Picture Story – LC3 China Retold

The following picture story has been contributed by Jerry Tang, QA Engineer, SUSE China. 

For the first time ever, LinuxCon is hold in CHINA, in Beijing. I’m am one of the lucky ones who have got a ticket 🙂 – so let’s have a closer look.  First, let me explain the correct conference name: LC3 = (Linuxcon + ContainerCon + CloudOpen) x 2 days. To its name: of course the “triple conference” focuses on “kernel, Container, Cloud” in the Linux Ecosphere. And it will last two days.

Day 1

Hi LC3 – nice to meet you!

From the first day’s schedule, I realize that ‘Cloud’ is the most frequently mentioned topic. And ‘Kubernetes’ is also everywhere. Business needs obviously drive Linux technologies.

But as Linux kernel fan, kernel topics are MY first priority.

Let’s check what is offered as “First Round”: the KEYNOTES!

I am sure you like this: Big Sponsor Big Logo!

But of course: thanks to all of the sponsors who ensured we will get a good LC3 in China.

One of my most important conclusions from the keynotes: open source is future!

Now to a kernel-related presentation：

Evolving Ext4 for Shingled Disks – Theodore Ts’o, Google

A valuable talk. Theodore Ts’o is talking clearly and simply about the topic. Based on the ext4 mechanism of metadata and journal, only a few code changes in ext4 provide for huge improvements in performance.

I would definitely recommend to watch the video of this presentation when it is published …

After that – next kernel related talk:

Linux Kernel Development – How It All Works  – Greg Kroah-Hartman, The Linux Foundation

I don’t understand at all why they choose the smallest room for this presentation: you can just see from the crowd how “hot” this topic is.

As the core of Linux, the kernel is the most favorite topic for code monkeys.  And because I’ve a clear plan for this LinuxCon event, I got a seat at the front 😁.

Greg Kroah-Hartman (before joining Linux Foundation, he worked for SUSE) talks about

• Top contributors for Kernel
  • The people in the list are great experts
  • The companies in the list are strong, and powerful supporters of open source

This topic makes your enthusiasm flare up. And the speaker himself is also on the list 👍.

The talk is really good, it shows you the development status of the kernel, and gives hints how to contribute to the kernel.

After this talk, the morning sessions are over.

Now it’s Time to Look Around:

SUSE! 

If you register at the SUSE booth, you will have the chance to win a free trip to SUSECon in Prague / Czech Republic in September!

Huawei

Sign in here at the booth, and you will get a T-Shirt. Cool.

Microsoft

Many people is waiting for gaming and gambling after having signed in.

Red Hat

This time Red Hat keeps a low profile.

Alibaba

AliCloud is getting some interest!

Hurry – the afternoon presentations start – let’s go back to the session rooms to listen to interesting topics:

Much Ado About Blocking: Wait/Wake in the Linux Kernel   – Davidlohr Bueso, SUSE Labs

The speaker is a developer from SUSE Labs. He talks about block mechanism in the kernel. A good topic to listen to – as a kernel fan 😉.

Fully Automated Kubernetes Deployment and Management – Peng Jiang, Rancher Labs

Now we come to Kubernetes – but I prefer the Linux kernel topics, because this one here is a little more about business (well – I am a developer!).

I definitely like this topic:

MD RAID1 and NVMe: High Performance Data Duplication – Coly (Yong) Li, SUSE

Don’t mistake me here: I like it not just because the presenter speaks Chinese, but because his message is easy to understand and his topic is great to learn – and I know this guy 🙂.

The RAID1 sync code is very complicated, but this presentation introduces a new bucket hash way to replace the old implementation. I can just recommend this topic.

Ok, this is my last technical session for today. LC3, see you tomorrow…

Day 2

Hi LC3, I am arriving.

The elevators are closed down. Advantage: on my way to breakfast I find the Information Desk and the Intel booth …

I have to admit, Intel is very smart – look at their booth design …

… and in addition they feed us!

Today is THE day: the Linux VIPs are coming to talk to us! The keynotes are supposed to be highly exciting – so it is advised to hurry and find a good seat inside the keynote room

Da da ! (Don’t tell me you don’t know this guy!) 

Finally, we get to see the one and only Linus Torvalds, “King Arthur” of Linux 🙂

He is asked several good questions :

• What is really surprising about Linux development?
• What motivates you?
• What do you think about the future of Linux leadership?
• Will Linux be replaced?
• How to get started as an open source developer?

I think his answer might also make you to think a bit – so, if you want to listen to his answers, please just watch the video 😃.

But now it is “Tech Topic Time” again! There are a few presentations I want to attend!

Timekeeping in Linux VMs – Vitaly Kuznetsov, Red Hat

KVM, Xen, and Hyper-V related time keeping techniques and the corresponding parts of the Linux kernel are all mentioned.

Emulating a timer is a simple thing, but keeping the performance of the time count is definitely not.

You don’t need to have a deep understanding of the background – the topic is easy to understand – and the presentation is really good.

Alibaba’s Work on Resource Management in Linux Kernel – Tao Ma, Alibaba Cloud 

This is a very valuable and interesting topic, and this presentation it is based on a real user case, the Double 11  (also known as “Singles’ Day” or Guanggun Jie) event in China.

Basically the company suffered from the pain of page cache in Linux. The presenter shares details with us how, at Alibaba, they handled the huge access sync.

Already Lunch Time?

Again, a huge THANK YOU to Intel !

Power reloaded – and back to the session rooms:

Obstacles & Solutions for Livepatch Support on Arm64 Architecture – Bin Li, Huawei

KDUMP: Usage and Internals – Pratyush Anand, Red Hat India

If you are using Red Hat Linux, you should probably listen to this presentation. If you are not using Red Hat Linux, it is also ok because the Linux kernel debug procedures are basically the same among the distributions :).

If it had subtitles, I would enjoy the talk …

Live Patching, Virtual Machine Introspection and Vulnerability Management – Lars Kurth & Cheng Zhang, Citrix

This talk features two speakers – one speaks English, the other Chinese … It is the last presentation I join. And it also very interesting, because it’s about security on XEN. It

• Gives an intro to the current security issues on XEN
• Presents a new idea how to define malicious software
• gives examples how to optimize live patching on XEN

Very cool! You can ask questions in Chinese, but nobody uses Chinese 😂!

With that, my second day is over – and so is my picture story.

In my view, LC3 China is a huge success. At least I enjoyed all the presentations I joined – and that’s all I have to say about that…!