Opening Remarks

• Aleix Pol Gonzalez (KDE)
• Kristi Progri (The GNOME Foundation)

Room: Auditorium Join us as we kick off LAS 2022!

Flathub: now and next

• Robert McQueen (Endless OS Foundation)
• Jorge Castro (None)

Room: Auditorium Flathub was founded in 2017, and has since been established as the place to download around 1,500 apps which can be easily installed on any Linux distribution. In less than 5 years there has been consistent impressive growth in available applications, and Flathub is without a doubt an excellent resource for Linux users, developers, devices, distros and extremely cool apps. The last 18 months have shown significant acceleration with applications like Open Broadcast Studio (OBS), Firefox, Bottles, Yuzu, and Telegram choosing to directly publish on the Flathub store to have a direct line to their users in a format that provides distribution-agnostic packaging with support for multiple toolkits and technologies. We’re also seeing multiple distributions including Flathub directly or with a single click, and consumer devices selecting Flathub to complete their app offerings. However, along with the good news there are concerns about the true long term sustainability of the FOSS app ecosystem, and the dream of sustainable application development eludes many in our community. Software developers on proprietary platforms can have an idea on a Friday, hack on it over the weekend, publish it on a Monday, and collect a check at the end of the month. The idea of OSS developers asking for financial support used to be an uncomfortable conversation, but as mobile and cloud SaaS platforms have swallowed the software world we find ourselves at a crossroads. How can we enable developers to contribute in a way that is not just fun for them, but also sustainable? Shouldn't desktop developers have the same opportunities and successes that OSS has had in mobile and cloud? This is the problem we are trying to solve, and what we've been working on for the past year. Thanks to the efforts of many people at this conference and support from GNOME, KDE & Endless, we have been able to focus on tackling the application distribution problem as a whole, not just as a set of technical requirements. Can we build something that can compete with users’ expectations of quality, convenience, ease of use, while keeping the values of open source that attracted us all to the platform in the first place? So what’s next for Flathub – or what should be next? This presentation will discuss recommendations for creating revenue streams, overcoming financial barriers to true sustainability, along with recommendations for community inclusivity and growth. We must let our best innovators and collaborators fully participate in the Flathub community while keeping on a stable career path. Most of the challenges we will be facing this year cannot be solved by code alone (don't worry, we still have plenty of those), but by work that requires multiple disciplines across multiple organizations. We need all skill levels, non-developers, marketing, etc. to make a multi-country, multi-currency app store that is fair and transparent without bringing the bad parts of the duopoly with it. We look forward to discussing how we can all tackle this together, and sharing our vision for the future. Our speakers: (Both are hoping to attend in person.) Rob McQueen is CEO at the Endless OS Foundation. Rob is an experienced engineering manager and company leader, and has been a user, developer and advocate for a Free and Open Source Linux desktop for nearly 20 years. Based in Cambridge, United Kingdom, Rob also currently serves as the President of the GNOME Foundation, a 501(c)(3) in the open source desktop space, and is Chair of the Board at OpenUK. Jorge O. Castro is a community manager, specializing in Open Source. A cat herder – a combination of engineering, developer relations, and user advocacy. He spent the last 10 years or so delving into cloud land working with projects like Kubernetes and Cloud Custodian. Jorge is interested in helping the Linux desktop achieve the same level of ubiquity and success.

Fractal-next: The journey of rewriting a GTK Matrix client

• Julian Sparber (GNOME)

Room: Auditorium Fractal is a popular Matrix chat client for the GNOME desktop which has been in development since 2017. Fractal was designed to work well for collaboration in large groups, such as free software projects. For a long time there were two main areas that needed improvements: performance and maintainability were limited. What’s more, it lacked end-to-end encryption (E2EE) support. Over the course of 2021 we spent countless hours rewriting Fractal from scratch and now we are close to the first release. Fractal-next is built on top of the matrix-rust-sdk, a set of libraries that help to build Matrix clients. The client, still written in Rust, now uses GTK4. During development, the focus was on performance, maintainability and E2EE. And of course, we kept mobile support.

Designing for Open Source Applications

• Rajdeep Singha

Room: Auditorium This session will be about the importance of design in app development, especially in the Open Source space. It'll guide developers on how to make mockups, UI designs, prototypes, collaboration etc. using tools like Figma. I'll also talk about conducting UX research in a sustainable manner, keeping the budget in mind, even if it is zero. I'll also touch on related topics like principles of design, design thinking, human centric design, inclusive design etc. Attendees will learn why design is important in app development, and why its not something that is added after completing the product. They will learn to use existing UI toolkits to create mockups and prototypes for their apps. They will learn to conduct user research and gather feedback in a user centric approach. They'll learn about the fundamental principles and philosophies in the world of UX Design and design in general. All of this, while keeping their financial and time resources in mind.

Snapcraft Secrets: The hidden power of desktop extensions

• Igor Ljubuncic (Canonical)

Room: Auditorium There are two ways one can develop snaps: the hard way or the elegant way. Packaging applications as snaps isn't always easy, especially when it comes to graphical desktop applications. Developers need to figure out a fair deal of components and settings for their software to function perfectly. Runtime libraries, environment variables, icons, themes, desktop integration... the list goes on. What if there was a way to have these automagically happen? Well, there is! Snapcraft Extensions are a powerful, flexible set of tweaks and options designed specifically to make life easier for snap developers. In this session, we will talk about what the extensions can do, how they work behind the scenes, and the different ways they can contribute to faster, more streamlined, and more consistent snaps.

Integrating Progressive Web Apps in GNOME

• Phaedrus Leeds

Room: Auditorium The GNOME Foundation funded me to work a project starting in November 2021 to make Progressive Web Apps first-class citizens in the GNOME desktop environment. Progressive Web Apps are essentially websites which make use of web standards to enable them to look and feel more like native apps: they can be installed like native apps, used without the usual browser chrome such as the address bar, and they can support some or all of their functionality offline. My project has consisted of working on a new portal to allow Flatpak'd web browsers to install web apps without adding sandbox holes, adding back support for web apps to GNOME Software, and revamping the web app support in GNOME Web. I have also bootstrapped an initiative to include a set of PWAs with GNOME Software to help users discover them and broaden the set of apps available for linux desktops. Much of the work is also useful for KDE and other desktop environments, so it is not only beneficial for GNOME. This should increase the value proposition of the linux desktop both for users and app developers, who can reach users much more easily. This presentation will cover the project and hopefully get you excited about PWAs on linux desktops!

A new distribution openSUSE Leap Micro (Platform Diversity) A new distribution openSUSE Leap Micro openSUSE Leap Micro is a new distribution based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro with the main purpose to be a host-os with minimal footprint which fits well the app-centric world. A small foot print, focus on the EDGE as well as data center, containerization and virtual machines, whatever flies your app. Leap Micro has a 6 months release cycle with support lasting until the next release or up to 4 years of support with a migration to SLE Micro. Proposed type a 10 minutes lightning talk.

Your app on the Steamdeck I will go through ways to make sure your app is usable on the device, how to test it and what the possibilities for you and your users are.

Funding Flatpak Development on Open Collective (People and Communications) It's been almost a year since Flatpak started fundraising on the Open Collective platform, with some modest success. While several companies have contributed to Flatpak development, most notably Red Hat, the project is under-resourced and crowdfunding may be a way to address that while maintaining the project's independence. This lightning talk will cover how we are approaching the fundraising, what technical work it has enabled, and what the future might hold.

Pro Audio on Linux in 2022

• Sam Thursfield

When I started learning music production in the mid 2000's, the choice was: Windows, or Mac? In intervening 15+ years, support for Linux as a pro-audio OS has got to the point that I don't use anything else Two major improvements have been Hubert Figuière's efforts around Flatpak packaging, and Wim Tayman's work leading Pipewire development. I will highlight those and more creative apps that are available to modern Linux users.

Make Computing Personal Again!

• Parke Bostrom

Lxroot is a lightweight, flexible, and safe alternative to the chroot program. A non-root user may use Lxroot to safely create a chroot-style virtual software environment (via unprivileged Linux namespaces), and then run one or more apps inside that chroot-style environment. Lxroot is a general-purpose and flexible tool. As such, Lxroot has potential uses related to Gaming, Ecosystem Growth, Platform Diversity, and Innovation. Back in the 1980’s, apps were distributed on floppy disks. Floppy disk technology gave the common user complete control over which software, and when, ran on their computer. As such, computers in the 1980’s were truly “personal”. In the decades since the 1980’s, complex multi-tasking operating systems and community-controlled (often corporate-controlled) network based “app stores” have replaced the floppy disk. Today, the common user is “locked in” to one app store (or possibly to several app stores simultaneously). Control has shifted away from the common user, and towards the community (or corporation) that controls the “app store”. In other words, today’s computers and smartphones are most definitely no longer “personal”. I wrote Lxroot so that I could install, upgrade, and run the software I wanted, the way I wanted. This includes installing and simultaneously running multiple versions of the same app, possibly even from multiple different sources, all done safely as a non-root user. This 10 minute lightning talk will cover, at a high level, potential uses of Lxroot related to Gaming, Ecosystem Growth, Platform Diversity, and Innovation. For viewers who are interested in lower-level, nuts and bolts information about Lxroot, I recommend my November 2021 Packaging-Con talk (see link below). Users, app developers, and app distributors should all know that unprivileged Linux namespaces can be used, without root access, to control the installation and safe execution of apps on Linux computers. Lxroot is one tool that allows users and app distributors to use Linux namespaces to accomplish these goals. More information: https://github.com/parke/lxroot Packaging-Con talk abstract Packaging-Con talk video

Screen sharing in online meetings on Wayland (Innovation) With wayland being mature enough to be the default option for more distributions and with recent events in the world that shifted focus to online meetings and work from home, comes an important question. What is the current state of screen sharing support in modern browsers on Wayland?

The Ubuntu Summit in Prague - OR - The return of UDS!

• Till Kamppeter

Sponsors Dinner - Ristorante Tema http://www.ristorantetema.com/en/

One plugin, six platforms

• Majid Hajian

Room: Auditorium Building and maintaining an open-source project comes with many challenges, but it's fun and rewarding! Plugins and packages are an essential part of any framework, and Flutter is not an expectation for development to make a cross-platform application with a single code base! You can develop a plugin package that connects the API to the platform-specific implementation(s) using a platform channel to provide calls into platform-specific APIs. In this session, you will learn how to start developing a plugin for Flutter, the best practices from my experience of being the maintainer of great plugins such as Plus plugins, FlutterFire, and the importance of Federated plugins and their architecture together with platform channel API.

UKUI Technology Sharing In Tablet Mode

• Jianfeng Li (Ubuntu Kylin community)

Room: Auditorium UKUI 3.0 is a lightweight desktop environment based on the Linux release developed by Kylin team. In addition to the traditional desktop mode, the tablet mode is also provided to meet the needs of various scenarios. We will share UKUI's experience and achievements in how to add support for tablet form and its future planning.

Bottles

• Mirko Brombin (Bottles)
• Francesco Masala (Bottles)
• Pietro di Caprio

Room: Auditorium In this forty-minute session we would introduce you to some key elements of our program ecosystem: Wine - How it works and what its purpose is Wine Prefixes - What they are and how Bottles come into play Bottles Managers - How Bottles manages packages (and more) for each bottle Layers - What they are and how they are implemented Future plans and ideas

MBition Office Hour

Energy Conservation and Energy Efficiency with Free Software

• Joseph De Veaugh-Geiss (KDE e.V.)

Room: Auditorium It may be obvious that energy conservation and efficiency in software engineering will mean fewer shared resources are needed to keep our digital society running. Oft overlooked is that Free and Open-Source Software is well suited to achieve both! Free and Open-Source Software guarantees user autonomy through the four freedoms. This autonomy permits users to install what they need and uninstall what they do not, bypassing bloatware and in turn conserving electricity. And this autonomy means users may choose to continue using older hardware but keep the software up-to-date, reducing global CO2 emissions by avoiding the unnecessary production and shipment of new devices. Moreover, Free and Open-Source Software guarantees transparency: this has always entailed that anyone may inspect and learn from how software runs; today, this transparency can be extended to include software’s energy consumption when in use. When energy demands are transparent, software can be made more efficient and users may make more informed choices. Digital sustainability should be considered holistically: user autonomy and control over one's digital life as well as transparency in our digital infrastructure's resource consumption are a part of that. In this talk I will present how Free Software licenses enable users and their communities to directly influence the factors determining software sustainability.

Flatpak BoF

• Phaedrus Leeds

Room: Room 2 This BoF is an open forum for discussing areas of improvement in Flatpak. What features are most important to work on? Can we decide on the technical direction for any major features? Should Flatpak provide a better UX for command line apps? Are there tooling improvements that would make life easier for Flatpak maintainers on Flathub or elsewhere?

Toolbx: developing applications on OSTree based OSes

• Debarshi Ray (GNOME, Fedora, Red Hat)

Room: Auditorium There has been a recent push towards rethinking how a general-purpose Linux distribution is put together, and a rough consensus seems to be emerging. The core operating system is shipped as an immutable OSTree image and all the applications are Flatpaks. This promises painless upgrades, clear separation between the OS and applications, and secure and cross-distribution applications. Endless OS, Fedora Silverblue and GNOME OS are prominent examples of this approach. However, these next-generation Linux distributions present some problems for people who want to set up a development environment on them. The OSTree images containing the core operating system are intentionally minimal and hard to change. They don't even come with traditional package managers like APT or DNF. This makes it difficult to install any development tools, editors or SDKs. So, how do we, as hackers, dogfood these next-generation Linux distributions and use them to hack on the same applications that we want people to use on them? Toolbx solves this problem by providing a fully mutable container within which one can install their favourite development tools, editors and SDKs. For example, it’s possible to do "dnf install gcc" without affecting the base operating system. This talk will focus on Toolbx, and what it offers to hackers using these next-generation Linux distributions.

How to get the Ubuntu visuals into Flutter

• Frederik Feichtmeier

Room: Auditorium I would love to talk about my experience with how to create Linux applications with Flutter and what efforts we have made in the past year to get the Ubuntu design and visuals to Flutter applications. yaru.dart: getting the looks in yaru_widgets.dart: getting widgets in that are convenient for the desktop settings: using dart APIs and testing everything in a real application firmware_updater and new installer: small effort, huge impact improvements on the horizon: files, software, pdf viewer, image viewer

Usability testing in open source software: Making your software easy to use

• Jim Hall

Room: Auditorium Your program might be easy for you to use, but can someone else use it just as easily? If we want people to use open source software, it has to be easy to learn and easy to use, or people will not use it. In this session, we'll learn about usability testing - what it is, why it's important, and how to do it. You don't need a "usability lab" to do usability testing - you don't even need to be in the same room. You can learn a lot just by watching five people use the software to do a set of tasks. We'll walk through all the steps to do your own usability test and how to understand the results so you can make your software even better.

Closing Remarks

• Aleix Pol Gonzalez (KDE)
• Kristi Progri (The GNOME Foundation)

Room: Auditorium

Ubuntu 22.04 Release Party We will celebrate the new release with cake, prosecco, and a very nice atmosphere! Join us and let's have some fun!