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Offline videos are available here: https://video.fosdem.org/2026 https://video.fosdem.org/2026 It's organized by room which you can find here: https://fosdem.o

Offline videos are available here: https://video.fosdem.org/2026 https://video.fosdem.org/2026 It's organized by room which you can find here: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/tracks/ https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/tracks/

prima-facie 8mo ago
Hi, I'm trying to find Lennart Poettering's presentations, but they don't seem to be available yet? https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/speaker/lennart_poettering/ https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/speaker/lennart_poettering/ Thanks
- ahartmetz 8mo ago
  Look forward to ye olde uncle Lennart's old-timey sales pitch. I'm gonna summarize the Varlink talk: DBus is, and I quote, "very very very complex" and his system with JSON for low-level IPC is, in fact, the best thing since sliced bread and has no significant flaws. It works basically just like HTTP so the web people will love it. Kernel support for more great shit pending! I'm not sure where the hardon for a new IPC system with lernel (keeping that typo) support is from, but he's been trying for 15 years now. AFAICT, the service discovery problem could be solved by a user space service without much trouble. I mean if the whole thing wasn't an exercise in bad technological taste.
  - thinkbud 8mo ago
    I do not share your view of old timey sales pitch, at least for the talk about systemd nspawn OCI container support. If anything, that talk was a tad low effort, with even dismissive answers — "Yes" and "No?" as full answers to audience questions, with no follow up?! Still very informative though!
    - ahartmetz 8mo ago
      The Varlink talk really was very salesy for a Fosdem presentation. Shouldn't be long until the recording becomes available, feel free to tell me I was wrong after watching it.
      - ongy 8mo ago
        It's mainly re-hashed. I think I've seen the same talk twice before? At least once. It's a very "I've made a cool thing. This is what I think is cool about it" type of talk. Which I don't think is uncommon for FOSDEM. Maybe a bit uncommon for a higher profile figure like Lennart.
        NekkoDroid 8mo ago
        > It's mainly re-hashed. I think I've seen the same talk twice before? At least once. He held a similar talk at All Systems Go I think (I missed the talk here at FOSDEM). > It's a very "I've made a cool thing. This is what I think is cool about it" type of talk. Varlink isn't something he just made up, he mearly "adopted it" (started making use of it). It existed before, but I don't know anything that really made use of it before.
        ptx 8mo ago
        Who made it up, then? The official-looking website at https://varlink.org https://varlink.org doesn't give any information about who the authors are, as far as I can tell, but the screenshots show the username "kay". There's a git repo for libvarlink [1] where the first commits (from 2017) are by Kay Sievers, who is one of the systemd developers. An announcement post [2] from later in 2017, by Harald Hoyer, says that the varlink protocol was created by Kay Sievers and Lars Karlitski in "our team", presumably referring to the systemd team. So the systemd developers "adopted" their own thing from themselves? [1] https://github.com/varlink/libvarlink https://github.com/varlink/libvarlink [2] https://harald.hoyer.xyz/2017/12/18/varlink/ https://harald.hoyer.xyz/2017/12/18/varlink/
        NekkoDroid 8mo ago
  - gnoack 8mo ago
    I think you are misrepresenting this; Varlink is based on much more conventional UNIX technology than Dbus, which is decades old: You connect to a named UNIX socket through its socket file in the filesystem (man page: unix(7)). This is an old mechanism and it is known to work well. It does not require a broker service, it works right at system startup, and it does not require a working user database for permission checks (which would be a circular dependency for systemd in some configurations). If at all, I am surprised that systemd didn't use that earlier. The main thing that Varlink standardizes on top of that is a JSON-based serialization format for a series of request/response pairs. But that seems like a lightweight addition. It also does not require kernel support to work, the kernel support is already there. He mentioned in the talk that he'd like to be able to "tag" UNIX sockets that speak varlink as such, with kernel support. But that is not a prerequisite to use this at all. The service discovery -- and he said that in the talk as well -- is simply done by listing socket files in the file system, and by having a convention for where they are created.
    - direwolf20 8mo ago
      What do you connect to, when you connect to varlink, if there is no broker service?
      - ahartmetz 8mo ago
        It's kinda weird to present this as a DBus alternative when it doesn't even offer the same facilities, particularly many-to-many communication. Though I have a pretty good idea of where a Varlink broker would turn up and which init system it would be tied to.
        direwolf20 8mo ago
        Very typical systemd–developer style.
      - gnoack 8mo ago
        Those are pathname UNIX domain sockets, so you address them through the socket file, which is conventionally stored somewhere under /run. You can run "netstat --listening --unix" to list the UNIX domain servers on your system, to get an impression. See https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/unix.7.html https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/unix.7.html
- miduil 8mo ago
  Hehe, I'm eagerly waiting for this one as well as I'd be extremely happy to replace some hack to run docker images with `systemd-nspawn` served from the nix store.
- ignoramous 8mo ago
  The FOSDEM speakers are sent emails to review and approve the video recording (this involves rudimentary stuff like reviewing the start and end time, if the automated system didn't get it right; choosing one of the three audio channels etc). The recordings that have been reviewed and approved would be online by now.
- Findecanor 8mo ago
  It takes time before all videos have been edited and reviewed for publishing. You can see the progress schedule here: https://review.video.fosdem.org/overview https://review.video.fosdem.org/overview
1vuio0pswjnm7 8mo ago
Appreciate the .vtt files Easier to preview content before downloading

prima-facie 8mo ago

Hi, I'm trying to find Lennart Poettering's presentations, but they don't seem to be available yet? https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/speaker/lennart_poettering/ https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/speaker/lennart_poettering/ Thanks

ahartmetz 8mo ago
Look forward to ye olde uncle Lennart's old-timey sales pitch. I'm gonna summarize the Varlink talk: DBus is, and I quote, "very very very complex" and his system with JSON for low-level IPC is, in fact, the best thing since sliced bread and has no significant flaws. It works basically just like HTTP so the web people will love it. Kernel support for more great shit pending! I'm not sure where the hardon for a new IPC system with lernel (keeping that typo) support is from, but he's been trying for 15 years now. AFAICT, the service discovery problem could be solved by a user space service without much trouble. I mean if the whole thing wasn't an exercise in bad technological taste.
- thinkbud 8mo ago
  I do not share your view of old timey sales pitch, at least for the talk about systemd nspawn OCI container support. If anything, that talk was a tad low effort, with even dismissive answers — "Yes" and "No?" as full answers to audience questions, with no follow up?! Still very informative though!
  - ahartmetz 8mo ago
    The Varlink talk really was very salesy for a Fosdem presentation. Shouldn't be long until the recording becomes available, feel free to tell me I was wrong after watching it.
    - ongy 8mo ago
      It's mainly re-hashed. I think I've seen the same talk twice before? At least once. It's a very "I've made a cool thing. This is what I think is cool about it" type of talk. Which I don't think is uncommon for FOSDEM. Maybe a bit uncommon for a higher profile figure like Lennart.
      - NekkoDroid 8mo ago
        > It's mainly re-hashed. I think I've seen the same talk twice before? At least once. He held a similar talk at All Systems Go I think (I missed the talk here at FOSDEM). > It's a very "I've made a cool thing. This is what I think is cool about it" type of talk. Varlink isn't something he just made up, he mearly "adopted it" (started making use of it). It existed before, but I don't know anything that really made use of it before.
        ptx 8mo ago
        Who made it up, then? The official-looking website at https://varlink.org https://varlink.org doesn't give any information about who the authors are, as far as I can tell, but the screenshots show the username "kay". There's a git repo for libvarlink [1] where the first commits (from 2017) are by Kay Sievers, who is one of the systemd developers. An announcement post [2] from later in 2017, by Harald Hoyer, says that the varlink protocol was created by Kay Sievers and Lars Karlitski in "our team", presumably referring to the systemd team. So the systemd developers "adopted" their own thing from themselves? [1] https://github.com/varlink/libvarlink https://github.com/varlink/libvarlink [2] https://harald.hoyer.xyz/2017/12/18/varlink/ https://harald.hoyer.xyz/2017/12/18/varlink/
        NekkoDroid 8mo ago
- gnoack 8mo ago
  I think you are misrepresenting this; Varlink is based on much more conventional UNIX technology than Dbus, which is decades old: You connect to a named UNIX socket through its socket file in the filesystem (man page: unix(7)). This is an old mechanism and it is known to work well. It does not require a broker service, it works right at system startup, and it does not require a working user database for permission checks (which would be a circular dependency for systemd in some configurations). If at all, I am surprised that systemd didn't use that earlier. The main thing that Varlink standardizes on top of that is a JSON-based serialization format for a series of request/response pairs. But that seems like a lightweight addition. It also does not require kernel support to work, the kernel support is already there. He mentioned in the talk that he'd like to be able to "tag" UNIX sockets that speak varlink as such, with kernel support. But that is not a prerequisite to use this at all. The service discovery -- and he said that in the talk as well -- is simply done by listing socket files in the file system, and by having a convention for where they are created.
  - direwolf20 8mo ago
    What do you connect to, when you connect to varlink, if there is no broker service?
    - ahartmetz 8mo ago
      It's kinda weird to present this as a DBus alternative when it doesn't even offer the same facilities, particularly many-to-many communication. Though I have a pretty good idea of where a Varlink broker would turn up and which init system it would be tied to.
      - direwolf20 8mo ago
        Very typical systemd–developer style.
    - gnoack 8mo ago
      Those are pathname UNIX domain sockets, so you address them through the socket file, which is conventionally stored somewhere under /run. You can run "netstat --listening --unix" to list the UNIX domain servers on your system, to get an impression. See https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/unix.7.html https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/unix.7.html
miduil 8mo ago
Hehe, I'm eagerly waiting for this one as well as I'd be extremely happy to replace some hack to run docker images with `systemd-nspawn` served from the nix store.
ignoramous 8mo ago
The FOSDEM speakers are sent emails to review and approve the video recording (this involves rudimentary stuff like reviewing the start and end time, if the automated system didn't get it right; choosing one of the three audio channels etc). The recordings that have been reviewed and approved would be online by now.
Findecanor 8mo ago
It takes time before all videos have been edited and reviewed for publishing. You can see the progress schedule here: https://review.video.fosdem.org/overview https://review.video.fosdem.org/overview

1vuio0pswjnm7 8mo ago

Appreciate the .vtt files Easier to preview content before downloading