LinuxFest Northwest

LinuxFest Northwest is an annual technology conference and expo held in Bellingham, Washington. It is a Saturday and Sunday weekend event held in late April or early May. The event is dedicated to discussion and development of the Linux operating system and other free and open-source software projects.

Event description
LinuxFest Northwest is a free event, focused on generating interest in Linux and other Open source software projects. During the event, conference attendees listen to several presentations and make contact with several companies and non-profit organizations that share an interest in open-source software. The event raises money through a raffle and by charging commercial vendors a donation fee for their booths. This allows the festival to stay free for all who wish to come while raising enough money to fly in popular speakers.

Location
Linuxfest Northwest is held in Bellingham, Washington, about 80 miles (128.75 km) north of Seattle and 50 mi (80 km) south of Vancouver, B.C. The location is primarily chosen because the facilities are donated by Bellingham Technical College. There have been discussions in the past to move the festival south to Seattle, however no local groups have taken on the task.

History
LinuxFest Northwest originated as "Linuxfest", held by the Bellingham Linux Users Group (BLUG). The first 'fest' was held in 2000, but was mainly advertised as a local Bellingham event. In 2003, the fest was expanded to a regional event, advertising as far south as Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, and north to Vancouver, British Columbia. Until 2006, it was a full day on Saturday. In 2007 it was expanded into a 2-day weekend event. In 2019 the logo was changed from a totem pole to a Pacific Northwest landscape. The 2020, 2021, and 2022 conferences were either cancelled or moved online in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2023 conference was cancelled due to an unplanned closure of the venue.

Previous featured speakers

 * 2010
 * Brian "Krow" Aker — Drizzle
 * Jesse Keating — Fedora Developers conference
 * Brian Alseth — ACLU Technology and Freedom


 * 2009
 * Joe Brockmeier — Building Packages, Distros, and More
 * Jon "maddog" Hall — How Free and Open Source Software will have World Domination
 * Jesse Keating — What's under the hat? A sneak peek at Fedora 11!
 * Seth Schoen — Information security discovers physics
 * "Monty" Widenius — AskMonty & Black Vodka


 * 2008
 * Brian "Krow" Aker — Caching via libmemcached
 * Joe Brockmeier — A Look at KDE4
 * Mel Chua — OLPC: Education in the classroom worldwide
 * Brian Hatch — Network Protocols Illuminated
 * Jesse Keating — Fedora 9 Sneak Peek
 * Rob Lanphier — Hijinks and tomfoolery on the 3D Internet


 * 2007
 * Brian "Krow" Aker — How Sites Scale Out
 * chromatic — The Present and Phuture of Parrot
 * Crispin Cowen — Securing Linux Systems with AppArmor
 * Karl Fogel — 3 Centuries of Open Source & Copyright
 * Jesse Keating — One Laptop Per Child
 * Allison Randal — Parrot: a VM for Dynamic Languages
 * Karen Sandler — Software Patents


 * 2006
 * Tim Bray — Open Problems in Network Computing
 * Greg DeKoenigsberg — Fedora and Community Building
 * Charles Ditzel — Twelve Reasons To Use NetBeans
 * George Dyson — Turing's Cathedral
 * Jim McQuillan — The Linux Terminal Server Project
 * Danny O'Brien — Incoming! What's on the EFF's Radar


 * 2005
 * Brian "Krow" Aker — State of the Dolphin
 * Chris DiBona — Google Open Source Update
 * George Dyson — Von Neumann's Universe
 * Chuck Gray — Impact of Linux
 * Brian Hatch — The Command Line is for Everyone!
 * Dee-Ann LeBlanc — Linux for Dummies


 * 2004
 * Charles Ditzel — Java 2004 : Java and Linux
 * Chuck Gray — Linux Solutions for Business
 * Brian Hatch — Linux Security
 * Dee-Ann LeBlanc — Bringing Mainstream Games to Linux
 * Rasmus Lerdorf — PHP from the Source
 * Chris Negus — Fedora/Red Hat Troubleshooting