While the rest of FOSS Nation oooohs and ahhhhs with all the developments currently coming out of LinuxCon in Seattle, the end of the week’s attention — and attendance — shifts to San Marcos, Texas.
San Marcos is an exciting, historic community in the heart of Central Texas midway between Austin and San Antonio. It is home to Texas State University (the alma mater of Lyndon Johnson), and — as the Chamber of Commerce likes to boast — home of the famous San Marcos outlet malls, the largest in the Southwest.
This year, San Marcos is home to Texas Linux Fest 2015, which is being held Friday and Saturday of this week at the San Marcos Conference Center.
Now in its sixth year, Texas Linux Fest is an annual community-run conference for Linux and free/open source software users and enthusiasts based in the Lone Star State. Much like the Southern California Linux Expo in Los Angeles, Ohio LinuxFest in Columbus, and LinuxFest Northwest in Bellingham, Wash. — and an ever-growing list of successful regional shows — Texas Linux Fest is a weekend event geared towards individual users, rather than an expensive multi-workday expo that caters primarily to sponsored attendees.
The schedule for the two-day event is packed with both veteran and new speakers alike.
Expected highlights at Texas Linux Fest on Friday include a Unikernel Summit led by Citrix’s Russell Pavlicek, evangelist for the Xen Project. Chef is hosting a Introduction to Chef on Friday as well, along with a wide range of speakers throughout the course of the day.
Texas Linux Fest Saturday kicks off at 9 a.m. with the keynote by the Apache Software Foundation’s Joan Touzet, who will speak on the topic, “Evolve or Perish! Improving OSS Communities The Apache Way.” Like Friday, another stellar cast takes the various podiums at the San Marcos Conference Center — including Reglue’s (and FOSS Force’s) Ken Starks, a former Texas Linux Fest keynoter who will be speaking on text-to-speech options in Linux. Also of special note would be O’Reilly’s Joshua Simmons, who no doubt will successfully talk about “Fail Early, Fail Often, Fail Well.”
Lightning talks, Birds of a Feather meetings, and a raffle wrap up the event on Saturday evening.
You can still register for Texas Linux Fest — admission is $25 at the Enthusiast level, and $55 for the Supporter level. Here’s the difference in the admission price levels, according to the Texas Linux Fest staff: “[B]oth tickets will grant you the same access to the festival expo floor, talks, and education sessions. You can purchase either ticket and see everything! The differences comes in the form of what you feel would be best to donate to help us keep making the festival a success.”
For more information on Texas Linux Fest, visit their website.
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Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero
