The Linux Foundation announced the final program for LinuxCon North America in Vancouver, B.C. August 17-19, 2011. Events include the 20th anniversary of Linux gala celebration, a discussion between Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman, a keynote by IBM's Irving Wladawsky-Berger, and a “20 Years of Linux” panel featuring Jon “maddog” Hall and Eben Moglen.

LinuxCon includes in-depth technical content for Linux developers and operations personnel, as well as business and legal insight, says the nonprofit Linux Foundation (LF). As we reported in April, LinuxCon North America will host the formal Linux Gala celebration of the 20th anniversary of Linux, featuring a "Roaring 20s" theme.

The LF now says the Gala will be held the evening of August 17 at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver, and will feature "an unprecedented lineup of key personalities to represent Linux' past, present and future," as well as a "unique ceremony with special presentations of awards." The Gala will include a live band, casino, and dinner. Penguin suits (tuxedos) and flapper dresses will be available to rent onsite, says the LF.

Naturally, Linux creator Linus Torvalds (pictured) will take part in the celebration. Perhaps to help promote the anniversary, Torvalds decided last month to switch from the eight-year old Linux 2.6 tree to Linux 3.0. The final 3.0 release will arrive with the usual incremental updates sometime before LinuxCon. 

At the conference, Torvalds will participate in an interview-style keynote in which he discusses Linux kernel technical advancements and challenges with kernel developer and maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman. LinuxCon will also feature a "20 Years of Linux" panel moderated by LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin. The panel will include Linux and open source luminaries Jon "maddog" Hall (pictured at left), and open source legal expert Eben Moglen, founder of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC).

Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger (right), chairman emeritus of the IBM Academy of Technology and visiting professor of Engineering Systems at MIT, will give a keynote on the first 20 years of Linux. Wladawsky-Berger was responsible for identifying emerging technologies and marketplace developments at IBM, which was instrumental in pushing Linux onto servers.

In addition to the speakers noted in our earlier coverage, including Red Hat's Jim Whitehurst, HP's Phil McKinney, Ubuntu's Allison Randal, and book author Clay Shirky, speakers and session highlights are said to include:

• Grant Likely from Secret Lab, on fixing the messy state of ARM code in the Linux kernel in "How to Set a Broken Arm"
• Duane Nickull of Adobe on "Marching forward: the 25% desktop linux penetration solution." (At this point, we'd be happy with 2 percent, but hey, we're listening.)
• Greg Kroah-Hartman (pictured) of SUSE and the Linux kernel project on "The stable Linux kernel tree"
• Jake Edge of LWN.net on "IPv6 and Linux"
• Chris Jones of Oracle on "The changes and challenges of PHP and Linux"
• A Huawei speaker addressing an "Open perspective" on GPL licensing
• Khoa Huynh of IBM on "Optimizing performance of persistent data storage in KVM-based clouds"
• Ted Ts'o (pictured), a long-time kernel developer and senior developer at Google, on "ext4 improvements for Linux Cloud Servers"
• Keith Bergelt of Open Invention Network on "Patents and the latest in consumer electronics"

LinuxCon will also feature a full track dedicated to MeeGo, as well as multiple onsite Linux training opportunities, says the LF. Courses are said to include Linux Performance Tuning, Embedded Linux Development, and Open Source Compliance.

Availability

LinuxCon North America will be held in Vancouver, B.C. at the Hyatt Regency Vancouver, August 17-19. Early-bird registration is available for $500 through July 8, at this LinuxCon registration page. More information on LinuxCon events may be found at the LF's events page. More on the LinuxCon Gala may be found at this social events page. (Note that some of the above links, as well as the full session list, may not go live until June 15.)

The winners of this year's Linux Foundation Video and T-shirt design contests will also be featured at LinuxCon, and submissions for videos are still open, here. T-shirt voting is still open, here.

This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.