openSUSE turned 20

Last week, I was in Nürnberg for the openSUSE conference. The project turned 20 years old this year, and I was there right from the beginning (and even before that, if we also count the S.u.S.E. years). There were many great talks, including a syslog-ng talk from me, and even a birthday party… :-)

This year marks not just 20 years of openSUSE but also a major new SLES and openSUSE Leap release: version 16.0. There were many talks about what is coming and how things are changing. I already have a test version running on my laptop, and you should too, if you want to help to make version 16 the best release ever! :-) Slowroll also had a dedicated talk. It is a new openSUSE variant, offering a rolling Linux distribution with a bit more stability. So it is positioned somewhere between Leap and Tumbleweed, but of course it is a bit closer to the latter.

That said, I also had a couple of uncomfortable moments. I ended up working in open-source, because it’s normally a place without real-world politics. In other words, people from all walks of life can work together on open-source software, regardless of whether they are religious or atheist, LGBTQ+ allies or conservatives, or come from the east or the west. And even though I agree that we are in a geopolitical situation in which European software companies are needed to ensure our digital sovereignty, it’s not a topic I was eager to hear at an open-source event. I enjoy the technology and spirit of open-source, but I’m not keen on the politics surrounding it, especially at this time of geopolitical tensions.

syslog-ng logo

As usual, I delivered a talk on log management, specifically about message parsing. While my configuration examples came from syslog-ng, I tried to make sure that anything I said could be applied to other log management applications as well. I also introduced my audience to sequence, which allows you to create parsing rules to parse free-form text messages: https://github.com/ccin2p3/sequence-RTG In the coming weeks, I plan to package it for openSUSE.

Happy birthday to openSUSE, and here’s to another successful 20 years!