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#Fosdem 2024 is about to start!

Richard Hartmann is about to give the #Fosdem opening keynote.

I'm in the talk on Sound Open Firmware (SOF). Didn't know it was based on #Zephyr...

https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2859-introducing-sound-open-firmware-project/

Nice architecture! My laptop's speakers and microphones are in good hands...
#alsa #sof #fosdem #linux

The speaker just said:

"...Mediatek helped us [NXP], because until then we were the only ones using ARM [for audio DSP], and when they jumped in we could discuss ARM-specific problems with them."

This is what a healthy open source.project.looks like

Oh no, the room for the gccrs talk is already full and they're kicking out anyone who is standing by the wall

https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2207-the-plan-for-gccrs/

#FOSDEM has grown huge and needs larger rooms at this point...

The rivalry between Linux desktops is a thing of the past. Now the #KDE and #GNOME booths coexist side by side; I've seen users pass to both desks and pick up stickers for their laptops.

Crowded hallways at #FOSDEM...

Crowded food trucks...

I should have packed a sandwich and, more importantly, a bottle of water. #FOSDEM

Finally got into the #Rust devroom. There are lots of interesting talks this afternoon.
https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/track/rust/

My favorite #FOSDEM talk so far is "The Four Horsemen of Bad #Rust Code"

The 4 horsemen of bad #Rust code are: Ignorance, Excessive Abstraction, Premature Optimization and Omission.

This entertaining talk contains useful design advice applicable to any programming language, so you should watch it even if you're not planning to learn #Rust.

https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2434-the-four-horsemen-of-bad-rust-code/

#Servo, the web rendering engine written in #Rust that was orphaned by #Mozilla in 2020, is still alive and working on its 2024 roadmap

https://servo.org/

#Thunderbird is also embracing #Rust

Integrating #Rust with the huge, aging C++ codebase of #Thunderbird is not free of challenges...

Also note the person drinking beer in the corner. Yes, that's a common sight at #FOSDEM

Aha! Found the outlet that's spreading all those Belgian beers

Of course the Free University of Bruxelles would serve beer on campus! #FOSDEM

The campus pub has plenty of beer options. Which one should I choose?
#FOSDEM

Someone who seemed knowledgeable recommended this beer

Good morning from #FOSDEM. Today I'm in the #RISCV room, but they're having trouble with the projector

TIL that you can just do this:

dnf install qemu-user-static-riscv slirp4netns podman

podman run --platform=linux/riscv64 -it docker.io/riscv64/ubuntu bash
root@88bb76ac7391:/# uname -a
Linux 88bb76ac7391 6.8.0-0.rc0.20240112git70d201a40823.5.fc40.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Jan 12 16:56:17 UTC 2024 riscv64 riscv64 riscv64 GNU/Linux

Note the weird combo of Fedora Rawhide kerneland riscv64 emulated by qemu

slirp4netns is this weird thing for unprivileged network namespaces:

https://github.com/rootless-containers/slirp4netns

It's required by #podman because it runs without root privs.

The #RISCV in #QEMU thing also works with classic #docker, but I'd rather use Podman for improved isolation.

An #AMD engineer in the audience mentioned that #Framework will soon release proof-of-concept Coreboot firmware for their AMD laptops.

It's not yet an end-user thing due to missing power management, which is a showstopper for a laptop.

The only reason I haven't already switched to a nice Framework laptop was the proprietary BIOS, but with official support from AMD it won't take long... hopefully

I don't understand why #Mozilla didn't switch to Quiche, a full QUIC + HTTP/3 stack entirely written in #Rust and actively maintained by #Cloudflare.

I picked Quiche in 2021 to implement DNS-over-HTTP3 (DoH3) on Android, and it was small and easy to embed into the existing C++ codebase of the Android DNS resolver.

https://github.com/cloudflare/quiche

I entered the #Retrocomputing devroom too late for the talk on the PiStorm, a new CPU accelerator card for your old #Amiga 500.

Eat your hat, John!

https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-1742-pistorm-the-evolution-of-an-open-source-amiga-accelerator/

Next, my travel mate @giomba and another Italian by the handle @giuliof gave a really interesting talk on their joint effort to reverse engineer the Sanco 8003, an obscure 8-bit platform.
#retrocomputing #fosdem

https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2008-a-journey-documenting-the-sanco-8003-computer/

And so #FOSDEM 2024 is over. Phew!

Kudos to the net admins who kept the WiFi mesh running smoothly across dozens of rooms and hallways packed with Linux nerds. Anyone who has experience scaling networks knows that conferences are a torture scenario for wireless infrastructure.

@giomba @giuliof