Fosdem 2021

Fosdem 2021 was free software related virtual conference held February 6th and 7th, 2021.

We are not hosting a complete archive of all the Fosdem 2021 presentations, nor do we plan to. The following list of presentations are just the more interesting ones. See the Fosdem 2021 website for additional boring talks that will likely put you to sleep.

Interesting Presentations From Fosdem 2021

• A fresh look at toolchains in 2021
  
  
  binutils, gcc and glibc are no longer the only options. Are they still the best? There are answers in this 41 minute long video presentation by Bernhard Rosenkränzer at Fosdem 2021.
  
• Ada Lovelace and The Very First Computer Program
  
  
  We all know that Ada Lovelace is credited as the first computer programmer. But what did she write? What did it do? And how does it work? We look at the program, its function, and break it down line-by-line so you can understand the origins of our entire industry. After all, it doesn't get any more retro than this!
  
• An emulator for my old system today and tomorrow? Thoughts and guidelines about digital preservation by/of emulators
  
  
  Software emulators are wonderful tools to study old computer systems for different purpose from running legacy application to retrogaming. This Fosdem 2021 talk explores the context of digital preservation triggered by on-going work in a Belgian computer museum where emulators help in rediscovering old systems, maintaining/recovering knowledge on their design and sharing the experience with the audience without stressing fragile old machines.
  
• Building massive virtual communities in Matrix
  
  
  Matthew, the open source lead for the Matrix project, held a 48 minutes long lecture on Matrix, a open protocol communications system with encrypted chat, chatrooms and more, at FOSDEM 2021. The video is worth watching if you are curious to learn how Matrix works, what their future plans are for shared spaces and other features, and the practical use-cases it can solve for you and your organization.
  
• Dragging MAME into the 21st century: Practicalities of a large project with two decades of history
  
  
  The open source emulation landscape is littered with abandoned projects. MAME has survived stock market crashes, a pandemic, major internal refactoring, half a dozen leadership changes, and persistent rumours of the project’s imminent death. Why is MAME still here? How does MAME continue to attract contributors? What are some of the issues a project this size faces?
  
• Gemini, a modern protocol that looks retro
  
  
  Gemini: Back to the 1990s with a protocol and format to distribute real content, without tracking and visual effects. Stéphane Bortzmeyer explained what it is all about, how it works and how it differs from the modern world wide web in this 27 minutes long video presentation as Fosdem 2021.
  
• HOWTO Make A USB Adapter For A VISTA80 Keyboard From 1977
  
  
  Jeremy Ouellet bought an old VISTA80 from the Canada Science and Technology museum and figured out how to use it on modern computers using a passive USB adapter. He shared his experience in a 14 minute long video at the virtual FOSDEM conference in February 2021.
  
• Mozilla History: 20+ Years And Counting: An overview of origins, past, and present
  
  
  Robert Kaiser gave an insightful 45 minute long talk about Mozilla and its 20 year long history at this years virtual Fosdem 2011 conference in February 2021. There are a lot of things you may not know about the long history of one of the biggest and oldest free software projects that you can learn by watching this video.
  
• NoRouter: instant multi-cluster & multi-cloud container networking
  
  
  Setting up multi-cluster and multi-cloud container networking for dev environments has been too harder than it needs to be. NoRouter is a novel instant networking stack to overcome this difficulty, by transferring IP packets over stdio streams (aka "shell connections"). Akihiro Suda gave a 15 minute video presentation about it at Fosdem 2021. It covers how it works and why it is pretty neat.
  
• Notcurses: Making terminals do things that were never intended
  
  
  Notcurses is a C library (with C++, Python, and Rust wrappers) facilitating complex TUIs on modern terminal emulators. Notcurses supports vivid colors, multimedia via FFmpeg or OIIO, sane multithreading, and complex Unicode. Developer Nick Black gave a nice overview of Notcurses in a 15 minute long lightning talk video at Fosdem 2021.
  
• Starting Over: A FOSS proposal for a new type of OS for a new type of computer
  
  
  A possible next evolutionary step for computers is persistent memory: large capacity non-volatile main memory. With a few terabytes of nonvolatile RAM, who needs an SSD any more? I will sketch out a proposal for how to build an versatile, general-purpose OS for a computer that doesn't need or use filesystems or files, and how such a thing could be built from existing FOSS code and techniques, using lessons from systems that existed decades ago and which inspired the computers we use today.
  
• Why your PC only has sixteen colors
  
  
  Your computer only supports 16 text colors, and 8 background colors. Why so few colors? And why is there a "Bright Black"? This fun lightning talk video from Fosdem 2021 explains the origins of these 16 colors, and why the colors look the way they do.
  
• Working on DOS in 2021
  
  
  Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, DOS was everywhere. And despite being a 16-bit command line operating system, DOS was actually pretty good for the era. Jim Hall did a really good presentation on FreeDOS and DOS in the 1980s and 1990s at the Fosdem 2021 conference. The video is 48 minutes long.
  

Links

• fosdem.org/2021 (The Fosdem 2021 website)