Linux.conf.au

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The correct title of this article is linux.conf.au. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

linux.conf.au is Australia's national Linux and Open Source conference. It is a roaming conference, held in a different Australian city every year, coordinated by Linux Australia and organised by local Australian Linux User Groups.

The conference is a non-profit event, with any surplus funds being used to seed the following year's conference and to support the Australian Linux and open source communities. The name is actually the conference's URL, using the uncommon second-level domain .conf.au, just as other conferences - such as FOSS.IN - now do.

Growing at a rate of approximately 25% in size per year, the conference is one of three major, international, grass-roots open-source conferences world wide. The other two are the Ottawa Linux Symposium (commonly known as OLS) and Linux Kongress.

[edit] Conference history

The zeroth conference (then called CALU - Conference of Australian Linux Users) was held in Melbourne, Victoria at Monash University between July 9 and July 11, 1999. Conceived, bankrolled (via his personal credit card) and executed by famed Linux kernel hacker Rusty Russell, it laid the foundation for a successful, strongly technical, eclectic and fun conference series.

The first conference with the name "linux.conf.au" was held in Sydney, New South Wales at the University of New South Wales between January 17 and January 20, 2001.

The second conference was hosted by Home Unix Machine Brisbane User Group and held in Brisbane, Queensland at the University of Queensland between February 6 and February 9, 2002.

The third conference was held in Perth, Western Australia at the University of Western Australia between January 20, 2003 and January 25, 2003.

The fourth conference was held in Adelaide, South Australia at the University of Adelaide between January 12, 2004 and January 17, 2004. The concept of having miniconferences which preceded the main conference grew further, with several almost considered conferences in their own right. These included the Open-Source in Government (ossig) miniconf, EducationaLinux, Debconf and GNOME.conf.au. One major highlight from this conference was Linus Torvalds, originator of the Linux operating system kernel, being dunked in a dunk tank to raise money for charity.

The fifth conference was held in Canberra at the Australian National University between April 18, 2005 to April 23, 2005.

The sixth conference was held in Dunedin, New Zealand at the University of Otago from January 23, 2006 until January 28, 2006. This conference broke new ground, being the first conference to be held outside Australia, recognising the importance of the New Zealand Linux community.

The seventh conference will be held in Sydney in 2007 from January 15 to January 20 again at the University of New South Wales.

The eighth conference will be held in Melbourne in 2008, this time at the University of Melbourne. This will be the second time the conference has been hosted there, but the first time under the linux.conf.au name.