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Linux.conf.au Talks Available Online

Posted by timothy on from the use-dash-flip-as-necessary dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Despite the floods, linux.conf.au 2011 went ahead in Brisbane. Videos of the talks given at the conference are available via blip.tv. Highly recommended are Vint Cerf's keynote and Keith Packard's talk on X and the future of Linux graphics."

48 comments

  1. First blip? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can type more than that for my comment.

  2. Sad ... by Schwarzy · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... that I need access to a computer with ADOBE Flash installed to watch this.

    1. Re:Sad ... by ludwigf · · Score: 1

      ... that I need access to a computer with ADOBE Flash installed to watch this.

      Too bad google didn't sponsor the event. youtube's html5 video player works pretty well.

    2. Re:Sad ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      no you dont. there is an ogg version if you look on the page. its a drop down box

    3. Re:Sad ... by DarthJohn · · Score: 3, Informative

      Wait, what?

      "I see play episode as:" followed by a combo box with three different formats to choose from: flv, ogg and mp4.

      Also, off to the right is "Files and Links." I expanded that and right clicked on the ogg links and am downloading about 5 videos now. I plan to watch them with totem.

    4. Re:Sad ... by Schwarzy · · Score: 1

      Thanks !! I just stopped on the "missing plugin" message. I wonder why they do not switch automatically on ogg or other when Flash is not present.

    5. Re:Sad ... by Ysangkok · · Score: 1

      ... that I need access to a computer with ADOBE Flash installed to watch this.

      Not true. See the "Play episode as..." dropdown below the description. There is also a HTML5 option.

    6. Re:Sad ... by Inf0phreak · · Score: 2

      You know you can download the videos from blip.tv, right? And they play perfectly fine in mplayer or vlc.

      --
      ________
      Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
    7. Re:Sad ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not Flash... Flash Flood.

      Really guys, no need to prove it. We already knew you can walk on water!

    8. Re:Sad ... by DaVince21 · · Score: 1

      Blip.tv has a HTML5 player (and it automatically activated for me). Problem is... the video didn't want to play in it.

      --
      I am not devoid of humor.
    9. Re:Sad ... by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      Well, maybe you shouldn't be using an ipad.

  3. Transcripts by Lproven · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Bugger the video formats, where are the transcripts?

    I could either spend half a day watching them or 5-10 min reading. You guys may have all day; I don't.

    --
    Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
    1. Re:Transcripts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      "Flash only? What about Ogg!"
      "They have Ogg stuff up, but what about transcripts?"
      "They have transcripts up, but what about transcript translations?"
      "They have transcripts up in all major languages, but what about captions?"
      "What about captions in other languages?"
      "What about translations to Esperanto and Latin for future posterity?"
      "Can someone write a MMIX player so these videos will be playable anytime into the future?"

    2. Re:Transcripts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heheh, you're a twit. Sorry you are so fucking busy complaining on Slashdot that you don't have time to watch a video. Get the fuck over yourself.

    3. Re:Transcripts by trawg · · Score: 1

      Yep, transcripts are great - I always prefer reading because I can absorb information so much faster than video. Generally, any video I want to watch now I try to download locally and play back in VLC at 1.2-1.5x faster - highly recommended.

      But I understand why they don't do transcripts - because it takes a lot of effort. We do transcripts for all videos that we produce on our website (blatant example plug) and doing it properly takes a surprising amount of effort. It's really easy to make mistakes, it's really time consuming to type it all up, etc. I believe there's some software which purports to automatically generate transcriptions - I haven't used it, but have seen the results - terribad.

      We've tried various options - like having juniors do it or volunteers - but usually the only way we can consistently get good quality transcriptions is to have them done by the person who actually did the video.

      Next step is actually doing it as closed captioning but that's another whole area of effort!

    4. Re:Transcripts by spongman · · Score: 1

      no need, Keith Packard already talks at least 1.5x faster. great talk.

    5. Re:Transcripts by Anthony · · Score: 1

      This post should be Moderated "Ungrateful sod". A bunch of volunteers pull out all stops to put together a conference against some daunting odds and you expect someone to type up a transcript for you? How much are you going to pay for it?

      --
      Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
    6. Re:Transcripts by miknight · · Score: 1

      My thoughts exactly.

    7. Re:Transcripts by CODiNE · · Score: 0

      Well since everyone is busy complaining about your request I'll just throw mine in.

      I'm deaf you insensitive clods!

      There.

      --
      Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
  4. So where is all the documentation? by Chemisor · · Score: 1

    Gee, I'd love to ditch the bloated monster of OpenGL and X and just use DRI. Only there is absolutely no documentation on how to do it. From what I have read so far I'm under impression I'd have to write a whole graphics driver, which, needless to say, is INSANELY difficult. Trying to look up API documentation and examples on anything but OpenGL is impossible. I am not even sure which API they are trying to promote, or what they all are for. For instance, is GEM a replacement to EGL or its backend? Is DRI an alternative to GEM, or an implementation of it? Then you have EXA, Gallium3D, Vdpau, DRM, and God knows how many alphabet soup APIs, all without a shred of documentation or a even a simple example. I don't know about you, but I'll just wait until the driver people figure out what the hell it is they want to do and then see what the API is then. Maybe they'll even write an example. Maybe then we'll finally have games written for Linux.

    1. Re:So where is all the documentation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      That's because you're a fucking tool.

      FYI You're one of those guys who just doesn't get it.

    2. Re:So where is all the documentation? by Chemisor · · Score: 0

      > That's because you're a fucking tool

      Thank you for reminding us what is wrong with the open source community today.

      > FYI You're one of those guys who just doesn't get it.

      Of course I'm one of those guys. I'm not in your little club where everyone knows every bleeding edge API by telepathy. Or maybe in the club of geniuses who can look at MesaGL source code and find those precious 50 lines that are necessary to communicate to DRI that I want to blit a buffer. I'm one of those fools who actually need to see a simple example, or to read API documentation, neither of which is available.

      Yes, it's nice that the graphics backend is finally starting to work in Linux. But I'll still have to wait until the day when kernel developers deign to notice us regular people and explain which of those fancy APIs are actually for us to write games and other stuff with. And maybe even explain what we have to do to render a triangle or blit an image to the screen. Using small words, of course, since fucking fools like us can't be expected to understand anything complicated. Or, better yet, nobody without 20 years of kernel programming experience should be allowed to write graphics applications on Linux. That'll keep Linux pure and without any of that bad software that regular guys like me can write.

    3. Re:So where is all the documentation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There really isn't any useful accelerated graphics API on Linux that isn't abandoned, deprecated, best accessed via the drawing APIs of a toolkit (SDL,Qt,GTK+ etc. etc.) or OpenGL.

      Accelerated console/framebuffer graphics i.e. without Xorg - are really only implemented by DirectFB using their own drivers, and even if you wanted to use DRI2 directly, which is possible, you would pretty much be writing an OpenGL or OpenGL-alike, as DRI/DRMs sole purpose is to allow an OpenGL implementation to access GPU hardware, and is pretty much maintained only for Xorg anyway. Not an option for most.

      Generally speaking, accelerated graphics outside of Xorg on Linux doesn't exist (except for DirectFB), and any work that is ongoing or going to be useful in future will be exposing an OpenGL or OpenGL ES API. Almost all the other acronyms are just noise really, and exist because of the various parallel approaches and implementations Mesa and Xorg driver developers have taken to get acceleration of the XLib, XRender and OpenGL APIS without having various apps stomp on each others memory or hardware state. Those you could use 'directly', but Xlib and XRender end up either being accelerated by the X server dynamically translating them into shader operations, or being done on the CPU because of incomplete implementation or lack of hardware support - so it would be faster if you just did all your drawing in OpenGL and preferably in GLSL in the first place anyway because you would have more control.

      So, basically, use OpenGL, there isn't anything else that is both accelerated and low-level (without being hardware-register level) that is useful for the vast majority of applications, including games.

    4. Re:So where is all the documentation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's because you're a fucking tool. FYI You're one of those guys who just doesn't get it.

      Too much truth? Please explain. 11 out of 10 times when you call someone a "tool" it is because you are one yourself. He does get it, and he sees things clearly. Does that bother you?

    5. Re:So where is all the documentation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks, this was very useful actually.

    6. Re:So where is all the documentation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh for mod points.

      +1 informative for parent please.

      and -1 troll for GGP. Ta.

    7. Re:So where is all the documentation? by Daniel+Phillips · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure you're a "tool" per se but you are guilty of running off at the mouth. Perhaps you are not aware that DRI was created mainly to handle OpenGL better? Granted, the net is not overflowing with links to technical details. Because it is pretty low level stuff, with a very small core of developers of maybe a couple dozen. But the information is out there.

      GEM is a low level component of DRI that manages rendering objects in memory, while EGL is a cross platform API for creating and managing OpenGL drawing surfaces, a potential replacement for GLX on Linux and WGL on Windows. Not quite there yet in terms of general availability. Working from the above link you should be able to find your way to the answers you seek, all of which is pretty well documented but not necessarily heavily linked from every Facebook home page.

      --
      Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
  5. Graphics? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Also talk about the future of Linux gaming and how to get devs to port modern games to it without having to use WINE, and more end-users like myself would take interest.

    Linux does everything I want, except gaming. I have no desire to go back and forth between Win and Lin just to browse the web, so make Linux capable of doing everything a Win system can and I'll make the switch right away.

    1. Re:Graphics? by loufoque · · Score: 1

      The actor in the video clearly said that the new architecture wasn't really compatible with binary blobs.
      Expect a mess unless you have an Intel GPU in the near future.

  6. This one got me... by toxygen01 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "We have removed 5 hundred thousand lines from X server core, did anybody notice?"

    1. Re:This one got me... by jbernardo · · Score: 1

      If you were trying to maintain a binary blob (like intel's infamous psb drivers) you surely noticed.

    2. Re:This one got me... by Beelzebud · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yeah and then he mentioned that there was still around 500,000 lines of code that "isn't doing very much". It was a great talk overall. I am actually very happy to see that the X server finally seems to be in the process of being phased out, or at least made less mandatory for a desktop system. Things like removing keyboard and mouse input from it are music to my ears.

    3. Re:This one got me... by JonJ · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I chuckled a bit at the response he got: "Yeah, they showed up in the kernel!"

      --
      -- Linux user #369862
    4. Re:This one got me... by Eil · · Score: 4, Insightful

      One downside to continually removing functionality from X and putting it into the kernel is that X becomes far less capable on non-Linux platforms. The BSDs, Solaris, even Darwin have benefited from OS-independent hardware support in X.

      Also, I remember a time when Linux kernel and X developers derided Microsoft for integrating their kernel and graphics layers so tightly...

    5. Re:This one got me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You missed out who said that: Linus!

    6. Re:This one got me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ....and so many years ago we had people willing to work...no coming up with radically new frameworks working on GGI[www.ggi-project.org], KGI[kgi-project.org] and UDI[projectudi.org] to bring about portable and secure mechanisms for providing input muxing, kernel(or user for microkernels) mode setting, and portable drivers to support these. Yay! to re-inventing the wheel Linux and X.org and excluding the BSDs, Solaris, etc.

    7. Re:This one got me... by _Shad0w_ · · Score: 1

      What came next was perhaps the bit which amused me most:

      Voice from the crowd: Yes, it all turned up in the kernel.

      Keith Packard: Thank you for managing my problem, Linus.

      --

      Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.

    8. Re:This one got me... by elkto · · Score: 1

      Indeed, I need multiple Video cards, a feature he described as not functional at this time in GEM and 'hard' to implement. He also berates the socket/network interfaces to the server, which I use heavily. He seems to view judisious memory use in low regard.

      But that said, there are is allot to be said for tidying up decades worth of code bloat, and revisiting the general graphics structure.

  7. Vint Cerf by sydneyfong · · Score: 1

    http://totallylookslike.icanhascheezburger.com/2008/09/29/vint-cerf-totally-looks-like-the-architect/

    Interesting coincidence I found out recently. Might be well known to those who is familiar with him, but it got a laugh out of me.

    --
    Don't quote me on this.
  8. Direct Download, FTW. by VortexCortex · · Score: 1

    Screw that flash laden b/s.

    Point your download accelerators at these links, and watch them in a proper video player.

    Vint Cerf Keynote

    X and the Future of Linux Graphics

    (right click, save as...)

  9. Interesting, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I don't understand how he can just say they don't care about NVidia. If it weren't for NVidia and their graphics solutions that actually work and provide good gaming performance, I would still be using Windows. 2001-era 3D support isn't adequate for all of us.

  10. Direct download links ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you want to just download all the videos of a particular format, or selectively download particular talks directly, see:

    http://www.abnormallyfast.com/lca/2011/

  11. Probably Off-topic, but... by mvdw · · Score: 1

    Can anyone who went to LCA this year tell me where it's going to be held next year?

    1. Re:Probably Off-topic, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.google.com.fj/search?q=lca+2012

    2. Re:Probably Off-topic, but... by rusty · · Score: 1

      Ballarat: http://lcaunderthestars.org.au/

      Looking forward to it!
      Rusty.

  12. Window managing in the kernel by jabjoe · · Score: 1

    I thought the criticism wasn't so much about the graphics drivers being in the kernel, as the windowing/GUI. No one is talking about moving windowing into the Linux kernel, just all the drivers. Well there is FBUI, but I think that is on the fringe. X could almost be thought of as a separate operating system on top at the moment, changing it to be just an app that deals with windows is a win to everyone. Especially the poor X developers.

  13. Smart guy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Keith seems like a clever guy, and the fact that he's so highly involved in X and still believes it should be thrown out should make us all consider this radical new direction for graphics on *NIX.

    I do fear for graphical application compatibility across platforms, but then again, people are writing for GTK+ and Qt, and not directly for X anyway

  14. Distinctive Dialect :-) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Disclaimer: I learnt English by myself mostly from Rap music, so I have lots of exposure to USAmerican dialects and I sound Ebonics when I talk.

    I can't understand anything these STRINES say!