Linux App Summit 2021

UTC
Remote

Remote

Aleix Pol (KDE), Heather Ellsworth (GNOME), Nuritzi Sanchez (GNOME), Sriram Ramkrishna (GNOME)
Description

The Linux App Summit (LAS) is designed to accelerate the growth of the Linux application ecosystem by bringing together everyone involved in creating a great Linux application user experience.

Here are some categories that could hold interesting talks. We encourage you to submit a talk as soon as possible even if you don’t think it fits into one of these topics. 

Regular talks will be 40', lightning talks will be 10'.

ECOSYSTEM GROWTH

The growth of Linux-based hardware offers more choices in the market and indicates further investment into the Linux app space. App Stores are offering thousands of applications and games for the Linux platform and open source is growing necessity in tech.

How can we ensure continued growth for the Linux app ecosystem? Are there areas of opportunity we should explore? How can we build sustainability into our ecosystem? How do you keep your users engaged?

PLATFORM DIVERSITY

The Linux platform’s greatest strength is the wealth of diversity in our ecosystem. There are toolkits and software languages for every purpose. Whether you want to develop a game, design an application, or even build a website, the app ecosystem has the tools to make that happen.

Are you working on a technology that enables cross-platform distribution? Do you have ideas for how we can enable platform diversity? How should we evolve to reach your users?

INNOVATION

Important technologies that you use on a daily basis (maybe without realizing it), have been developed within the Linux app ecosystem. Discuss with us how to push the boundaries of what we are offering right now and reach more users than ever before.

What does the Linux app ecosystem need to get to the top? What are we missing? Are there new technologies we should be embracing? 

PEOPLE & COMMUNICATIONS

While the Linux app ecosystem has been largely shaped by open source communities, we believe there's space for everyone. Making sure both businesses and communities alike can thrive in the ecosystem is vital for the platform to be sustainable over time. It is vital that people are able to make a living from the work they do for Linux users.

How can we make sure companies find their niche in the ecosystem? How can we help communities work together to create and support end-user apps? How can we keep people around in the long-run? 

LEGAL AND LICENSING

Whether you are a die-hard Free Software advocate or are just looking to write a commercial application or game, there are no restrictions on what can be built on the Linux app ecosystem. How can we navigate the complex world of licenses to create great products? 

What kind of open source business models exist through licensing? What are the latest issues related to licensing that our community should be aware of?

Surveys
Linux App Summit
    • 09:00 09:10
      Opening Remarks 10m
    • 09:10 09:55
      Adaptive Apps: The Future is Now 45m

      Over the past few years we have laid the foundation for an ecosystem of GNOME apps that work seamlessly across form factors, from phones to desktops and everything inbetween. There are now dozens of core and third party apps using these new adaptive widgets and design patterns, and most new apps are adaptive from day one.

      But that's just the beginning: GTK4 is finally out, and apps are starting to move to it. This transition unlocks a whole new world of gestures, animations, and layouts that were not possible before.

      In this talk I'll sum up the current state of adaptive GNOME apps, demo some of the most exciting new stuff, and talk about what's in store for the future.

      Speaker: Tobias Bernard
    • 09:55 10:40
      Windows程序在Ubuntu Kylin 系统的应用和推广 (Application and Popularization of Windows Programs on Ubuntu Kylin) 45m

      题目
      Windows程序在Ubuntu Kylin 系统的应用和推广
      Application and Popularization of Windows Programs on Ubuntu Kylin

      目录
      Index

      1.linux 桌面的应用生态现状
      The current situation of Linux Application Ecosystem.

      Chicken-and-egg problem for Linux on the desktop
      This brings us to the chicken and egg issue of Linux on the desktop. Until Linux can provide equivalents for the above applications, its market share on the desktop will stagnate.
      But until the market share of Linux on the desktop rises, no vendor will develop applications for Linux. How does one break this vicious circle?

      Again, Wine can provide an answer. By letting users reuse the Windows applications they have invested time and money in, Wine dramatically lowers the barrier that prevents users from switching to Linux. This then makes it possible for Linux to take off on the desktop, which increases its market share in that segment. In turn, this makes it viable for companies to produce Linux versions of their applications, and for new products to come out just for the Linux market.
      But wine is not user-friendly tools.

      2.Wine在windows程序适配中的不足
      The weak point of Wine on Windows Programs Porting for linux.
      Windows 应用wechat 和Tencent Meeting在中国应用广泛,但在wine对这些程序相应的支持不足;wine的使用对大众用户有些困难,需要做一些繁琐的配置工作。
      Wechat and Tecent Meeting is popular application On Windows Desktop in China,but these app have many bugs when run them on Linux+wine.
      It is a little difficult to use wine for ordinary user. If you want use wine well,you need a lot of configuration work.

      3.Ubuntu Kylin 在Wechat适配中做出的工作和贡献
      The Kylin Contribution in Wechat adaption On Ukylin OS
      截图问题分析,和视频通话问题分析和解决,appimage 格式打应用包等。
      In Wechat we resolved some issue such as screen capture fail, video talk fail ,etc. We also try to pack the wine and its depends with appimage format,to handle differences between different linux OS.

      4.后续开发计划和展望
      Future Research and Development Plan
      Richedit,Directshow 等模块问题解决和开发计划,回馈开源,回馈wine 社区。

      Speakers: 珂铭 梁, mina Liu
    • 10:40 11:00
      Break 20m
    • 11:00 11:45
      LibreOffice: Improving the Project Sustainability 45m

      LibreOffice was announced in 2010 to relaunch innovation of the already stagnant OpenOffice project. After 10 years of growth, it was necessary to review and update the strategy based on the evolution of the office suite market, to improve the sustainability model. In fact, enterprises - although deploying LibreOffice to save money over proprietary solutions - are not supporting the project as much as individual users. Over time, this can represent a threat for the sustainability of the project, as development can be slowed down. We have therefore changed the strategy, to educate enterprises about the right approach to FOSS, by giving back in one of the many available ways: purchase the LTS version from the ecosystem, fund the development of a specific feature, pay for the solution of a bug or a regression, and so on. The right approach from enterprises would ensure the long term sustainability of the LibreOffice project, and the evolution of the Open Document Format (ODF) ISO standard file format for true interoperability.

      Speaker: Mr Italo Vignoli (The Document Foundation)
    • 11:45 12:30
      Funding Krita 45m

      We started funding development for Krita in 2010. Currently, nine people work full-time on Krita, the digital painting application. Over the years, we have tried different ways of funding Krita: donations, store sales, a development fund, contract work for companies like Intel and Blender Studio, sales of training materials and resource packs.

      Currently, one person is funded through donations, the others through sales in the Windows Store and Steam. We are working to join the Epic Store. And we are working a new Development Fund website.

      In this presentation we'll talk about Krita's funding history, and how well the different approaches have worked for us through the years, and what we would need to make the linux desktop community do their bit to support Krita's development.

      Speaker: Mrs Halla Rempt (Krita)
    • 12:30 16:00
      Break 3h 30m
    • 12:45 13:30
      Sponsor Office Hours: JingLing
      Conveners: CC Liu (JingLing), Edwin Hao
      • 12:45
        Sponsor Office Hours: JingLing 45m
        Speakers: CC Liu (JingLing), Edwin Hao
    • 13:30 14:15
      Sponsor Office Hours: Canonical
      Convener: Igor Ljubuncic (Canonical)
      • 13:30
        Sponsor Office Hours: Canonical 45m
        Speaker: Igor Ljubuncic (Canonical)
    • 14:15 15:00
      Sponsor Office Hours: Codethink
      Conveners: Javier Jardón (Codethink), Nicole Mpofu
      • 14:15
        Sponsor Office Hours: Codethink 45m
        Speakers: Javier Jardón (Codethink), Nicole Mpofu
    • 16:00 17:00
      Software Freedom in the Pandemic: Wins, Losses and Lessons Learned 1h

      We're over a year into the pandemic and starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. During this tumultuous time, we've seen massive societal changes and struggled as a movement to rise to the challenges presented to us. While there have been quite a few successes as we've held remote conferences, cheered while others learned to work remotely, continued our collaborative communities and supported each other, there are many things that we wish were better. Karen will talk about our biggest triumphs, our lost opportunities and explore how we can learn from all of this to come together to push the software freedom movement forward beyond a return to "normal times" and into the future.

      Speaker: Karen Sandler
    • 17:00 17:30
      Break 30m
    • 17:30 18:15
      Make your application multi-platform! 45m

      Many people use Windows and macOS as their OS of choice. If we want to expose them to Open Source software, we have to bring the software to them. Some large projects, like GIMP and Inkscape, are available on those platforms.

      What does it take to make your application available on Windows and macOS? Dan and Arjan, maintainers of Gaphor, did just this.

      In this talk we dive in to what it takes to make your application available on all major desktop platforms. Why should you bother? How can you make it happen, and what does it bring to your project? Tune in and find out!

      Speakers: Arjan Molenaar, Mr Dan Yeaw
    • 18:15 19:00
      Writing native Linux desktop apps with JavaScript 45m

      If you are a JavaScript developer and want to write something for the Linux desktop in JavaScript, two popular ways are to use Electron or to publish an extension for GNOME Shell on extensions.gnome.org. However, there is a third way that doesn't require users to use GNOME and doesn't require embedding a web browser!

      In this talk I will walk through the process of creating a native desktop app written in JavaScript and publishing it to users.

      Speaker: Philip Chimento
    • 09:00 09:45
      Automate your Flatpak manifest updates today 45m

      flatpak-external-data-checker started life as a side-project at Endless, notifying the team when a small number of unofficial Flatpak wrappers for third-party proprietary apps in Endless' own Flatpak repository needed attention. Three years and sixteen developers later, it checks and automatically updates over a hundred apps on Flathub, many of which are free software and maintained by their upstream developers, and has a small but thriving community of contributors itself.

      This talk will cover how this tool grew into its present form, how it can help you maintain a Flatpak of your application, and its implications for the health of the Flathub ecosystem.

      Speaker: Mr Will Thompson (Endless OS Foundation)
    • 09:45 10:30
      Making flatpaks from Fedora RPMs 45m

      Some of you may know flatpaks as a new, distribution-independent way to distribute your applications. But did you know there is a direct way to turn your Fedora RPM package into flatpak in the Fedora infrastructure?
      In the talk, I would like to explain the idea behind flatpak and the difference between standard flatpaks (eg. from flathub) and the Fedora ones. After this brief introduction, I would aim at the process of the RPM-to-flatpak conversion, what is needed and how to perform a successful conversion. Finally, I would demonstrate the whole process of conversion on some simple application.
      This talk is aimed at developers and RPM package maintainers (rather than end users).

      Speaker: Jan Beran
    • 10:30 11:00
      Break 30m
    • 11:00 11:45
      15 cool things you didn't know you could do with snaps 45m

      You must have heard about snaps, perhaps even used them. But have you fully explored and discovered the powers of the snap ecosystem?

      In this talk, we will show you some neat tips and tricks and best practices on how to develop and use snaps, with maximum efficiency and speed. There will be something for everyone, from a developer just starting with snaps to diehard veterans with many a snapcraft.yaml under their digital belt. We will also unveil a few handy secrets for snap users, so you can have a fun, productive experience.

      Speaker: Igor Ljubuncic (Canonical)
    • 11:45 12:00
      Qt Design Studio: Closing the gap between designers and developers 15m

      Qt is a framework for creating graphical user interfaces as well as cross-platform applications that run on various software and hardware platforms such as Linux, Windows, macOS, Android or embedded systems with little or no change in the underlying codebase. Qt is well known for its usage by the KDE and Open-Source applications like Krita.
      QML, a user interface markup language, is part of the Qt framework. QML is a declarative language (like CSS and JSON). Qt Quick is the name of the QML based framework for defining modern user interfaces.
      To break the cycle of painstaking feedback loops between designers and developers the Qt Company is also developing Qt Design Studio a graphical editor for Qt Quick and QML. Qt Design Studio comes also as a free community version for non-commercial users and is available for Linux.
      This talk is showing how Qt Design Studio with Qt and QtQuick can be used to create Linux apps with a modern user interface and how to involve UX designers in the development process.

      Speaker: Henning Gründl
    • 12:00 12:15
      Behind KDE documentation tooling 15m

      This lightning talk will primarily focus on the recent improvements on KDE's documentation tooling and how this can help other projects too. I will focus on describing our two biggest changes: the creation of our new centralized documentation hub in develop.kde.org/docs using Hugo and the many improvements in our API generation tooling.

      This talks is interesting for people who develop libraries and want to increase the amount of API users by making it easier to get started.

      Speaker: Carl Schwan
    • 12:15 12:30
      Freedesktop SDK on RISC-V 15m

      Freedesktop SDK is the base runtime and SDK for Flatpak applications.
      RISC-V is a new open standard processor architecture.
      Recently, some efforts have been made to prepare Freedesktop SDK to
      RISC-V. We are now able to run RISC-V Flatpak application in emulators.
      This short talk will explain where we are on the plan of releasing
      Freedesktop SDK for RISC-V.

      Speaker: Valentin David (Codethink)
    • 12:30 16:00
      Break 3h 30m
    • 12:45 13:30
      Sponsor Office Hours: Collabora – The state of VR/AR & how to write apps for Linux
      • 12:45
        The state of VR/AR & how to write apps for Linux 45m

        VR took off for the consumer with the release of Oculus consumer hardware. However, the hardware lacked open source drivers and Linux support in general. The OpenHMD project was created to solve this issue, and as it so happens, it was funded by two former Chalmers students. The consumer VR space has now grown from a crazy inventor in a garage into a large industry. In 2019, the Khronos Group released the OpenXR specification allowing the creation of cross-platform applications to be written. In this talk, Jakob will give an overview of the history and status on VR/AR on the Linux desktop, and will go more indepth about the OpenXR API.

        Speaker: Jakob Bornecrantz (Collabora)
    • 13:45 14:30
      Sponsor Office Hours: openSUSE
      Convener: Douglas DeMaio (openSUSE)
      • 13:45
        Sponsor Office Hours: openSUSE 45m
        Speaker: Douglas DeMaio (openSUSE)
    • 14:30 15:00
      BoF: XDG Portals
      Convener: Georges Basile Stavracas Neto (Endless OS Foundation)
      • 14:30
        XDG Portals 30m

        Flatpak portals have progressively been adopted across various platforms. Recently, the popular streaming appication OBS Studio merged code to use the desktop portal for screencasting, a huge win for the community. However, this progressive adoption comes with challenges, new use cases, and exposes bugs. Let's discuss the next concrete steps towards improving different portals.

        Speaker: Georges Basile Stavracas Neto (Endless OS Foundation)
    • 15:00 15:30
      BoF: Audio, Video, and Arts BOF
      Convener: Be Wilson (Mixxx, Whisperfish)
      • 15:00
        Audio, Video, and Arts BOF 30m
        Speaker: Be Wilson (Mixxx, Whisperfish)
    • 16:00 17:00
      Tour of My Embedded Linux Powered Private Smart Home 1h

      Rather than expose your smart home device data and voice commands “to the cloud” (i.e., to large tech titans as well as smart product manufacturers), this talk demonstrates how you can maintain better privacy over it. The "secret" is free and open source, spun out of Mozilla to be community led, and easy to set up and manage. (Spoiler: the central hub runs the WebThings Gateway). Since data are processed and stored locally, there's no need to give up your privacy, and even if your Internet goes down, your smart home still works.

      Kathy will take you on a tour of her own smart home, then demonstrate the simplicity of MicroBlocks for building your own “smart devices”, such as motion sensors, temperature sensors, door/window sensors, pushbuttons, lights, and more.

      Speaker: Kathy Giori
    • 17:00 17:30
      Break 30m
    • 17:30 18:15
      Sandboxing your data with Tracker 45m

      Tracker is most commonly known for its metadata indexers, but at its core it is powered by the concept of RDF and the SPARQL query language, more common in the web world.

      In the pursue to fit a square peg (upfront metadata indexing, globally accessible deduplicated data) in a round hole (selective sandboxed access), the Tracker 3.x core library gained multiple features that make it more suitable for the general purpose of storing data, with built-in distributed and sandboxed characteristics.

      In this talk you will learn how a 2010's spec for the web world fixed a desktop problem in 2020's, and how Tracker can be used for private data, distributed (and sandboxed) data exchange between processes, and beyond.

      Speaker: Carlos Garnacho (Red Hat)
    • 18:15 19:00
      Making dollars and sense of free software funding's future 45m

      Sustainably funding public goods is hard, just ask your local government. We
      know free software benefits everyone, whether or not users contributed to its
      development. How then can we reach the world of everyone working on software
      they love, while making a livable wage? Let's discuss the current funding platforms, where they work, where they don't, and what does free software really need for a sustainable and successful future?

      Disclaimer: I am with the team building Snowdrift.coop While we believe that we're addressing some of these questions, we a) aren't there yet, and b) know that there are plenty of unaddressed areas on the way to a free software utopia. This will not just be a pitch for our platform, promise!

      Speaker: Wm Salt Hale (SeaGL / Snowdrift.coop / UW)
    • 19:30 20:30
      Social event - Chinese Kungfu 1h

      Chinese Kungfu are several hundred fighting styles that have developed over the centuries in China.
      These fighting styles are often classified according to common traits, identified as "families" of martial arts.
      Examples of such traits include Shaolinquan physical exercises involving Five Animals mimicry or training methods inspired by Old Chinese philosophies, religions and legends.

      Option 1 Five Steps Fist 五步拳

      Option 2 Elementary Long Fist 初级长拳一步

      Option 3 Elementary Swordsmanship 初级刀术

      All sessions start with a Kungfu performance, followed by learning Kungfu history and basic skills with shoulders, waists, and legs.

      • 0 -10 minutes General introduction of Chinese martial arts
      • 10 - 15 minutes Introduction of Chen style Taiji - Fighting Tai Chi
      • 15 - 25 minutes Taiji performance -Fighting Tai Chi
      • 25 - 45 minutes Decompose and teach a section of Fighting Taiji
      • 45- 55 minutes Teach Taiji hand pushing
      • 55 - 60 minutes Q&A

    • 09:00 09:45
      Building & distributing Linux desktop apps using Electron 45m

      I'll walk you through the challenges I faced while building and distributing app for Linux using Electron. At the end of the talk, you'll learn the common gotchas and their solutions in distributing the app, understanding user experience without compromising the user privacy, managing different versions, managing automatic updates, reaching your target audience, ensuring security and a great user experience on Linux platforms. This knowledge would have saved me months of pain and tears.

      Speaker: Pradeep Sharma (Electron)
    • 09:45 10:30
      On the fragmentation in the open-source world and on the challenges to create a healthy and sustainable project maintanence. 45m

      Many open source projects fail to create a sustainable setup and constant and healthy growth, to adopt to new needs and changes and to survive over many years. Limited amount of time and human resources is usually the major factor for this. In this presentation we're going to talk about the fragmentation of resources in the area of applications for interactive analysis and visualization of scientific data (LabPlot, SciDAVis, Veusz, Kst, AlphaPlot, etc.), challenges caused by this and how we're trying to overcome them now at LabPlot.

      Speaker: Alexander Semke
    • 10:30 11:00
      Break 30m
    • 11:00 11:45
      Distribution of Qt apps to other platforms 45m

      A story of an app which is distributed to Linux, Mac OS and Windows.

      In this talk I want to share my experience with distribution of Qt apps to all major platforms. I'm going to talk about tools and methods I use and also about specific requirements each platform, like Windows and Mac OS, have compared to Linux and who knows, maybe you will tell me how to do it better and simple.

      Speaker: Jan Grulich (Developer)
    • 11:45 12:30
      Contributing Beyond Code 45m

      This talk aims to share my experience, challenges, contributions with contributing to the Scalable Onboarding project, Extensions Rebooted Initiative, and volunteering for Guadec 2020. Over time I have noticed that non-code contributions are not usually appreciated so much so asides from hearing my story, it will be a call-to-action for attendees to appreciate non-code contributors. For first-time contributors that will attend my talk, it will help them understand how to contribute via some tips I will share from my experience in the past year.

      Speaker: Ruth Ikegah
    • 12:30 16:00
      Break 3h 30m
    • 13:00 13:45
      Sponsor Office Hours: Sponsor Office Hours: Fedora Project
      Convener: Marie Nordin
    • 16:00 17:15
      Panel Discussion: Building International Software Communities 1h 15m

      Community leaders and experts from around the world discuss their Open Source Communities and the experiences.

      Speakers: Allyson Alexandrou, Aniqa Khokhar, Tomaz Canabrava, Regina Nkemchor, Manuel Haro, Mustapha Abubakar, Hong Phuc Dang
    • 17:15 17:30
      Break 15m
    • 17:30 18:15
      Building the Linux Vendor Firmware Service: Forcing Hardware Vendors to care about Linux users 45m

      The LVFS started as a side project running on a server under my stairs. In the last five years we’ve grown fwupd and the LVFS to the point where it’s a Linux Foundation project, listed on government purchase requirements and included on the CVs of people looking for jobs in the industry. Vendors now need to interact with the ecosystem we’ve built to get the Works With ChromeBook certification from Google, and Lenovo and Dell choose hardware partners based on how they work upstream with the LVFS and fwupd.

      In the last 5 years we’ve built something that dozens of people are paid to work on and has provided more than 25 million firmware files to end users. We have used a few tricks over the years to convince vendors to “join the LVFS” and this talk will give lots of examples on how we grew the ecosystem from nothing into something that CTOs talk about over lunch.

      I think a lot of the problems I’ve encountered building this project might be interesting to people trying to build a similar app ecosystem for Linux users.

      Speaker: Richard Hughes (Red Hat)
    • 18:15 19:00
      ARM yourself with an ecosystem of Linux apps 45m

      Soon the likes of Apple’s M1 chip won’t cost an ARM and a leg. In the not too distant future adding ARM support to your applications is going to be crucial for reaching users, both old and new.

      ARM hardware is cropping up in more and more places, it’s not just for embedded devices anymore. ARM clouds have been around for a while and we’re seeing the first serious workstations from Apple. Before NVIDIA brings ARM into every developer's life, let me tell you Ubuntu’s plan for support and how you can start testing and developing for ARM, using the software and the workflows you’re used to, today.

      Speaker: Rhys Davies