Day one at FreedomHEC

SEATTLE — The first-ever FreedomHEC started today in Seattle. FreedomHEC is an informal two-day conference discussing hardware issues under Linux; hot on the heels of the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), it offers a chance to see the Linux side of things.

This morning’s activities started with a discussion to set the schedule for the day. Presentations included a lightning overview of SysFS and Udev, presented by Greg Kroah-Hartman; a session on how the kernel development community works, presented by Randy Dunlap; a question and answer session on the Linux SCSI layer with James Bottomley, the kernel maintainer of the SCSI layer; open source rocketry using Linux; and a question and answer session with Kroah-Hartman on how to get a driver added to the stock Linux kernel.

FreedomHEC is still not completely full, so if you are in the Seattle area and want to be there tomorrow, sign up on the FreedomHEC wiki.

James Bottomley talks about the kernel – click to enlarge

Tomorrow, Kroah-Hartman will be presenting his “write a working Linux driver” session, and there will be more presentations. To participate in Kroah-Hartman’s driver-writing session, bring a laptop running a current Linux kernel, and appropriate development tools for building kernel modules. The driver will be for a USB thermometer, and if you want to keep the USB thermometer, the cost is $25.

The conference is hosted on the 75th floor of the Columbia Center building, at the corner of 5th Avenue and Cherry Street in Seattle. This is a chance to learn about Linux hardware issues directly from some of the actual kernel maintainers. I’m really looking forward to it!