Linux App Summit 2022

Engineers at Codethink get some time and money each year to attend conferences, and part of the deal is we have to write a report afterwards. Having written the report I thought… this could be a bit more widely shared! So, excuse the slightly formal tone of this report, but here are some thoughts on LAS 2022.

Talk highlights

1. Energy Conservation and Energy Efficiency with Free Software – Joseph De Veaugh-Geiss

Video, Abstract

If you follow climate science you’ll know we have some major problems coming. Solving these will take big societal changes towards degrowth, which was not the topic of this talk at all. This talk was rather about what Free Software developers might do to help out in the wider context of reducing energy use.

I recommend watching in full as it was well delivered and interesting. Here are some of the points I noted:

• Aviation is estimated to cause 2.5% of CO² emissions in 2017, and “ICT” between 1.5-2.8%.
  • Speaker didn’t know if that number includes Bitcoin or other “proof-of-work” things
  • This number does include Bitcoin. (Thanks to Joseph for clarifying 🙂
  • Two things that make the number high: short-lifespan electronic devices, video streaming/conferencing
• Software projects could be more transparent about how much energy they use.
  • Imagine 3 word processors which each provide a Github badge showing energy consumption for specific use cases, so you can choose the one which uses least power
• KDE’s PDF reader (Okular) recently achieved the Blauer Angel eco-certification
• There is an ongoing initiative in KDE to measure and improve energy consumption of software – a “measurement party” in Berlin is the next step.
  • Their method of measuring power consumption requires a desktop PC and a special plug that can measure power at reasonably frequency.
• Free software already has a good story here (as we are often the ones keeping old hardware alive after manufacturers drop support), and there’s an open letter asking the EU to legislate such that manufacturers have to give this option.

2. Flathub – now and next

Video, Abstract
There is big growth in number of users. The talk had various graphs including a download chart of something like 10PB of data downloaded.

The goal of Flathub is not to package other people’s apps, rather to reduce barriers to Linux app developers. One remaining barrier is money – as there’s no simple way to finance development of a Linux app at present. So together with Codethink, GNOME and Flathub are working on a way that app users can make donations to app authors.

Notes

There was a larger presence from Canonical than I am used to, and it seems they are once again growing their desktop team, and bringing back the face-to-face Ubuntu Developer Summit (rebranded Ubuntu Summit). All good news.

COVID safety:

• all participants expect speaker were masked during talks
• the seats were spaced and our “green pass” (vaccine or -ve test) was checked on day 1
• in the social events the masks all came off, these were mostly in the outside terrace area.

Online participation:

• maybe 30% of talks were online and these worked well, in fact the Flathub talk had one speaker on stage and one projected behind him as a giant head, and it worked well.
• the online attendees were effectively invisible in the venue, it would be better if there was a screen projecting the online chat so we could have some interaction with them.

The organisation was top notch, the local team did a great job and the venue was also perfect for this kind of event. Personally I met more folks from KDE than I ever have and felt like a lot of important desktop-related knowledge sharing took place. Definitely recommend the conference for anyone with an interest in this area.

I don’t have any good photos to share, but check https://twitter.com/hashtag/las2022 for the latest. Hope to see you there next year!