similar OS images.  With KSM we're able to improve virtual machine density by as much as 300% without impacting performance.  One of the great benefits of using Linux as the hypervisor means KSM is not limited to KVM and virtual machines, but can also reduce memory pressure with normal Linux applications. This presentation is technical and geared towards developers since it will focus on the kernel implementation of KSM.  A person attending this presentation can expect to learn how KSM works and in what deployment scenarios it will help.

Though progress has been made in introducing a shared cadence among software projects, there are still concerns surrounding the differences in packaging and lack of synchronization among major Linux distributions.   By coordinating software freezes and releases, it would not only help those who are doing development on Linux but it would also help improve the lives of system architects who use Linux as the backbone of their infrastructure.

Join Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth as he discusses the benefits and controversies surrounding coordinated software releases in the Linux development and vendor communities.