Conferences 2021: A Retrospective and Outlook

Besides the improvements around embedded Linux software and ongoing development of Linux kernel components, the Pengutronix team took the corona pandemic as an opportunity: Last year, many conferences were accessible via internet, so we joined from the comfort of our home offices and shared our experiences and ideas with the community.

For the statistics nerds among us: We were present at

  • 10 conferences with
  • 15 presentations and published
  • 18 new YouTube videos

FOSDEM

Traditionally, the open source community meets for its annual meeting in Brussels at the beginning of February - In 2021 however, beer and waffles had to be consumed at the desk at home. Yummy :-)

The exchange took place via online lectures and the matrix messaging protocol. Of course, waffles will be baked in the kitchen at home again in February 2022.

Our Contributions:

Next Date 5th and 6th February 2022
Event URL https://fosdem.org/2022/

Chemnitzer Linux Tage

The CLT learned from the Chaos Computer Club and pixelated the lecture hall building in a workadventure. The result was a real conference experience where people spontaneously met and chatted in the corridors. At every corner, lovely designed details or participants streaming videos of their guinea pigs surprised everyone.

The world was complemented by numerous lectures and Big Blue Button rooms, offering workshops or lightening talks.

We are looking forward to the implementation in 2022 and will be there again with the Pengutronix Quiz with questions about Linux, open source and embedded topics.

Next Date 12th and 13th March 2022
Event URL https://chemnitzer.linux-tage.de/2022/de/

building IoT

"building IoT is the trade conference for IT professionals developing applications and products in the Internet of Things and IIoT."

We would like to thank the speakers for their excellent support during the conference and for the interesting selection of topics. We look forward to attending building IoT in the future.

Our Contributions:

Next Date 10th and 11th May 2022
Event URL https://www.buildingiot.de/index.php

OSADL COOL

The monthly online conference programme of Open Source Development Lab (OSADL) has become an integral part of the Pengutronix team's schedule.

In the editions, various topics relating to open source software in the industrial environment are discussed and debated. The structure follows the pattern: introduction to the topic by an overview lecture, followed by an expert lecture and subsequent discussion.

Our Contribution:

  • Security requirements of embedded systems with special emphasis on field update (J. Lübbe)
Next Date 26th January 2022
Event URL https://www.osadl.org/

Live Embedded Event

The Live Embedded Event is another format that has emerged during the pandemic to gather the embedded community.

As the conference is initiated and hosted by our colleagues from France, the conference language is mixed French and English.

Our Contribution:

Next Date 18th May 2022
Event URL https://live-embedded-event.carrd.co/

Digitaltag

"Over 2,000 actions nationwide and 4,325 hours of programming across Germany and in virtual space. That was Digitaltag 2021!"

For Hildesheim, we looked at the question of how to transform a city into a "smart city". To do this, we first looked at LoRaWAN as a technical building block for a smart Hildesheim and then tried to work out what a smart city can learn from Freifunk as a community project.

Our Contribution:

Next Date 24th June 2022
Event URL https://digitaltag.eu/

FPGA-Conference Europe

The FPGA Conference is aimed primarily at industry with specialist presentations on the development of FPGAs. The focus was on supply chain security, AI and edge computing with a focus on concrete product solutions.

Our Contribution:

Next Date 5th to 7th July 2022
Event URL https://www.fpga-conference.eu/

FrOSCon

The summer meeting of the German-speaking open source community also took place online in 2021. In ~ 36 hours lecture recordings, experiences with working in a home office, security vulnerabilities, entry possibilities into open source development are conveyed. A new addition is the category "Woodworking instead of IT" about hobbies and compensation possibilities that speakers have tried out and discovered during the COVID-19 contact restrictions.

Our Contribution:

Next Date unkown
Event URL https://www.froscon.de/

ELC-E

This time the ELC-E was not only a conference in Europe, but a hybrid event in the USA with guests from all over the world, on site and via the internet.

Understandably, it is difficult to accommodate all sleeping habits when a global audience gathers at a conference. Thanks to a spontaneously provided Jitsi, a technically sound exchange among the participants was well possible, but nevertheless this can hardly replace the discussion in the corridors. We are therefore very much looking forward to meeting again live at the next ELC-E conference.

Our Contributions:

Next Date 13th to 16th September 2022
Event URL https://events.linuxfoundation.org/embedded-linux-conference-europe/

ESE-Congress

The Embedded Software Engineering (ESE) Congress describes itself as the leading congress for the embedded industry. In addition to an extensive track on management and team leadership, the congress offers basic lectures in many relevant areas of embedded development, such as test automation and code quality.

Our Contributions:

Next Date 5th to 9th December 2022
Event URL https://ese-kongress.de/

Further Readings

Pengutronix Kernel Contributions in 2021

2022 has started, and although Corona had a huge impact on our workflow, the Pengutronix team again made quite some contributions to the Linux kernel. The last kernel release in 2020 was 5.10, the last one in 2021 was 5.15, so let's have a look at what happened in between.


QM meets CI

"Hey Marie, how do I schedule my vacation dates again?", since I'm working in the management division of Pengutronix, I know these kind of questions very well. Writing down the processes enables me to answer "RTFM". Processes are organizational tasks that need to be performed over and over again, sometimes based on a fixed interval - sometimes on demand.


Pengutronix on ELC 2021

The sun is shining for the last days of summer 2021. It doesn't only mean that autumn is coming, but also that this year's ELC is in preparation.


Yocto Project Virtual Summit 2021

On Tuesday, 25th and Wednesday, 26th, the 3rd edition of the Yocto Project Virtual Summit took place on the internet. With a fair ticket price of 40$ Pengutronix developers Jan Lübbe and Enrico Jörns got a 2-day long wild ride through the latest features, workflows and experiences with the Yocto Project.

FrOSCon 2023

In a few hours, the 18th FrOSCon will begin at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences. Pengutronix will be there again with a small team. At one of the partner booths we will show some of our activities in the open source community. We will bring our labgrid demonstrator and the FPGA demo.


Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2023: Our Recommendations

Last month Pengutronix was present at the Embedded Open Source Summit (EOSS) in Prague. Thanks to all to all speakers for sharing your knowledge! In this blog post we want to shine a spotlight at a few talks that we found especially interesting. (Links to recordings will be added once the recordings are available.)


Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2023: Our Contributions

This year the Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELCE) is back in Prague! Pengutronix, again, is on a field trip with 15 colleges to attend the conference. The ELCE is one of the big conferences where the Embedded Linux Community meets during the year. This time the ELCE is part of the Embedded Open Source Summit (EOSS): a new conference with only embedded topics and without cloud- or crypto-tracks.


Netdevconf 0x16

After a longer time with online-only events, the Netdev 0x16, a conference about the technical aspects of Linux Networking, was organized as hybrid event: online and on-site at Lisbon.


CLT-2022: Voll verteilt!

Unter dem Motto "Voll verteilt" finden die Chemnitzer Linux Tage auch 2022 im virtuellen Raum statt. Wie auch im letzten Jahr, könnt ihr uns in der bunten Pixelwelt des Workadventures treffen und auf einen Schnack über Linux, Open Source, oder neue Entwicklungen vorbei kommen.


Wir haben doch etwas zu verbergen: Schlüssel mit OP-TEE verschlüsseln

Moderne Linux Systeme müssen häufig zwecks Authentifizierung bei einer Cloud- basierten Infrastruktur oder einer On-Premise Maschine eigene kryptografische Schlüssel speichern. Statt der Verwendung eines Trusted Platform Modules (TPM), bieten moderne ARM Prozessoren die TrustZone-Technologie an, auf deren Basis ebenfalls Schlüssel oder andere Geheimnisse gespeichert werden können. Dieses Paper zeigt die Nutzung des Open Portable Trusted Execution Environments (OP- TEE) mit der Standardkonformen PKCS#11 Schnittstellen und i.MX6 Prozessoren von NXP als Beispiel.