LinuxFest Northwest is an annual technology conference and expo held in Bellingham, Washington. 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 and other free and open-source software 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 and 50 mi (80 km) south of Vancouver, B.C. The location is primarily chosen because the facilities are donated by Bellingham Technical College. 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 the 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, 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, and the 2023 conference was cancelled due to an unplanned closure of the venue.
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 — 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 — 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 — 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