{"$schema": "https://c3voc.de/schedule/schema.json", "generator": {"name": "pretalx", "version": "2026.3.0.dev0", "url": "https://pretalx.com"}, "schedule": {"url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/schedule/", "version": "4", "base_url": "https://pretalx.com", "conference": {"acronym": "txlf2026", "title": "Texas Linux Fest 2026", "start": "2026-11-06", "end": "2026-11-07", "daysCount": 2, "timeslot_duration": "00:05", "time_zone_name": "US/Central", "colors": {"primary": "#006ab3"}, "rooms": [{"name": "Atrium", "slug": "5016-atrium", "guid": "f0c88334-c4bb-5f5c-93d1-4466ce01b012", "description": "https://commons.utexas.edu/meetings-and-events/building-layout", "capacity": null}, {"name": "Big Tex", "slug": "5017-big-tex", "guid": "ca275ba2-5553-5625-a182-2935b9bf3cd8", "description": "https://commons.utexas.edu/meetings-and-events/building-layout", "capacity": 345}, {"name": "Lil Tex", "slug": "5018-lil-tex", "guid": "25a4d6a0-25f6-52b3-926b-cfee58a9ee03", "description": "https://commons.utexas.edu/meetings-and-events/building-layout", "capacity": 145}, {"name": "Balcones", "slug": "5019-balcones", "guid": "3fbeb4b9-cf21-5b02-9f2e-52b7f3849b3a", "description": "https://commons.utexas.edu/meetings-and-events/building-layout", "capacity": 72}, {"name": "Stadium", "slug": "5020-stadium", "guid": "ab8fd1eb-2867-5282-bbd7-8f6d8982a225", "description": "https://commons.utexas.edu/meetings-and-events/building-layout", "capacity": 60}, {"name": "Bevo", "slug": "5021-bevo", "guid": "69381280-6749-5f8f-985e-45e4a2693814", "description": "https://commons.utexas.edu/meetings-and-events/building-layout", "capacity": 44}], "tracks": [{"name": "Linux", "slug": "7195-linux", "color": "#546e7a"}, {"name": "Distributions", "slug": "7207-distributions", "color": "#1e88e5"}, {"name": "Cloud Native", "slug": "7198-cloud-native", "color": "#00acc1"}, {"name": "Artificial Intelligence", "slug": "7197-artificial-intelligence", "color": "#8d6e63"}, {"name": "Observability", "slug": "7199-observability", "color": "#f06292"}, {"name": "Databases", "slug": "7196-databases", "color": "#7cb342"}, {"name": "Security", "slug": "7200-security", "color": "#00897b"}, {"name": "Automation", "slug": "7203-automation", "color": "#fb8c00"}, {"name": "Infrastructure", "slug": "7205-infrastructure", "color": "#8e24aa"}, {"name": "Gaming", "slug": "7204-gaming", "color": "#fdd835"}, {"name": "Development", "slug": "7206-development", "color": "#43a047"}, {"name": "Other", "slug": "7202-other", "color": "#e53935"}], "days": [{"index": 1, "date": "2026-11-06", "day_start": "2026-11-06T04:00:00-06:00", "day_end": "2026-11-07T03:59:00-06:00", "rooms": {"Atrium": [{"guid": "1ba0d96d-464b-52d9-be80-e4dd71b761c3", "code": "7FGJTN", "id": 104612, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-06T10:00:00-06:00", "start": "10:00", "end": "2026-11-06T17:00:00-06:00", "duration": "07:00", "room": "Atrium", "slug": "txlf2026-104612-expo-hall", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/7FGJTN/", "title": "Expo Hall", "subtitle": "", "track": null, "type": "Expo Hall", "language": "en", "abstract": "Come meet our sponsors and our community of open source projects in the exhibit hall.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/7FGJTN/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/7FGJTN/", "attachments": []}], "Big Tex": [{"guid": "15fac1eb-84b5-5ffa-bcf2-b721969d735b", "code": "GKNSHM", "id": 104615, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-06T16:45:00-06:00", "start": "16:45", "end": "2026-11-06T17:15:00-06:00", "duration": "00:30", "room": "Big Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-104615-lightning-talks", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/GKNSHM/", "title": "Lightning Talks", "subtitle": "", "track": null, "type": "Lightning Talks", "language": "en", "abstract": "Lightning talks are short, focused presentations designed to share an idea, project, or perspective in five minutes or less.  No prior signup is required, just show up to this session and get in line.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/GKNSHM/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/GKNSHM/", "attachments": []}], "Balcones": [{"guid": "572c8457-6765-5a94-81c1-ec8481231586", "code": "CEYSED", "id": 103345, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-06T09:00:00-06:00", "start": "09:00", "end": "2026-11-06T11:50:00-06:00", "duration": "02:50", "room": "Balcones", "slug": "txlf2026-103345-power-editing-with-vi-basics", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/CEYSED/", "title": "Power Editing with Vi: Basics", "subtitle": "", "track": "Linux", "type": "Workshop", "language": "en", "abstract": "This hands-on tutorial will take you from Vi beginner or intermediate user to a power user, able to leap tall text buildings with a single bound. Unleash the full power of that blinking cursor, become more efficient at your job, and fame and fortune will surely follow. Most people use about 10% of what Vi is fully capable of. Awaken to your text editor\u2019s full potential.\n\nWho Should Attend This Presentation? Anybody that works on UNIX and Linux systems would benefit from fully learning Vi, an ubiquitous and standard editor.\n\nTopics include:\n\n- History and design principles\n- The command language syntax\n- All movement commands\n- Many text alteration commands\n- Working with registers (\u201cclipboards\u201d)\n- Working with multiple files\n- Undoing and redoing changes\n- An introduction to the Vim editor\n\nThis is a hands-on workshop. Attendees should bring a laptop to follow along with the in-class exercises. Please download a copy of \u201cAlice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland\u201d from Project Gutenberg, which we will use to practice Vi motion, editing, and text transformation commands.\n\nhttps://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11/pg11.txt", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "YGUEMD", "name": "Aleksey Tsalolikhin", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/UQLCCR_3bd7QD5.webp", "biography": "Aleksey Tsalolikhin started his IT career in tech support at EarthLink (ISP) in the nineties. Wrangling EarthLink\u2019s server farms by hand, Aleksey developed an abiding interest in automating system administration and in improving the quality of life, efficiency and morale of IT Operations practitioners.\n\nAleksey has been teaching at conferences since 2010: at USENIX/LISA, LinuxCon, Ohio Linux Fest, SoCal Linux Expo, Cascadia IT Conference, IBM SHARE, ShellCon, and others.  Aleksey has delivered private trainings through his training and consulting company Vertical Sysadmin, Inc.\n\nAleksey is a recognized CFEngine Community Champion (2011) and LOPSA Mentor of the Year (2011).", "public_name": "Aleksey Tsalolikhin", "guid": "74e33460-2af3-5b40-9418-5a83fd8696ae", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/YGUEMD/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/CEYSED/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/CEYSED/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "302a9677-0e54-59e5-9b33-07826fcae5ca", "code": "Q7CPTX", "id": 97819, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-06T13:30:00-06:00", "start": "13:30", "end": "2026-11-06T14:50:00-06:00", "duration": "01:20", "room": "Balcones", "slug": "txlf2026-97819-rhelevant-security-practices-selinux-keylime-usbguard-hardening-lab", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/Q7CPTX/", "title": "RHELevant security practices: SELinux, Keylime, USBGuard hardening lab", "subtitle": "", "track": "Security", "type": "Workshop", "language": "en", "abstract": "Ready to stop hoping your security holds and start verifying it does? \n\nForget security theory\u2014join our practical application lab. Attendees will walk away with ready-to-use configuration files and deployment examples for Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux), Keylime, and USBGuard, enabling you to construct a truly robust, attestable, and compliance-ready Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) environment. \n\nLearn this advanced security skill set, including:\n\n**SELinux:** Move beyond basic permissive and enforcing modes to architect and troubleshoot custom Mandatory Access Control (MAC) policies, significantly limiting the damage from exploited processes. This will help you detect compromised services and privilege escalation.\n\n**Keylime:** Remote attestation and integrity monitoring protects against unauthorized modifications to the bootloader, kernel, or critical system files. It provides cryptographic, continuous proof that a host has not been tampered with\u2014ideal for detecting sophisticated, hardware-level rootkits and ensuring compliance.\n\n**USBGuard:** USB device authorization policy stops malicious USB devices (like \"Rubber Ducky\" or \u201cBadUSB\u201d keystroke injectors or firmware attacks) from executing automatically and blocks unauthorized removable media, preventing both data exfiltration and malware introduction via physical ports.\n\nBring a laptop to follow along in a web based lab or use the git to run it on your own machine or homelab.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "GFC9EP", "name": "Joshua Loscar (aka Jscar)", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/P98NVY_eSDfX7j.webp", "biography": "Senior Technical Marketing Manager - Red Hat\n\nI am focused on creating content for the RHEL community. Over a Decade in IT, cyber-security advocate, conference organizer, and open-source enthusiast. Hobbies include homelabs, podcasting and 3D Printing.", "public_name": "Joshua Loscar (aka Jscar)", "guid": "0ffa6393-fad3-5c46-baaa-a605b07c6dda", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/GFC9EP/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/Q7CPTX/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/Q7CPTX/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "7f82f8a5-84fb-50fc-9441-69a3b0640bd1", "code": "DQ3XW7", "id": 97860, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-06T15:00:00-06:00", "start": "15:00", "end": "2026-11-06T16:20:00-06:00", "duration": "01:20", "room": "Balcones", "slug": "txlf2026-97860-structured-query-language-101", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/DQ3XW7/", "title": "Structured Query Language 101", "subtitle": "", "track": "Databases", "type": "Workshop", "language": "en", "abstract": "SQL is a powerful language for working with relational databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle. This is an 80-minute introduction to writing SQL database queries. Please load a copy of DBeaver Community Edition (free, open-source) from https://dbeaver.io/download/ on your Mac, Windows, or Linux laptop to work along with the presentation. We will use the sample database that is included with DBeaver. We will start with simple SELECT statements to retrieve data, INSERT to add data, use UPDATE to modify it, and DELETE to remove it. We will then move on to using WHERE to narrow your database searches, grouping & ordering for readability, and using built-in functions. This is a great way to learn how to use a relational database.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "9LRB7T", "name": "Dave Stokes", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/DTASJP_WZqfA5E.webp", "biography": "Dave Stokes is the DBeaver Community Manager", "public_name": "Dave Stokes", "guid": "63274f56-2744-5595-bb1f-b0d42df1a6b9", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/9LRB7T/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/DQ3XW7/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/DQ3XW7/", "attachments": []}], "Stadium": [{"guid": "96e9c682-98ef-59b8-96f0-bb235a0ea6c2", "code": "MVXENR", "id": 101389, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-06T09:00:00-06:00", "start": "09:00", "end": "2026-11-06T10:20:00-06:00", "duration": "01:20", "room": "Stadium", "slug": "txlf2026-101389-build-a-local-rag-lab-with-lima-and-ollama", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/MVXENR/", "title": "Build a Local RAG Lab with Lima and Ollama", "subtitle": "", "track": "Artificial Intelligence", "type": "Workshop", "language": "en", "abstract": "Are you new to local AI workflows? Looking to better understand LLMs and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)? Don\u2019t want to spend a fortune on a hosted solution? \n\nIn this tutorial, we will learn how to use Lima to create a repeatable local Linux environment geared towards working with local LLMs and RAG. We will use Ollama to run a local language model, add a small set of local documents, generate embeddings, store them in a local vector database, and then use retrieval-augmented generation to answer questions from that document set. It is designed for beginners who want to get hands-on with local LLM development. \n\nAttendees will leave with a configured lab, reusable examples, and a clearer understanding of how to build, test, and expand local RAG workflows.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "M3EXWD", "name": "mrjandro", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/SPNSYW_CetaB0m.webp", "biography": "Alex is an open-source enthusiast with over 25 years of experience in Linux, Kubernetes, and other open-source projects. He specializes in helping people navigate complex technical challenges and is passionate about making systems and concepts more accessible and understandable. He is a frequent presenter and volunteers to mentor aspiring technologists. A lifelong learner, he believes the ability to learn is the most valuable skill in tech and is dedicated to helping others grow through shared knowledge.", "public_name": "mrjandro", "guid": "1af7d525-326c-534f-be70-4a729028f17a", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/M3EXWD/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/MVXENR/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/MVXENR/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "3a77a3e8-851c-5837-a11b-7faed32e66ae", "code": "88EDHE", "id": 102510, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-06T10:30:00-06:00", "start": "10:30", "end": "2026-11-06T11:50:00-06:00", "duration": "01:20", "room": "Stadium", "slug": "txlf2026-102510-ramalama-podman-quadlets-build-task-specific-ai-services-with-systemd", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/88EDHE/", "title": "RamaLama + Podman Quadlets \u2014 Build Task-Specific AI Services with systemd", "subtitle": "", "track": "Artificial Intelligence", "type": "Workshop", "language": "en", "abstract": "Running a model locally is easy. Turning that model into multiple task-specific services \u2014 each with its own security boundary, system prompt, and restart policy \u2014 is where most guides stop. This workshop picks up where `ramalama run` leaves off.\n\nRamaLama gives you container-native local AI inference with one command: pull a model from an OCI registry, detect your GPU, serve it. Podman quadlets turn that into a systemd-managed service that starts on boot, restarts on failure, and logs to journald, but one model can do many jobs! By placing lightweight agent containers in front of a single RamaLama model server you will build task-specific AI services that behave like any other daemon on your Linux box. No Kubernetes required.\n\nPrerequisites: Laptop with a browser. Familiarity with Linux command line helpful but not required \u2014 we explain every unit file directive.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "GQJBDV", "name": "David Duncan", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/XHYHRX_Eb2EJor.webp", "biography": "David Duncan is a Principal Partner Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services, specializing in enterprise Linux ecosystems. He works with Red Hat, Canonical, SUSE, and community distributions (Fedora, AlmaLinux, CentOS) to optimize Linux for cloud-native and AI workloads. An active contributor to the Fedora Project since 2007 and former coordinator of the Central Texas Linux User's Group, David brings both deep technical knowledge and community perspective to his presentations. He is based in Austin, TX.", "public_name": "David Duncan", "guid": "0d359c18-e62d-5c70-9b1c-61985714821a", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/GQJBDV/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/88EDHE/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/88EDHE/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "3343dcc5-8bfe-5309-8cbd-94b0158b7417", "code": "KBRFMJ", "id": 102121, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-06T13:30:00-06:00", "start": "13:30", "end": "2026-11-06T16:20:00-06:00", "duration": "02:50", "room": "Stadium", "slug": "txlf2026-102121-confidential-computing-verifiable-and-sealed-os-images", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/KBRFMJ/", "title": "Confidential Computing: Verifiable and Sealed OS Images", "subtitle": "", "track": "Cloud Native", "type": "Workshop", "language": "en", "abstract": "Image based Linux OSes have become increasingly popular. From GnomeOS to Bazzite there are a lot of ways to build and maintain your images. This workshop will walk you through how to improve a standard transactional deployment to be hardened, sealed, and verifiable including hardware-rooted attesation by utilizing Unified Kernel Images (UKI), bootc, and composefs.\n\nWe will walk through the entire lifecycle of an OCI-native operating system:\n\n1. Defining the image: Customizing a container image tailored for your needs.\n2. Leveraging Composefs: Understanding how bootc ingests OCI containers and materializes them into a secure, verifiable, read-only filesystem.\n3. Sealing the OS: Bundling your configuration into a Unified Kernel Image (UKI) to establish strict lifecycle and update guarantees rooted in hardware security. \n4. Booting and Verification: Deploying your newly minted image and validating its tamper-resistance and deployment integrity.\n\nBy the end of this lab, you will walk away with a fully functional, self-generated sealed image template and the practical confidence to implement container-like immutability across your infrastructure.\n\nPrerequisites for Attendees:\n- Familiarity with Podman and basic Linux command-line navigation.\n- A Linux machine capable of running a virtual machine (KVM/QEMU, qemu-img, virtiofsd, openssh-clients)", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "BQHFKN", "name": "Sean Thrailkill", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/CYW7SD_KkD2Ypv.webp", "biography": "Sean is a Software Engineer with 15 years of experience who has a passion for Virtualization in all its forms. When Sean is not working he is a host on the Hybrid Cloud Show, working on his homelab, or scuba diving. Ask him about why you absolutely need a homelab!", "public_name": "Sean Thrailkill", "guid": "a44bb5dc-24f8-5417-ac25-c10affb0cb16", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/BQHFKN/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/KBRFMJ/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/KBRFMJ/", "attachments": []}], "Bevo": [{"guid": "3a3d7af3-9689-5827-88ea-910e2b8566f1", "code": "XG9E9J", "id": 101959, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-06T09:00:00-06:00", "start": "09:00", "end": "2026-11-06T11:50:00-06:00", "duration": "02:50", "room": "Bevo", "slug": "txlf2026-101959-introduction-to-software-defined-radio-sdr-with-the-usrp-radio", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/XG9E9J/", "title": "Introduction to Software-Defined Radio (SDR) with the USRP Radio", "subtitle": "", "track": "Other", "type": "Workshop", "language": "en", "abstract": "This workshop provides a practical introduction to Software-Defined Radio (SDR) using the USRP radio and the open-source software tool-chain (C++, Python, UHD, and GNU Radio), running on Linux. We will discuss the hardware and the architecture of the USRP radio, and how to get starting using it, installing the development environment, and programming the USRP from C++ and Python, using the UHD API, and using the GNU Radio framework. Several real-time demos and examples of wireless systems running on the USRP radio will be shown. Attendees should gain a basic foundation and practical understanding of how to configure, program, and operate the USRP to implement various wireless systems and applications.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "DK8JEH", "name": "Neel Pandeya", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/Q7HWTN_wndVpAf.webp", "biography": "Neel Pandeya is a Principal SDR Engineer and Group Manager at National Instruments in Austin, Texas, USA. His background and interests are in open-source software development, kernel and embedded software development, wireless communications, 4G/LTE and 5G/NR networks, DSP and signal processing, FPGA programming, and software-defined radio (SDR). He has previous technical management experience and university teaching experience, and formerly held a TS/SCI government security clearance.  He is a co-founder and co-organizer of the New England Workshop for SDR (NEWSDR), and is a co-organizer of the GNU Radio Conference (GRCon) as well as the 5G Workshop at IEEE MILCOM.  He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), and a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering (MSEE) from Northeastern University (NEU), and is a member of IEEE and Eta Kappa Nu (HKN).  He has an Amateur Radio License, and is aspiring to obtain a private pilot license.", "public_name": "Neel Pandeya", "guid": "6009e5d0-283b-59c4-8504-ffdc98271507", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/DK8JEH/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/XG9E9J/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/XG9E9J/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "ff6c7c71-9787-5348-b97a-585bf21ea636", "code": "EF3G9A", "id": 103382, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-06T13:30:00-06:00", "start": "13:30", "end": "2026-11-06T14:50:00-06:00", "duration": "01:20", "room": "Bevo", "slug": "txlf2026-103382-build-a-safer-sudo-with-cedar", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/EF3G9A/", "title": "Build a Safer sudo with Cedar", "subtitle": "", "track": "Other", "type": "Workshop", "language": "en", "abstract": "Cedar is an open-source authorization policy language and CNCF Sandbox project for expressing fine-grained permissions in policies that are human-readable and designed for automated analysis. In this hands-on workshop, attendees will use Cedar to authorize privileged Linux operations invoked through sudo. Using a local VM and the Tarp browser client, participants will test and modify policies controlling who may view logs, check service status, or restart a systemd service. The demo also shows context-aware rules\u2014such as allowing local operations while denying SSH requests\u2014and how root-owned fixed command mappings prevent argument injection, arbitrary commands, and unauthorized shell access.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "ZLWHLY", "name": "Michael Schwartz", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/UEWK8J_oAv3Dno.webp", "biography": "Mike is the Founder of Gluu, a cybersecurity infrastructure software vendor. He is the founder and BD of the Janssen Project, a self-funded Linux Foundation project to provide a home for open source identity and access management infrastructure. He hosts the \u201cIdenterati Office Hours\u201d Livestream twice a week, which features discussions on all topics digital identity and application security. He hosted a podcast from 2018-2024 called \u201cOpen Source Underdogs\u201d, which featured many leaders in open source business community. Mike resides in Austin TX with family and pigeons.", "public_name": "Michael Schwartz", "guid": "f47057a2-006a-5507-9344-e04820a0629d", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/ZLWHLY/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/EF3G9A/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/EF3G9A/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "afe20bef-1673-5d38-9683-9ce3c3dac0d4", "code": "J3DRGC", "id": 103495, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-06T15:00:00-06:00", "start": "15:00", "end": "2026-11-06T16:20:00-06:00", "duration": "01:20", "room": "Bevo", "slug": "txlf2026-103495-mitigating-all-the-vulns-with-bpf-lsm-a-tutorial", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/J3DRGC/", "title": "Mitigating All The Vulns with BPF-LSM: A Tutorial", "subtitle": "", "track": "Security", "type": "Workshop", "language": "en", "abstract": "When yet another Linux kernel vulnerability lands on the front page, what are your options?\nIf you are lucky, it was patched months ago and is already in your distro kernel or latest stable LTS release. Worst-case, the patch doesn't exist yet and you're going to be exposed until one exists and you can reboot your fleet.\n\nWhat if I told you... there is another way to mitigate these vulnerabilites and you don't even need to reboot your machine! To do this at Cloudflare we reached for BPF-LSM. In this hands-on workshop, you'll build your very own defensive BPF LSM program that can be used to disarm some of these attacks.\n\nStarting from a \"hello world\" LSM program, you'll write and load your own BPF-LSM code on your laptop and watch it deny an operation in real time: blocking a syscall path the same way a live vulnerability mitigation would.\n\nWe'll cover how the Linux Security Module framework and BPF fit together, how LSM hooks differ from raw syscalls, how to return \"permission denied\" from your own policy, and how to verify it actually works.\n\nPrerequisites: A laptop capable of running the provided VM image (setup instructions TBD). Comfort with C and the Linux command line is helpful.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "QDSWNE", "name": "Chris Arges", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/VWZBAH_in0V5pw.webp", "biography": "Currently a Senior Systems Software Engineer at Cloudflare. I like to build things. I have a master's degree in Computer Engineering and 19 years of experience in software development and leadership both writing code and leading teams.\n\nMy mission is to make the world better where I can. Through my work I want to make the Internet more secure and reliable for everyone. In my free time I enjoy coaching and inspiring a future generation to grow, innovate and create a better world.", "public_name": "Chris Arges", "guid": "b28e679c-fe7c-5299-a5f8-2315f730ad9f", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/QDSWNE/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/J3DRGC/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/J3DRGC/", "attachments": []}]}}, {"index": 2, "date": "2026-11-07", "day_start": "2026-11-07T04:00:00-06:00", "day_end": "2026-11-08T03:59:00-06:00", "rooms": {"Atrium": [{"guid": "fdb90829-a72e-5857-821c-340522190f33", "code": "NZSHTY", "id": 104611, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T10:00:00-06:00", "start": "10:00", "end": "2026-11-07T17:00:00-06:00", "duration": "07:00", "room": "Atrium", "slug": "txlf2026-104611-expo-hall", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/NZSHTY/", "title": "Expo Hall", "subtitle": "", "track": null, "type": "Expo Hall", "language": "en", "abstract": "Come meet our sponsors and our community of open source projects in the exhibit hall.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/NZSHTY/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/NZSHTY/", "attachments": []}], "Big Tex": [{"guid": "e695999f-20c0-5dd9-9164-58b039b06f34", "code": "MZY8DZ", "id": 104613, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T09:00:00-06:00", "start": "09:00", "end": "2026-11-07T09:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Big Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-104613-keynote", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/MZY8DZ/", "title": "Keynote", "subtitle": "", "track": null, "type": "Keynote", "language": "en", "abstract": "TBD", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/MZY8DZ/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/MZY8DZ/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "4f7bd67b-9308-5b24-97fe-423d84868122", "code": "HU8TDL", "id": 99970, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T10:00:00-06:00", "start": "10:00", "end": "2026-11-07T10:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Big Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-99970-enabling-safe-usage-of-linux-in-systems-progress-to-date", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/HU8TDL/", "title": "Enabling Safe Usage of Linux in Systems: Progress to date", "subtitle": "", "track": "Linux", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Linux has been one of the most active open source project since it's creation in 1991.   Having 9 changes an hour, for the last 10 years or so, presents an interesting challenge for traditional safety analysis methodologies.   The [ELISA]([url](https://elisa.tech/)) (Enabling Linux in Safety Applications) project has been exploring approaches to help with the analysis of linux being used in safety critical systems.   This session will go through some of the approaches being investigated to date and welcomes discussion on other approaches to consider.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "NVY8MA", "name": "Kate Stewart", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/RNFW3S_8YBZcer.webp", "biography": "Kate Stewart works with the safety, security and license compliance communities to advance the adoption of best practices into embedded open source projects. She has launched the ELISA and Zephyr Projects, as well as supporting other embedded projects. With more than 30 years of experience in the software industry, she has held a variety of roles in software development, architecture, and product management, primarily in the tooling and embedded ecosystem working with international teams.", "public_name": "Kate Stewart", "guid": "1ebb6236-6614-5f44-96bb-762a3bebc94f", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/NVY8MA/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/HU8TDL/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/HU8TDL/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "9fdd0a27-4424-56d0-8557-19d88850552e", "code": "E97QXC", "id": 101451, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T11:00:00-06:00", "start": "11:00", "end": "2026-11-07T11:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Big Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-101451-linux-and-risc-v-2026-edition", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/E97QXC/", "title": "Linux and RISC-V: 2026 Edition", "subtitle": "", "track": "Linux", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "It's been a big year for RISC-V and Linux: we have new fast hardware, drivers, and bugs! This talk is meant to give an overview of the state of the ecosystem and community. I want to go over big releases of this year (RVA23 hardware, Fedora 44 images and the Omni Kernel) and how you can learn more, engage with the ecosystem, and contribute back. While there is a lot going on in the RISC-V universe, this will focus on Linux capable hardware and that broader ecosystem. There is a lot to share and I also want to learn what the audience thinks are high priority issues that we can tackle together. The beginning of this talk will be brief, and the remainder will be much more interactive with audience polls and questions.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "VZHNNV", "name": "edolnx", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/AVSAQ9_APXZW3I.webp", "biography": "Carl is a RISC-V true believer and one of the founding members of the Works with RISC-V ecosystem project. He's also been in the Linux community for over 30 years at this point, so please treat him like the Elder Millennial he is :D", "public_name": "edolnx", "guid": "355f6ca1-1294-54c0-8c3b-52703e0d7b86", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/VZHNNV/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/E97QXC/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/E97QXC/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "201ce313-a2e0-56c2-99de-ff37ef81d132", "code": "SUKNZ9", "id": 96692, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T14:00:00-06:00", "start": "14:00", "end": "2026-11-07T14:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Big Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-96692-from-bash-to-burnout-staying-sane-in-a-24-7-tech-world", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/SUKNZ9/", "title": "From Bash to Burnout: Staying Sane in a 24/7 Tech World", "subtitle": "", "track": "Other", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "IT is full of late nights, urgent tickets, and systems that always seem to fail right before a holiday weekend. Over time, that pace catches up with you. I learned that lesson the hard way.\n\nIn this session, I\u2019ll share what burnout really looks like from someone who\u2019s lived through it and how I found my way back to a healthier balance. We\u2019ll talk about the patterns that lead us there, from over-commitment and constant context switching to the pressure to \u201calways be learning.\u201d Then we\u2019ll look at practical ways to protect your energy while still loving your work: setting better boundaries, automating what drains you, and finding community outside the console.\n\nYou\u2019ll leave with real strategies you can use to make IT a sustainable career instead of a sprint. Because the best admins, developers, and engineers aren\u2019t the ones who work nonstop. They\u2019re the ones who learn how to rest, recharge, and still show up ready for what\u2019s next.\n\nLearning Outcomes:\n- Recognize early warning signs of burnout in IT and DevOps roles.\n- Identify habits and boundaries that support long-term career health.\n- Apply small, practical changes to rebuild focus and motivation.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "ZX7U8V", "name": "Eric Hendricks", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/LXEXJE_G2ALXhv.webp", "biography": "Eric \u201cThe IT Guy\u201d Hendricks is a former Linux Systems Administrator turned Solutions Architect and an instructor at Johnson County Community College. He\u2019s spent over 15 years in IT building, breaking, and teaching Linux systems. Eric now focuses on helping others navigate tech careers with honesty, humor, and a deep love for open source and community.", "public_name": "Eric Hendricks", "guid": "b01ec157-edf2-5392-b4ae-247f2bdd8e3e", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/ZX7U8V/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/SUKNZ9/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/SUKNZ9/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "05261b27-052c-5b8f-9655-bd9e5690fe6b", "code": "U9C3Q8", "id": 100468, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T15:00:00-06:00", "start": "15:00", "end": "2026-11-07T15:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Big Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-100468-experience-using-linux-to-control-the-southern-california-railroad-museum-s-signal-garden", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/U9C3Q8/", "title": "Experience using Linux to control the Southern California Railroad Museum's signal garden.", "subtitle": "", "track": "Other", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "The Southern California Railroad Museum is one of the biggest transportation museums in the United States.  One major feature of this museum is its Signal Garden.  This allows guest to press a button and see signals work.  \n\nBehind the scene is a Linux Raspberry PI controller.  This talk discusses how the 100 year old railroad signals are interfaced with the PI and the unique challenges that had to be overcome.  For example, the \"Wig-Wag\" signals use two huge electromagnets which are continually turned on and off.  Any time you turn off a big coil, you get a huge EMP which will fry unprotected machinery.  Additionally there is the problem with dealing with systems that are over 100 years old for which the documentation was lost sometime in the 1930's.\n\nThe signal garden presents some unique challenges.  Such as the time I started to upgrade the computer, opened the cabinet, saw the black widow making a nest on the main logic board, slammed the door shut and got some spray to debug the computer.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "CXEQQL", "name": "Steve Oualline", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/FJYJ3T_afs9gAx.webp", "biography": "Steve Oualline has been programming for 60 years in C, C++, and Linux.  He is the author of about a dozen books on programming and the programming process.", "public_name": "Steve Oualline", "guid": "410e95c0-b27b-556c-a4c2-ead208ded3c2", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/CXEQQL/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/U9C3Q8/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/U9C3Q8/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "41a4c26f-c5fe-59a5-b52b-c3b099d4e0a4", "code": "YK79SJ", "id": 101114, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T16:00:00-06:00", "start": "16:00", "end": "2026-11-07T16:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Big Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-101114-streamlining-enterprise-scale-open-source-governance-with-docassemble-granite", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/YK79SJ/", "title": "Streamlining Enterprise\u2011Scale Open\u2011Source Governance with docassemble & Granite", "subtitle": "", "track": "Other", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "At IBM, we have over 9,000 Open Source Engineers who work in over 900 open source organizations. As the people who review all of the open source contributions for compliance, we have legal oversight and must document everything. Until recently, we have required engineers to fill out word processing templates and then have our compliance team review each document one line by line to look at every release we do. This is painful.\n\nIn this talk, we introduce the new pipeline for IBM open source compliance review that uses docassemble.org, an open source tool to guide engineers to answer questions to generate the needed documents, and Granite, an local open source AI model, to help compile, categorize, and streamline the feedback loop for our compliance team. This allows them to focus on the content and legal questions instead of the process.\n\nWe\u2019ll tell the story of how we got here, what we\u2019ve learned, and even have some simple code to help you get this off the ground for your processes. Leverage docassemble, and you'll be shocked on how quickly you'll find real ROI and freedom to tackle real problems versus managing paperwork.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "WMKVXZ", "name": "JJ Asghar", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/KKZG3Z_MBniWlt.webp", "biography": "JJ works the Architect for the IBM OSPO representing IBM all over the world. If he isn\u2019t building automation to make his work streamlined he\u2019s building the groundwork to do just that.\n\nHe lives and grew up in Austin, Texas. A father and husband, trying to learn to balance his natural nerdiness with family life. He enjoys a good strong dark ale, hoppy IPA, some team building Artemis, and epic Gloomhaven campaigning.\n\nHe has recently dove headfirst into Fedora since IBM buying Redhat, but still secretly wants FreeBSD everywhere. He\u2019s always trying to become a better web technology developer, though normally just uses bash to get the job done.", "public_name": "JJ Asghar", "guid": "f33c98a4-9607-567a-b859-8c78587e0427", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/WMKVXZ/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/YK79SJ/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/YK79SJ/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "e9bcb1c0-331c-5e48-a1dc-6ff5a59a2dd4", "code": "QU7BME", "id": 99368, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T17:00:00-06:00", "start": "17:00", "end": "2026-11-07T17:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Big Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-99368-cauldron-ops-how-a-bored-navy-wife-out-shipped-enterprise-software", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/QU7BME/", "title": "Cauldron Ops: How a Bored Navy Wife Out-Shipped Enterprise Software", "subtitle": "", "track": "Other", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "In a corner of the industry where an institution of government contractors and political pressure rules, what happens when the wrong person builds the right thing, an unsanctioned structure with unsanctioned resources, when institution isn't watching? In this session, you'll hear about a bored Navy wife butting up against a wartime IT support strategy that involved two Excel spreadsheets and a phone. You'll hear about what she discovered while she built solutions: iterative development as natural evolution in broken systems, open source as a legitimate response to bloated enterprise solutions, frustration and constraint as motivators, and the innovation that emerges when a witch with an old Linux box and time on her hands has nothing to lose.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "QW9RNC", "name": "KL Grady", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/V739RX_cgVFSxV.webp", "biography": "KL has spent the better part of two decades as a software engineer and solutions architect with strong opinions, like maybe you shouldn't run critical infrastructure on a language that was thrown together in 10 days and immediately became the go-to for GeoCities page designers dead set on fairy dust mouse trails.", "public_name": "KL Grady", "guid": "6733a5c3-c3d0-53b0-af80-3caa17aa3e62", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/QW9RNC/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/QU7BME/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/QU7BME/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "5f0870e3-c6f0-5fa9-9fcc-e810c2b9db76", "code": "PE8DWC", "id": 104616, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T18:00:00-06:00", "start": "18:00", "end": "2026-11-07T18:15:00-06:00", "duration": "00:15", "room": "Big Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-104616-closing-remarks", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/PE8DWC/", "title": "Closing Remarks", "subtitle": "", "track": null, "type": "Closing Remarks", "language": "en", "abstract": "We'll wrap up the conference with a few final thoughts and highlights.  Join us as we close out the event together.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/PE8DWC/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/PE8DWC/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "c04f74e2-2005-5340-86ee-86a0e3cc9c9e", "code": "BUPFTA", "id": 104617, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T19:30:00-06:00", "start": "19:30", "end": "2026-11-07T22:30:00-06:00", "duration": "03:00", "room": "Big Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-104617-after-party", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/BUPFTA/", "title": "After Party", "subtitle": "", "track": null, "type": "After Party", "language": "en", "abstract": "TBD", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/BUPFTA/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/BUPFTA/", "attachments": []}], "Lil Tex": [{"guid": "91aa5a0d-24e4-5fa6-83ec-09aecb48d97c", "code": "Z7UKXE", "id": 102321, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T10:00:00-06:00", "start": "10:00", "end": "2026-11-07T10:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Lil Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-102321-podman-a-practical-tour", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/Z7UKXE/", "title": "Podman: A Practical Tour", "subtitle": "", "track": "Cloud Native", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Docker made containers usable and it has the mindshare, but it isn't the only containerization option we have!  This talk is a working tour of Podman:  what it is, how it fits into (and differs from) the Docker workflow, how to use it in real environments, and a couple of short war stories.  \n\nWe'll start from the basics:  what a container is and the history of containers.  Then we'll walk through some of Podman's features.  From there, we'll get into practical matters:  building images, running services, user-space networking, file-ownership, and a bit more!\n\nThis isn't a sales pitch or a call to use Podman over Docker, it's just an overview of an alternative project from an enthusiastic user!", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "BTDC83", "name": "Hobbs", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/WHQPZJ_fh2W9Ei.webp", "biography": "One half hillbilly and one half (cyber)punk, Hobbs is a Mercenary Janitor that hails from the foothills of the Ozark \"mountains.\" He has been daily driving Linux since the mid-90s.  He works as a freelance engineer supervised by three cats.", "public_name": "Hobbs", "guid": "b3647bd4-34d7-5db7-9a4c-1b2f5a554d42", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/BTDC83/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/Z7UKXE/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/Z7UKXE/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "f30f7996-455f-5848-81ea-31bc7e85d8a7", "code": "FQTX9Y", "id": 102513, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T11:00:00-06:00", "start": "11:00", "end": "2026-11-07T11:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Lil Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-102513-enterprise-kubernetes-at-home-a-homelabber-s-guide-to-okd", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/FQTX9Y/", "title": "Enterprise Kubernetes at Home: A Homelabber's Guide to OKD", "subtitle": "", "track": "Cloud Native", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Running enterprise-grade Kubernetes platforms like OpenShift provides invaluable career skills, but translating that architecture into a home or departmental lab can feel like shoving a square peg into a round hole. Datacenter luxuries like hardware load balancers, enterprise storage arrays, and endless pools of RAM don't exist under your desk. Thankfully, the upstream OKD project brings that exact same cloud-native power to your local hardware\u2014if you know how to navigate the infrastructure hurdles.\n\nThis presentation is a practical survival guide for successfully deploying OKD in resource-constrained environments. We will map out the architectural prerequisites that trip up most deployments, focusing heavily on configuring wildcard DNS subdomains and strict reverse DNS (PTR) records for node discovery. We will look at strategies for handling cluster ingress using lightweight open-source load balancers like HAProxy, and contrast persistent storage methods, comparing single-node local storage layout against multi-node NFS shared exports. Attendees will leave with a clear, realistic blueprint for spinning up a functional OKD cluster without melting their hardware or their power budget.\n\nKey Takeaways:\n- Sizing and Footprint: Navigating the trade-offs between traditional High Availability topologies, hyper-converged virtualized clusters, and Single Node OKD (SNO).\n- The Networking Triad: Step-by-step logic for implementing the API load balancer, configuring wildcard application routes, and getting PTR records right.\n- Storage Demystified: Configuring robust persistent volume backing using standard local LVM provisions or shared NFS storage mappings on Fedora CoreOS nodes.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "WN9C8S", "name": "Thomas Cameron", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/BDYMQL_qLQBcrP.webp", "biography": "Thomas Cameron has been in IT since 1993. He started out with Novell NetWare, then worked with Microsoft technologies, then discovered Linux in 1995. He's been an Open Source geek ever since. He's managed large scale Linux environments for organizations from banking to real estate to chip manufacturing. He worked at Red Hat from 2005 through 2019, as a chief architect and global technical evangelist. He then went to AWS, where he was a senior technical trainer. Recently, Thomas came back to Red Hat as a senior principal solution architect specializing  in Ansible. Thomas has achieved Red Hat Certified Architect, AWS Solutions Architect Professional, and had numerous other technical certifications. He's delivered technical presentations on Open Source in twenty countries on five continents.", "public_name": "Thomas Cameron", "guid": "b2885c8a-bcdd-51bc-8213-6c794b29d9cc", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/WN9C8S/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/FQTX9Y/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/FQTX9Y/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "d6850acc-5b53-507b-aa42-f4096dec186b", "code": "SYKJDG", "id": 99474, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T14:00:00-06:00", "start": "14:00", "end": "2026-11-07T14:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Lil Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-99474-agentic-infrastructure-lifecycle-management", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/SYKJDG/", "title": "Agentic Infrastructure Lifecycle Management", "subtitle": "", "track": "Artificial Intelligence", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "AI assistants can generate infrastructure code quickly, but speed alone does not make infrastructure safe, repeatable, or maintainable. The interesting problem is not how to get an AI agent to write Terraform, Compose, Ansible, or Kubernetes manifests. It is how to design infrastructure projects where an agent can make useful changes without bypassing the engineering practices that make infrastructure-as-code reliable.\n\nThis talk presents a practical framework for using agentic tools across the infrastructure lifecycle: build, update, test, deploy, and destroy. Using Docker Compose-based applications as an approachable example, we'll examine how familiar IaC practices such as pinned dependencies, modular and DRY configuration, environment separation, secrets management, idempotency, automated testing, and reviewable changes become even more important when an AI agent is modifying the repository.\n\nWe'll also look at the agent-facing side of the problem: repository instructions, scoped context, validation commands, tests, and explicit guardrails that give an agent enough information to work effectively without giving it unrestricted authority over production-impacting decisions.\n\nAlthough the examples use Docker Compose, the patterns apply broadly to Terraform/OpenTofu, Ansible, Kubernetes, Helm, Pulumi, CI/CD systems, and other infrastructure-as-code environments.\n\nThe goal is not better prompt engineering. It is better infrastructure engineering: building repositories where humans, automation, and AI agents can all make changes through the same predictable, testable, and reviewable lifecycle.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "QUKA8R", "name": "Cody Lee Cochran", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/7QZLDH_JFElwmI.webp", "biography": "Cody Lee Cochran is a Principal Engineer and Enterprise Architect for a small, family-owned defense contractor, Global InfoTek, Inc. He is an open-source contributor, former Red Hat Certified Engineer, and former Racker. He enjoys using Linux, Bash programming, and automating all the things.", "public_name": "Cody Lee Cochran", "guid": "a2f4ac6c-444e-5ebc-acf8-ec416ecae3a5", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/QUKA8R/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/SYKJDG/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/SYKJDG/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "6ff63535-e1d2-573c-b820-9d3c51c8127c", "code": "HQWWGD", "id": 97727, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T15:00:00-06:00", "start": "15:00", "end": "2026-11-07T15:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Lil Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-97727-don-t-mess-with-my-data-local-ai-mcp-on-linux", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/HQWWGD/", "title": "Don't Mess With My Data: Local AI + MCP on Linux", "subtitle": "", "track": "Artificial Intelligence", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "What if you could ask an AI \"is my house good for solar panels?\" - and get a real answer, without sending your address leaving your machine?\n\nIn this talk, we'll build a fully local AI agent stack on Linux that evaluates solar potential for any Texas property - no cloud APIs, no OpenAI key, no data leaving your network. We'll wire together Ollama running a local LLM, a custom MCP (Model Context Protocol) server exposing tools for geocoding and solar estimation, the free NREL PVWatts government API, and PostgreSQL for local storage. The result: an agent you can ask \"what would solar look like on my roof?\" and get a real, human-readable answer grounded in real data.\n\nWe'll cover:\n- Running a local LLM with Ollama on Linux\n- Building an MCP server that exposes real-world tools to any AI client\n- Turning raw government solar data into plain-English savings estimates\n- Persisting and querying results in local PostgreSQL\n- Running the whole stack as a systemd service - no always-on laptop required\n\nTexas gets 200+ sunny days a year and some of the most volatile electricity prices in the country thanks to ERCOT. This is a practical talk about what local, open source AI can actually do - on your hardware, on your terms, using a protocol you can reuse for your own tools tomorrow.\n\nAs the industry shifts from expensive frontier models toward cheaper, optimized inference this talk shows what's possible when you run capable AI agents directly on hardware you own.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "SSEMXA", "name": "Rajesh Alwar", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/GBACJM_dF1yGL4.webp", "biography": "Rajesh Alwar is a Systems Engineer with a background in cloud infrastructure and enterprise-scale systems, including designing on-premises edge compute solutions. Outside of work, he builds open source tooling for personal data analysis and automation from local LLM experimentation with Ollama to Python-based stock market scanners and Strava analytics pipelines. Rajesh is passionate about local-first, privacy-respecting AI and enjoys exploring how open source tools on Linux can replace cloud-dependent workflows without sacrificing capability.", "public_name": "Rajesh Alwar", "guid": "dad46314-51c6-5f86-b8a2-f117520ac3aa", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/SSEMXA/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/HQWWGD/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/HQWWGD/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "deb6fc70-8870-5c5e-8b1e-334641418733", "code": "M8H3K9", "id": 103342, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T16:00:00-06:00", "start": "16:00", "end": "2026-11-07T16:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Lil Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-103342-when-ai-agents-get-shell-access-securing-agentic-workloads-on-linux", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/M8H3K9/", "title": "When AI Agents Get Shell Access: Securing Agentic Workloads on Linux", "subtitle": "", "track": "Artificial Intelligence", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "AI agents are evolving from conversational assistants into systems that can execute shell commands, modify files, call APIs, start containers, and interact with production infrastructure. Giving an agent these capabilities can unlock powerful automation\u2014but it can also turn a bad model decision, prompt-injection attack, or compromised tool response into a serious security incident.\n\nThis session explores how Linux security primitives can be used to contain agentic workloads before they are trusted with real systems.\n\nWe will build a practical threat model for an AI agent with access to the operating system and examine risks such as excessive privileges, unsafe command execution, credential exposure, unrestricted network access, resource exhaustion, and accidental modification of host files.\n\nThe session will then demonstrate how to reduce these risks using rootless containers, Linux namespaces, cgroups, capability dropping, seccomp profiles, read-only filesystems, AppArmor or SELinux policies, network restrictions, ephemeral credentials, and detailed audit logging.\n\nA live demonstration will compare the same agent running in an overly permissive environment and in a hardened Linux sandbox. We will observe which dangerous operations succeed, which are blocked, and how the security controls affect the agent\u2019s behavior.\n\nAttendees will leave with a practical architecture and security checklist for running AI agents that can safely interact with Linux systems, containers, APIs, and infrastructure.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "QUM8NH", "name": "Pragya Keshap", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/S9VGN9_bBtpJAX.webp", "biography": "Pragya Keshap is a Technical Architect with more than 18 years of experience designing enterprise, cloud-native, and AI-enabled systems. She is a **Google Developer Expert in Google Cloud and a Docker Captain.**\n\nHer work focuses on distributed systems, containers, Kubernetes, cloud security, API platforms, generative AI, and reliable agentic architectures. She has designed and led large-scale technology initiatives in the financial-services industry and regularly writes and speaks about building secure, observable, and production-ready AI and cloud-native systems.\n\nPragya\u2019s technical articles have appeared in publications including InfoQ, O\u2019Reilly Radar, DZone, Cloud Native Now, and HackerNoon. She has also presented at developer communities and technology conferences on Docker, Google Cloud, AI agents, confidential computing, and cloud-native architecture.", "public_name": "Pragya Keshap", "guid": "2dd700b8-22e7-5872-803d-d2d8688a836a", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/QUM8NH/"}, {"code": "ZMAPMN", "name": "Akhilesh Keshap", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/QVEBX3_V2OnbfN.webp", "biography": "I am a software engineer by education, but a problem solver by attitude. In my 12 years of experience spanning across various industries such as E-commerce, Cloud,  SaaS Technology, Payments, Investment banking and Fintech, I have worked and managed large-scale, complex and multi-geographic projects in Technology and built products that customers love. During this time, I have worn multiple hats such as Product Manager, Go to Market strategy and execution, Team leader, Coach, etc.", "public_name": "Akhilesh Keshap", "guid": "941d223d-b369-52ba-80c1-28cf2ba90028", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/ZMAPMN/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/M8H3K9/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/M8H3K9/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "517cbf81-5c8e-5380-a557-32733905077b", "code": "FM99UQ", "id": 102418, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T17:00:00-06:00", "start": "17:00", "end": "2026-11-07T17:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Lil Tex", "slug": "txlf2026-102418-thou-shalt-not-make-a-machine-in-the-likeness-of-a-senior-engineer", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/FM99UQ/", "title": "Thou Shalt Not Make a Machine in the Likeness of a Senior Engineer", "subtitle": "", "track": "Artificial Intelligence", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Somewhere in Dune's backstory, a group of war-weary humans wrote a commandment into their bible: thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind. It's one of the most quoted lines in the entire saga. The real reason behind it wasn't just \"the machines got too smart.\" Humans had quietly handed those machines their judgment, and they woke up one day having forgotten how to make decisions for themselves.\n\nSounds familiar?\n\nThis talk tackles a very current, very specific fear: the fear of change, now supercharged by AI, LLMs, and coding assistants. Not the constant \"tech moves really fast\" fear engineers have always carried. This one is different. This one whispers that your hard-won expertise might be losing value in real time, that the field now moves faster than you can track, that you're losing the craftsmanship you spent a career building. If you've felt that in the last few years, you're not imagining it, and you're not alone.\n\nLet's use Dune as a lens to examine how a society can answer that exact fear in two different, equally tempting, equally wrong ways. Then we'll look at what actually works better.\n\nExpect an honest, occasionally funny, deeply Dune-flavored case for how technical people can hold onto their expertise and relevance. You don't have to reject the tools. You don't have to hand over your judgment to them either. No doom-posting (but yes, Dune-posting), no hype, no easy answers. Just a clearer way to think about this fear going forward.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "YUEZN7", "name": "Major Hayden", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/HL3AYD_gmYP4FE.webp", "biography": "Major Hayden is a Senior Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat, where he works Red Hat Enterprise Linux. He's spent more than two decades in open source, with stints architecting infrastructure at Rackspace during the early OpenStack days and serving in multiple leadership roles within the Fedora Project, including the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee and Fedora's Cloud SIG.\n\nA Texas Linux Fest regular, Major has previously spoken on Ansible automation and the realities of building RAG systems in production. When he's not deep in Linux internals, he's running, chasing contacts on amateur radio (W5WUT), or nerding out over financial markets.", "public_name": "Major Hayden", "guid": "b3a9b621-f0a7-5e26-a2d5-485264b9d970", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/YUEZN7/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/FM99UQ/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/FM99UQ/", "attachments": []}], "Balcones": [{"guid": "b12b7449-808e-5569-bcb9-72a3d7c7a2ed", "code": "FRFKTU", "id": 100221, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T10:00:00-06:00", "start": "10:00", "end": "2026-11-07T10:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Balcones", "slug": "txlf2026-100221-protect-the-humans-at-all-costs-why-technology-alone-can-t-solve-security", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/FRFKTU/", "title": "Protect The Humans At All Costs: Why Technology Alone Can't Solve Security", "subtitle": "", "track": "Security", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "We spend millions protecting the servers and the data.  We do countless threat modeling exercises. We employ armies of red-teamers to prove that our systems are secure from various technological threats. But at the end of the day, have we lost sight of what we are really protecting? \n\nUltimately, \"what\" we are protecting boils down to \"who\" we are protecting. If we've lost sight of the humans who ultimately are utilizing these systems and entrusting our technological ecosystems with their precious data and identities,  then it's easy to become cynical as well as Trapped In The Weeds of what is technically possible versus what is sustainable and desirable as outcomes for our Security Programs.\n\nWhen security has come to be seen as the \"Department of No,\" that's a good sign that we have lost our way and need to chart a better course for keeping our users, developers, and ourselves safe. This means getting past our biases, stopping blaming the user, and getting on the same page as those we need to secure. \n\nThis talk is a call to action to get away from our keyboards and get into real conversations with our colleagues that can help us transition away from being bottlenecks to being the solvers for efficiency,  and the team that helped make the safe way also the easiest and most sustainable way.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "73PEQT", "name": "Dwayne McDaniel", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/MM3B73_4AY3Ain.webp", "biography": "Dwayne McDaniel is a Principal Developer Advocate who has been on a mission to \"help people figure stuff out\" for over a decade. At GitGuardian, he specializes in secrets security and non-human identity governance across cloud and DevOps environments. A frequent speaker at events like DevOpsDays and BSides, he helps security and engineering teams better understand complex issues.", "public_name": "Dwayne McDaniel", "guid": "804c041d-5877-582d-a872-1087c6c05058", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/73PEQT/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/FRFKTU/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/FRFKTU/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "bfd9d3a3-8dac-5dd4-bed6-ea8b460e301e", "code": "UXUS8R", "id": 101404, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T11:00:00-06:00", "start": "11:00", "end": "2026-11-07T11:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Balcones", "slug": "txlf2026-101404-attack-of-the-ai-bots", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/UXUS8R/", "title": "Attack of the AI Bots!!", "subtitle": "", "track": "Security", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "The last few years Free and Open Source software has come under attack! Large and smaller projects have been flooded with \"Slop Contributions\". Frustrated maintainers have had enough of AI contributions. To makes things worse cyber attacks specifically malware have skyrocketed in the Open Source world. Malware has increasingly been spotted in new areas of the FOSS supply chain. In this talk you will hear about what maintainers are doing to gain back control from the \"Slop Contributions\". I will also discuss the latest Linux Malware landscape and what projects are doing to protect users.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "9FPEHA", "name": "Eduardo Robles", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/KKKXGK_OZUfcs1.webp", "biography": "Eduardo Robles works as a Cybersecurity Analyst IV for County of Hidalgo IT department.\n\nA Linux nerd interested in Information Security, Cyber Security, Open Source, tacos, and coffee. \n\nYou'll probably catch me ripping music to my Sony Minidisc or using Emacs for InfoSec.", "public_name": "Eduardo Robles", "guid": "4cb2dc44-fba6-50e2-89c4-583a18a49eb6", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/9FPEHA/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/UXUS8R/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/UXUS8R/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "94082884-eeb4-5138-a654-594ab29c214a", "code": "XVYKEX", "id": 102453, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T14:00:00-06:00", "start": "14:00", "end": "2026-11-07T14:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Balcones", "slug": "txlf2026-102453-kde-from-enterprise-to-mobile", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/XVYKEX/", "title": "KDE from Enterprise to Mobile", "subtitle": "", "track": "Distributions", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Two very different scenarios, joined by KDE. What do you do when your favorite Enterprise Linux distribution takes out KDE? What do you do when you want a touch friendly desktop for your tablet or phone? Join Troy as he explains how he, and the Fedora KDE SIG, made KDE for Enteprise Linux better than ever, as well a Fedora Plasma Mobile an upcoming place to watch. For Enterprise Linux he'll explain what end users want and how it is being provided. For Plasma Mobile he'll talk about what state it is currently in, use cases, pain points (usually hardware related) and his world famous demo's.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "FURHRV", "name": "Troy Dawson", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/HLBZ7C_7oryqsz.webp", "biography": "Spiky Hair, Hawaiian Shirts ... with Penguins on them.\nTroy currently works for Red Hat as the CentOS Stream Team Lead. \nHe is on the CentOS Board. \nHe is the EPEL Steering Committee chair. \nHe is chair of the Centos Alternative Images SIG, and an active member of the CentOS ISA SIG.\nTroy is also on the Fedora KDE SIG dealing largely with KDE in EPEL.\nYes, he is the same Troy Dawson that co-founded Scientific Linux.", "public_name": "Troy Dawson", "guid": "a1a7bf74-4cf8-5be0-9baf-04a8dd69281b", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/FURHRV/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/XVYKEX/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/XVYKEX/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "6a9eb15c-00dd-5741-b118-cf7bd84f70aa", "code": "PJLVGM", "id": 101695, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T15:00:00-06:00", "start": "15:00", "end": "2026-11-07T15:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Balcones", "slug": "txlf2026-101695-transactional-systems-in-the-fedora-ecosystem", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/PJLVGM/", "title": "Transactional Systems in the Fedora Ecosystem", "subtitle": "", "track": "Distributions", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Transactional systems offer a middle ground between Fedora Atomics, and their image based updating, and read-only filesystems and Traditional Fedora, with it's read/write filesystems, as they can be configured to do either, offering great flexibility.\n\nIn a read-only context, transactional Fedora offers a minimal system, and workloads are handled through podman or docker containers, for server usage. On the desktop, toolbox, distrobox, flatpaks, and potentially other application delivery mechanisms can be used, while still providing the possibility of local modifications to the read-only filesystem, for things that just make sense to be delivered via RPM.\n\nIn a read-write context, Transactional systems offer Atomic updating, offering the possibility of more reliable updating, more stable systems over time, and the ability to \"rollback\" snapshots, in case of issues. or for troubleshooting purposes.\n\nThis talk will discuss the basic ideas behind Transactional Updates, how they're used in openSUSE, and what it takes to bring them to Fedora.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "W7PQUN", "name": "Neal Gompa", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/GSJ7WA_vwcvc5B.webp", "biography": "Neal Gompa is a developer for \u2013 and contributor to \u2013 Fedora, AlmaLinux, CentOS, and openSUSE. Neal focuses primarily on the base Linux system components, such as package and software management, and desktop Linux. He believes in \u201cupstream first,\u201d which has led him all over the open source world. In addition to open source work as a consultant through Velocity Limitless, he is also a co-host on the Sudo Show podcast where he talks about \"the business of Linux.\"", "public_name": "Neal Gompa", "guid": "03480a7e-b974-53d1-ad3b-bceb67f475da", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/W7PQUN/"}, {"code": "3Y8R7F", "name": "Shawn W Dunn", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/RCVT7X_zO31Ksl.webp", "biography": "Lead Developer, Kalpa Desktop\nopenSUSE Board Member (2024-Present)\nPackager for both openSUSE and Fedora\nCommunity Moderator for openSUSE and Fedora\nLXQt Maintainer, Fedora and openSUSE", "public_name": "Shawn W Dunn", "guid": "c8dfe31a-5ede-5871-a023-9a3e86056b7c", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/3Y8R7F/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/PJLVGM/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/PJLVGM/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "80cd122a-9189-5aa5-ae9a-75df4c6c7804", "code": "UMCX99", "id": 104608, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T16:00:00-06:00", "start": "16:00", "end": "2026-11-07T16:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Balcones", "slug": "txlf2026-104608-why-isn-t-my-distribution-shipping-the-latest-version-yet", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/UMCX99/", "title": "Why isn't my distribution shipping the latest version yet?", "subtitle": "", "track": "Distributions", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "It's a question almost every Linux user, developer, or platform engineer has asked. Behind that seemingly simple question lies one of the most important, and least understood, engineering tradeoffs.\n\nEvery application, container, and cloud workload depends on software that has been packaged, tested, maintained, and released by a Linux distribution. Yet most engineers never see the work required to transform upstream source code into software that is stable enough to trust in production. Every package update must balance security, compatibility, regression risk, reproducibility, dependency management, architecture support, release criteria, and long-term maintenance. What appears to be \"slow\" is often deliberate engineering designed to reduce risk for millions of users.\n\nIn this session, we'll follow a package from its upstream release to its arrival in a Linux distribution, exposing the decisions, tradeoffs, and engineering practices that happen along the way. We'll explore why maintainers backport fixes instead of always upgrading, why regression prevention often outweighs feature velocity, and how release engineering quietly protects the software ecosystem that nearly every modern application depends on.\n\nWhether you build applications, manage infrastructure, contribute to open source, or operate production systems, you'll leave with a practical mental model for understanding how Linux software reaches your systems, and a deeper appreciation for the engineering judgment required to balance innovation, stability, and trust at scale.\n\nLinux distributions aren't slow. They're deliberate, because reliability is built one engineering decision at a time.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "LCS3CA", "name": "Autumn Nash", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/9WDCE3_wds5Zpn.webp", "biography": "Autumn Nash is a software engineer at Microsoft Azure, open source contributor, speaker, and community leader who explores what it means to build excellent engineers in an age of rapid technological change. Her work sits at the intersection of Linux, open source, AI, and engineering culture, where she helps teams think beyond tools to the judgment, stewardship, and collaboration that create resilient engineering organizations.\nAt Microsoft, Autumn works on Azure Linux with a focus on Linux security and open source collaboration. Previously, she was a software engineer at AWS working on Amazon Corretto and contributing to OpenJDK, after serving as a NoSQL Solutions Architect helping customers build distributed systems at scale.\nBeyond her engineering work, Autumn co-hosts the Fork Around and Find Out podcast, serves as Education Board Chair for MilSpouse Coders, and founded The Little Guild, a nonprofit dedicated to strengthening local communities. Whether contributing to open source, mentoring engineers, or speaking at conferences, she's passionate about leaving the engineering profession stronger than she found it.", "public_name": "Autumn Nash", "guid": "278dddc6-93f5-5154-a575-45aadef66fe5", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/LCS3CA/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/UMCX99/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/UMCX99/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "9881e982-40b1-57a4-a16a-59cceba3ea8b", "code": "XQUDW7", "id": 98189, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T17:00:00-06:00", "start": "17:00", "end": "2026-11-07T17:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Balcones", "slug": "txlf2026-98189-the-design-and-implementation-of-the-5bsd-operating-system", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/XQUDW7/", "title": "The Design and Implementation of the 5BSD Operating System", "subtitle": "", "track": "Distributions", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "5BSD explores a different approach to operating system security. Rather than starting every process with broad ambient authority and then restricting it through layers such as namespaces, seccomp, LSMs, and cgroups, 5BSD begins with no ambient authority. Every privilege is represented by an explicit capability granted to a process, and no process can acquire authority it was not intentionally delegated.\n\nBuilt on FreeBSD, 5BSD extends the operating system with a capability-oriented runtime while preserving compatibility with existing software, including Linux applications through the Linux ABI layer. Traditional UNIX applications continue to operate through familiar interfaces, while capability-aware applications can take advantage of new system calls and kernel services designed around explicit authority.\n\nThe system is bootstrapped by the Oracle, the privileged system initializer. Oracle launches workloads, constructs their initial capability sets, and delegates only the authority required for their intended function. After startup, workloads operate using the capabilities they possess rather than relying on ambient privileges. Services are discovered through Serviced, 5BSD\u2019s capability-aware service registry, while kernel facilities such as Keyvault and mac_abac provide cryptographic services and attribute-based access control without exposing unnecessary privilege to applications.\n\nThis talk introduces the architecture behind 5BSD, including capability bootstrapping, authority delegation, capability-aware system calls, and compatibility with existing UNIX and Linux software. We will follow a workload from process creation through capability initialization, demonstrate how capabilities are transferred and enforced, and examine how the system behaves when software attempts operations outside its delegated authority.\n\nAttendees will gain a practical understanding of capability-oriented operating system design, how 5BSD integrates capabilities into a BSD-derived kernel without abandoning compatibility, and how explicit authority provides a foundation for building systems with stronger isolation and more predictable security properties.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "Q837JR", "name": "Kory Heard", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/8L7GLA_pDWbHt1.webp", "biography": "UNIX whisperer.", "public_name": "Kory Heard", "guid": "1f6208b7-5558-58b3-bfbf-c703baa24aa5", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/Q837JR/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/XQUDW7/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/XQUDW7/", "attachments": []}], "Stadium": [{"guid": "5ab5c2db-5cb4-53dc-b8a8-1b84fe0fa45d", "code": "SGK7R7", "id": 101964, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T10:00:00-06:00", "start": "10:00", "end": "2026-11-07T10:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Stadium", "slug": "txlf2026-101964-stop-suffering-how-i-built-proxui-to-fix-my-homelab", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/SGK7R7/", "title": "\"Stop Suffering: How I Built ProxUI to Fix My Homelab\"", "subtitle": "", "track": "Infrastructure", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "As a sysadmin, I spent years managing my Proxmox homelab the hard way - juggling browser tabs, editing config files by hand, running the same commands over and over. Every gap in my workflow was a small daily frustration. Then I stopped waiting for someone else to fix it and built ProxUI: a self-hosted Proxmox management UI built by a sysadmin, for sysadmins.\n\nThis talk is not about being a developer. It's about recognizing that the tool you need probably won't be built by a company - because your use case is too specific, too personal, and too real. Every feature in ProxUI exists because I needed it: a single-page cluster dashboard, multi-cluster switching, automated cloud-ready qcow2 image builds, LXC device passthrough without editing config files, and more. Each one started as something I was doing by hand.\n\nI'll walk through the gap-driven development process: how frustration becomes a feature, how a sysadmin with minimal software engineering background ships a real tool and giving to the open source community. I'll also cover the infra around the project \u2014 how to build and store cloud images, how to run a live demo environment, and how to deploy ProxUI in your own homelab in minutes.\n\nIf you've ever thought \"someone should build this\" \u2014 this talk is for you.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "Q8JFSV", "name": "Alexander Shut", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/KDTQRX_UVah4W5.webp", "biography": "Alex is an Austin-based DevOps and Site Reliability Engineer with over 15 years of experience keeping Linux systems highly available, currently supporting enterprise infrastructure at EPAM Systems. He's a lifelong Linux lover and devoted self-hoster who runs a sprawling homelab built. Alex is the creator of ProxUI, an open-source Proxmox management UI, and spends his free time building tools that make infrastructure easier to run. When he's not in the terminal, he's enjoying Hill Country life with his beautiful wife, son, and three black cats.", "public_name": "Alexander Shut", "guid": "54675ce8-e388-5e81-99ae-ed171f963dbc", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/Q8JFSV/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/SGK7R7/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/SGK7R7/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "68575d23-6a67-53e2-bc7a-e0a5d68ab0ce", "code": "U97UWX", "id": 100451, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T11:00:00-06:00", "start": "11:00", "end": "2026-11-07T11:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Stadium", "slug": "txlf2026-100451-recruit-your-friends-into-a-backup-cult-encrypted-off-site", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/U97UWX/", "title": "Recruit your friends into a backup cult: Encrypted off-site", "subtitle": "", "track": "Infrastructure", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Everyone knows 3-2-1 backups, but that \"1 offsite copy\" is the part that trips people up. Rather than pay for a storage subscription, why not enter a pact with a friend? You'll both grab your stuff from the cloud, store them on a big drive, and sync a copy to each other's big drives\u2014fully encrypted and inaccessible to the public internet.\n\nThis is the true story of how I walked a friend through this experiment and became their Fireproof Backup Buddy. Their most important stuff is attached to my NAS; my stuff is on a drive attached to their computer. Flood, fire, ransomware, deeply stupid technical decision: we're both covered, and neither of us pays a grudging backup bill.\n\nThis talk will walk through setting up a system with:\n- Restic encrypting for diff-based backups\n- Tailscale (or just Wireguard) for reliable remote access\n- rclone keeping your Google stuff up to date (reality check)\n\nWill I be able to restore a real file from my friend's computer, during the talk? Maybe! Probably. Could be fun.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "XQUSBZ", "name": "Kevin Purdy", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/3PQDZT_rqvBkhh.webp", "biography": "Kevin Purdy is the Technical Content Manager (read: blogger-in-chief) at Tailscale. He has previously written for Ars Technica, Wirecutter, iFixit, Lifehacker, and other publications. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, his dog, and a collection of CPUs and bikes.", "public_name": "Kevin Purdy", "guid": "9ec38679-fe25-58f4-bcc0-38eaf7bf304b", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/XQUSBZ/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/U97UWX/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/U97UWX/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "4923591f-2982-5da8-8597-aeef327ed162", "code": "B8VMKA", "id": 101574, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T14:00:00-06:00", "start": "14:00", "end": "2026-11-07T14:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Stadium", "slug": "txlf2026-101574-incus-containers-vms-and-more", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/B8VMKA/", "title": "Incus: Containers, VMs, and More", "subtitle": "", "track": "Infrastructure", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "This talk serves as an introduction to the Incus project. Incus provides a powerful way to manage application containers, operating system containers and virtual machines in a single interface. While most people turn to Docker for containers or Proxmox for a more traditional hypervisor, Incus is an overlooked alternative whether it's a homelab or a production environment.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "VHQ8FH", "name": "Nathan Thornhill", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/D73RYB_58JpQbS.webp", "biography": "Nathan Thornhill has spent the past 10 years working in Information Technology and Security. From fixing computers and troubleshooting networks, to administering systems and responding to security incidents, he\u2019s seen a lot. Currently a full time Security Analyst with a small side business helping nonprofits access technology needs on a budget, Nathan is always excited to find new ways to use open source technology and bring it to the community.", "public_name": "Nathan Thornhill", "guid": "feb4e515-3e83-5d8e-b796-07a3d892d798", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/VHQ8FH/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/B8VMKA/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/B8VMKA/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "bf2a2bf5-4f8a-5e3b-9465-8b838a25773d", "code": "AGAAFR", "id": 100545, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T15:00:00-06:00", "start": "15:00", "end": "2026-11-07T15:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Stadium", "slug": "txlf2026-100545-the-right-to-rm-rf-building-a-global-self-hosted-backup-and-restore-platform", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/AGAAFR/", "title": "The Right to rm -rf: Building a Global, Self-Hosted Backup and Restore Platform", "subtitle": "", "track": "Infrastructure", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "The cloud is just someone else's computer but you data is your own. In this talk I will discuss common misconceptions about today's Internet that leave people unknowingly giving up their right to privacy, like Third Party Doctrine and Social Media, how to protect their data at home with self hosted infrastructure using ZFS and Samba 3 and how to keep access to your things secure even when crossing borders.\n\nI work in cybersecurity and travel with my devices. I've been through countless border crossings, airport inspections and in insecure work environments where I must protect my data while maintaining minimal downtime. In this talk, I will demonstrate my self hosted infrastructure that allows me to travel in peace knowing that my network is secure, my data is intact, my privacy is maintained and my downtime is minimal.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "PBDJQ8", "name": "Justin Campbell", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/APQEQU_RLrrmMN.webp", "biography": "I started tinkering with computers when I was 11 with Ubuntu's Wubi installer alongside Windows XP. 3 years later I started an IT consulting business providing managed networking and virtualization services to small and medium business. That took me to Kenya to deploy Raspberry Pis on car batteries for hospitals and the African Great Lakes region to develop custom communications systems for peace keeping teams. After selling that business to pay for college, I got my degree and have worked in a variety of jobs including lead engineer migrating a large research university's internal tooling from Perl on Solaris to Python on all platforms, principal engineer for a Nebula communications platform for threat detection and deep packet inspection at scale and now as the Vice President of Engineering for a platform hardening tool.  With any luck, I can spend the next many years sharing my knowledge and following my passion for educating other about digital privacy and delivering tools to help other protect themselves.", "public_name": "Justin Campbell", "guid": "e6180699-576d-50d7-82ae-500f83ad625d", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/PBDJQ8/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/AGAAFR/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/AGAAFR/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "0a3b2f85-3a19-5ac2-9cc7-81fdff14f179", "code": "PRLRSR", "id": 99605, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T16:00:00-06:00", "start": "16:00", "end": "2026-11-07T16:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Stadium", "slug": "txlf2026-99605-effective-ha-high-availability-architecting", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/PRLRSR/", "title": "Effective HA (High Availability) Architecting", "subtitle": "", "track": "Infrastructure", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "In this session, we\u2019ll dive deep into the concept of High Availability (HA) and explore how it benefits both customers and engineers/admins alike. The goal is to equip you with a clear understanding of how to plan and implement a highly available system that ensures uptime and resilience.\n\nWe\u2019ll start by distinguishing High Availability from Disaster Recovery\u2014two concepts that often get mixed up but serve different purposes in the realm of system reliability.\n\nNext, we\u2019ll explore various types of High Availability setups, from basic redundancies to more sophisticated failover mechanisms, and walk through the initial planning steps required to design an HA system that suits your needs.\n\nThen, we\u2019ll shift our focus to the core of your application: data. We\u2019ll talk about:\n\n- Best practices for storing and managing files in an HA environment.\n- SQL and NoSQL data: What are the differences and considerations when building for high availability?\n- How to make your data resilient to failures and ensure it\u2019s always accessible.\n\nFinally, we\u2019ll wrap up with a hypothetical example, followed by a real-world case study of an HA system I\u2019ve architected that\u2019s in production and actively supporting thousands of users.\n\nBy the end of this session, you\u2019ll have a solid understanding of how to design, implement, and manage a high-availability solution that keeps your services reliable and your customers happy.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "Z9QMWY", "name": "Carl Thompson", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/BQLN3R_Zq8Y196.webp", "biography": "Very passionate about security, high availability, and automation.\n\nI have more than 30 years experience working with Linux.  I specialize in security, high availability, and automation.  I write software in several languages, Golang currently being the most used.  My firm believe is setup your system so that is secure and highly available so that it doesn't intrude on your time off.", "public_name": "Carl Thompson", "guid": "4b07e353-a486-50bd-861d-cf8cbb0bd009", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/Z9QMWY/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/PRLRSR/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/PRLRSR/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "2550b868-fa19-5051-ad61-99d30eccdc4e", "code": "QHU83G", "id": 102521, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T17:00:00-06:00", "start": "17:00", "end": "2026-11-07T17:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Stadium", "slug": "txlf2026-102521-it-s-not-dns-it-can-t-be-dns-it-was-dns", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/QHU83G/", "title": "It's not DNS. It can't be DNS. It was DNS.", "subtitle": "", "track": "Infrastructure", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Every sysadmin knows the five stages of outage grief, and they all end at DNS. Yet for something that runs the entire internet, a clear and approachable explanation of it is surprisingly hard to find. In this talk, Jonathan will walk through a little history of DNS, what nameservers actually do, what TTLs are, and everything from caching to record types to email. Come learn the backbone technology you blame every day, so next time you can say \"it was DNS\" with confidence.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "ASFBXR", "name": "Jonathan Wright", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/WQ7LV9_9mjQWI5.webp", "biography": "Jonathan is the Infrastructure Team Lead for AlmaLinux.  He has been consuming open source and building infrastructure in the web hosting industry for over 20 years and actively contributing to open source for roughly the past 6 within the AlmaLinux, Fedora, and EPEL communities, among others.  Outside of technology he is an avid hunter and conservationist, boating and water sports enthusiast, member of the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary, and instrument-rated private pilot.", "public_name": "Jonathan Wright", "guid": "6130b39e-72ed-5803-955f-1e62dda6f880", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/ASFBXR/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/QHU83G/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/QHU83G/", "attachments": []}], "Bevo": [{"guid": "ed0d355f-ec8a-5ca2-96d4-de6dd08e238a", "code": "XWJUHQ", "id": 101952, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T10:00:00-06:00", "start": "10:00", "end": "2026-11-07T10:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Bevo", "slug": "txlf2026-101952-building-a-microsoft-and-google-alternative-with-1-of-the-resources-the-power-of-open-source-remote-work-and-innovation-culture", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/XWJUHQ/", "title": "Building a Microsoft and Google Alternative with 1% of the Resources: The Power of Open Source, Remote Work, and Innovation Culture", "subtitle": "", "track": "Development", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Competing with tech giants like Microsoft and Google may seem impossible for smaller companies with limited resources. However, Nextcloud has proven that an open-source business model, remote work, and a culture of open communication and innovation can provide a path to success. This presentation will explore how organizations can leverage open-source development, a distributed workforce, and agile innovation strategies to build competitive alternatives with a fraction of the budget and workforce. Attendees will learn how a transparent, community-driven approach leads to sustainable growth, fosters rapid innovation, and builds user trust.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "ANWSZU", "name": "Frank Karlitschek", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/BVQTTU_5lWBc8e.webp", "biography": "Frank Karlitschek is a long time open source contributor and former board member of the KDE e.V. He founded Nextcloud in 2016 to create a fully open source and decentralized alternative to big centralized cloud companies. Frank was an invited expert at the W3C to help to create the ActivityPub standard. Frank has spoken at MIT, CERN, Harvard and ETH and keynoted LinuxCon, Latinoware, FOSSASIA, Campus Party and many other conferences. Frank is the founder and CEO of Nextcloud GmbH. He is also a fellow of Open Forum Europe and an advisor to the United Nations regarding Open Source. Frank won the European SFS Free Software Award 2023 and the Acteurs du Libre European Award 2023.", "public_name": "Frank Karlitschek", "guid": "0b233e8a-352c-5adf-9438-d0ad2d154ec8", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/ANWSZU/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/XWJUHQ/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/XWJUHQ/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "ea12d592-ef05-5a6c-90d6-8fd36173f77b", "code": "SCFZC8", "id": 102472, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T11:00:00-06:00", "start": "11:00", "end": "2026-11-07T11:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Bevo", "slug": "txlf2026-102472-perl-is-dead-right", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/SCFZC8/", "title": "Perl is Dead... Right?!?", "subtitle": "", "track": "Development", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Nobody uses Perl for anything important any more... right?!?\nThe answer to this question may surprise or even SHOCK YOU.\nAs Monty Python says... \"I'm not quite dead yet!\"\n\nLearn how Perl is used to:\n- Predict storm surges & save lives\n- Implement cutting-edge AI models\n- Perform genetic analysis for medical breakthroughs\n- Keep the Internet running\n- And much more!", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "R9KNDE", "name": "William Braswell", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/98AJQH_JBJKHP3.webp", "biography": "President of the Public Enrichment and Robotics Laboratories 501(c)3 nonprofit organization;\nCreator of the Navi AGI platform;\nCamping & outdoors enthusiast!", "public_name": "William Braswell", "guid": "eeeb5c7f-c926-5981-a296-c96fdee2f57b", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/R9KNDE/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/SCFZC8/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/SCFZC8/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "ae79ba9f-4ef4-54a1-ac06-09b786c9c00c", "code": "D9AYRJ", "id": 101775, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T14:00:00-06:00", "start": "14:00", "end": "2026-11-07T14:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Bevo", "slug": "txlf2026-101775-from-log-files-to-live-signals-rethinking-hpc-operations-on-linux-bare-metal", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/D9AYRJ/", "title": "From Log Files to Live Signals: Rethinking HPC Operations on Linux Bare Metal", "subtitle": "", "track": "Automation", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "A large share of High-Performance Compute (HPC) work runs on Linux: the schedulers, bare metal nodes, job queues, and MPI processes. The operating model is usually reactive. An engineer submits a job, waits hours or days, and reads a log file after the damage is done. By then the compute is spent, the data is stale, and the decisions that depended on it are late.\n\nThis talk is a real enterprise case study in flipping that model from reactive to proactive. We built a Linux-native automation layer that connects a chat-based control plane to underlying bare metal HPC infrastructure, serving several thousand internal engineering users running millions of simulations per year. Shell scripts and system-level integration drive event-driven pipelines and feed data into a control plane that gives engineers timely, actionable signals before compute time is wasted.\n\nWe combined pre-submit validation, to catch the failures that never needed to run, with runtime inspection of solver state to identify stalled or diverging jobs while they are still cheap to kill. Near real-time alerts moved job status out of log files and into chat where users already work. The result is hundreds of thousands of compute hours saved per year, tens of thousands of engineer hours reclaimed, and millions of dollars in cost savings. \n\nThis talk shows that proactive HPC operations at scale are an automation problem you can already solve on the Linux stack you have.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "ZQTVAV", "name": "Borislav Sabotinov", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/U8NXHC_Yr059I2.webp", "biography": "Boris is a software engineer based in sunny Austin, TX working on large-scale engineering platforms that span High-Performance Compute (HPC), container orchestration platforms, and cloud systems. He cares about practical DevOps, improving feedback loops, and making complex systems less frustrating for the people who use them. He writes about HPC, DevOps, and applied AI at bss8.dev.", "public_name": "Borislav Sabotinov", "guid": "319f8b31-c208-5c1d-b2f9-ec1ef2f597fd", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/ZQTVAV/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/D9AYRJ/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/D9AYRJ/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "134fefad-18fc-5e08-8224-0d60cfcd991a", "code": "MNVVLN", "id": 101697, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T15:00:00-06:00", "start": "15:00", "end": "2026-11-07T15:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Bevo", "slug": "txlf2026-101697-testing-ansible-playbooks-in-your-kitchen", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/MNVVLN/", "title": "Testing Ansible Playbooks In Your Kitchen", "subtitle": "", "track": "Automation", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "You\u2019ve written some Ansible playbooks \u2014 but how do you really know they work before you push them to production? In this session, we\u2019ll explore how to test and validate your Ansible automation safely and repeatably using Test Kitchen with lightweight virtualization tools like Docker, Podman, Vagrant, or QEMU.\n\nWe\u2019ll cover how to set up a local \u201ckitchen\u201d for experimenting with playbooks, write simple verification checks, and integrate tests into your CI pipeline. You\u2019ll learn how to:\n\nBuild reproducible test environments for your Ansible code\n\nValidate roles and tasks automatically before deployment\n\nCatch errors early and increase confidence in your automation\n\nWhether you\u2019re new to Ansible or managing complex infrastructure, this talk will show you how to cook up reliable playbooks without burning down your servers.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "JL8GQH", "name": "Robby Callicotte", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/H97J7B_76kzdzY.webp", "biography": "Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat\n\nOpen source advocate. Fedora package maintainer, EPEL package maintainer, and member of CentOS Alternative Images SIG. I actually like systemd...", "public_name": "Robby Callicotte", "guid": "a88da947-4fbc-58f6-8eed-7df8853258b9", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/JL8GQH/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/MNVVLN/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/MNVVLN/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "f3fbb511-d13e-532d-b7ce-45a293959181", "code": "BMNQWK", "id": 102208, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T16:00:00-06:00", "start": "16:00", "end": "2026-11-07T16:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Bevo", "slug": "txlf2026-102208-how-to-upgrade-your-system-like-a-jrpg", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/BMNQWK/", "title": "How to Upgrade Your System Like a jRPG", "subtitle": "", "track": "Observability", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "Follow me and enter the world of VistaTorn, a bleak and dreary country full of inadequate search, elongated wait-times, hardcoded permissions and no observability as far as the eye can see (which is not very far). In this place rises a hero, a visionary, a beacon of innovation... and that hero is YOU!\nLearn how to navigate the murky waters of search, with no semantics or vector databases in sight. What tools should you implement to upgrade and conquer these streams of data? Within the castle, work to improve the throughput of services and investigate any and all latencies that arise through instrumentation of standardized and trusted observability tools. Join me on this journey to conquer your stack and save VistaTorn!", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "BPDHYS", "name": "Sophia Solomon", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/XGSEGN_iQw3JrR.webp", "biography": "Sophia's path into observability started in a biochemistry lab at UT Austin, where she discovered a passion for coding through her work at the DIY Diagnostics lab \u2014 a place where wet lab research and software development went hand in hand. After graduating in 2021, she joined GM as a Deployment Engineer/Analyst, later moving into a Software Engineering role focused on observing real-time LLM-based robotic systems on the plant floor. Today, as a Developer Advocate at Elastic, she draws on years of optimizing and troubleshooting logs, traces, and metrics in high-stakes, in-plant production environments, bringing both technical depth and practical insight to the challenges of observability at scale.", "public_name": "Sophia Solomon", "guid": "fb9959fc-bdf8-5229-9911-6f431cdabf11", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/BPDHYS/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/BMNQWK/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/BMNQWK/", "attachments": []}, {"guid": "4e0d29af-70a3-581d-8b89-69bee4d439c4", "code": "JZGLEW", "id": 98902, "logo": null, "date": "2026-11-07T17:00:00-06:00", "start": "17:00", "end": "2026-11-07T17:50:00-06:00", "duration": "00:50", "room": "Bevo", "slug": "txlf2026-98902-centrally-managed-multi-factor-authentication-for-all-your-users-notebooks", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/JZGLEW/", "title": "Centrally managed multi factor authentication for all your users' notebooks", "subtitle": "", "track": "Security", "type": "Talk", "language": "en", "abstract": "In enterprises or organizations users and their 2nd factors are managed centrally by you, the IT department. This works fine with logins to central services like web portals, the VPN or your SSH servers.\n\nBut when it comes to the login at notebooks it comes to some additional challenges you need to overcome. Even in 2026 - notebooks can go offline.\n\nThere are many different technical ways for multi factor authentication with different underlying cryptographic mechanisms. Symmetic keys or assymmetic keys. Some can work offline, some are hard to manage, some do not work offline in a sensible way.\nIn this talk we are looking into different authentication mechanism be it x509 certificates, OTP or FIDO2 to name a few with their pros and cons.\n\nThen we check how the open source multi factor management system privacyIDEA implements different ways of authenticating offline at your user's notebooks - be it Linux or Windows - with OTP tokens or with FIDO2 devices. In 2019 I held a talk at TXLF about privacyIDEA in general as an on prem multi factor solution. We are now looking deeper into management of FIDO2 devices and management for local logins to Linux and Windows machines.\n\nYou will get in depth knowledge how you can secure your notebooks with reliable authentication hardware like Yubikeys or other FIDO2 devices centrally managed in your own on prem privacyIDEA system.", "description": null, "recording_license": "", "do_not_record": false, "persons": [{"code": "9VAXGL", "name": "Cornelius K\u00f6lbel", "avatar": "https://pretalx.com/media/avatars/ZQGY8V_r0J1Y8e.webp", "biography": "Cornelius is into multi factor authentication since 2004. He is the project lead of the MFA system privacyIDEA.\n\nAs a consultant Cornelius learnt to understand customers requirements in heterogeneous networks first hand. He planned and implemented several public key infrastructures for smartcard usage and was one of the first to work on the interoperability of the Aladdin eToken between Windows and Linux.\n\nIn 2006 he started one of the the first open source one time password systems implementing the HOTP algorithm. Three years later Cornelius initiated an enterprise OTP solution as product manager. In 2014 he kicked off the open source privacyIDEA project. It is a vendor independent authentication system, which can be used to manage arbitrary authentication objects to implement many different ways of multi factor authentication.\n\nCornelius spoke at several conferences in Germany, in Austria, in the Netherlands, in Belgium (FOSDEM), in Denmark and in the U.S.", "public_name": "Cornelius K\u00f6lbel", "guid": "c47c3e95-3758-5825-8ca8-c9b530e95120", "url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/speaker/9VAXGL/"}], "links": [], "feedback_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/JZGLEW/feedback/", "origin_url": "https://pretalx.com/txlf2026/talk/JZGLEW/", "attachments": []}]}}]}}}