DebConf is an annual meeting of Debian developers, contributors, and users with the goal of improving the Debian project. This year’s event was held in Busan, South Korea, From July 21st to August 4th.
The first week is dedicated to DebCamp. This is very much an unconference where contributors and developers collaborate on Debian related projects. The second week is dedicated to DebConf, and it is a conference style event, with Talks, BoFs, and workshops.
This year, Canonical joined DebConf as a Gold sponsor and sent a significant number of employees to host sessions and work on the Debian project. Canonical also had a booth during Job Fair day.
Ubuntu’s collaboration to this year’s debconf was significant thanks to members of the Ubuntu community and UbuCon organizers, who dedicated a tremendous amount of their time to the success of the event. Special thanks to Ubuntu LoCo: @sukso96100 , @choo121600, @sukso96100, @mscho7969, @moon-js
About Busan
Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gwangan_Bridge1.jpg
Busan, South Korea’s second most populous city and a captivating tourist destination, is gracefully nestled by the sea. The city is defined by a seamless harmony of coastlines, mountains, and modern structures. Beyond its cultural allure, Busan thrives as a port and industrial hub, actively shaping its future with financial and IT developments.
Canonical Representatives
Agathe Porte (Kernel) - @gagath
Athos Ribeiro (Server) - @athos-ribeiro
Graham Inggs (Foundations) - @ginggs
Julian Andres Klode (Foundations) - @juliank
Lucas Kanashiro (Server) - @lucaskanashiro
Lukas Märdian (Foundations) - @slyon
Matthias Klose (Foundations) - @doko
Mauro Gaspari (Community) - @ilvipero
Paride Legovini (Release Management) - @paride
Sergio Durigan Junior (Server) - @sergiodj
Shengjing Zhu (Foundations) - @zhsj
Utkarsh Gupta (CPC) - @utkarsh
Job Fair
As a Gold Sponsor, Canonical had a booth during Job Fair day. We had many interesting interactions, over 80 individual conversations, and plenty of questions related to hiring and working at Canonical by people from all over the world.
Canonical Job Fair booth
Swag
DebConf 2024’s swag bag was absolutely fantastic; we all received many items which proved to be very useful in the hot and humid days of Busan’s summer. The digital and analogue versions of Debian fans were among the most welcome, and the tumblers reminded us all to stay hydrated.
DebConf 24 Swag
Ubuntu’s booth came loaded with stickers, lanyards and pins. Seeing so many people adding Ubuntu stickers on their laptops and phones was super cool. And by the way, it looks like the Pukyong National University (PKNU) now has an Ubuntu branded safety helmet!
The Ubuntu branded PKNU helmet
Sessions
Videos are available for most of the talks. Links are available on the schedule or meetings-archive.
Hallway track and Key Signing
One of the most important tracks is the hallway track, bumping into random Debian Developers and Community members, making new friends, building trust and having interesting conversations on how we can move things forward. The Continuous Key-Signing Party is usually a good conversation starter.
Netplan in Debian
Lukas Märdian moderated a BoF about the Past, Present and Future of Networking in Debian giving an introduction to the different network stacks in use in Debian today and advocating for a coherent configuration layer on top of the existing stacks, using Netplan. We’ve had some good discussions during and after the BoF and intend to form a unified “Debian Networking” team.
Lukas Märdian leading a very full session about Debian networking
Sequoia und gpg-sq
Justus gave an interesting talk about Sequoia PGP, sq, gpg-from-sq, v6 OpenPGP, and Debian, how the LibreGPG fork affects the OpenPGP landscape around Sequoia & GnuPG, and we had good discussions about the issues that affect the GnuPG version 2.4 that is currently being used in Ubuntu.
Bursary BoF
Utkarsh Gupta moderated the Bursary Team BoF as he leads the Bursary team for DebConf.
The discussion was around what went well and what could be improved for the next DebConfs and the split of general v/s diversity bursary and the team budgets. A lot of people joined, including the Debian Project Leader, and it was a good 2-hour discussion with a lot of action items.
Debian-Installer
Alper gave an interesting talk about his Ideas to Move Debian Installer Forward and how he would love to get rid of udebs, reducing lots of complexity from the “InstallerOS” and making it a normal application on top of an ordinary Debian system. Potentially, re-writing some parts of it to introduce a client/server architecture, similar to Subiquity.
Ruby team BoF
Lucas Kanashiro and Utkarsh Gupta led the annual Ruby team BoF where some general topics involving the team are discussed. This year, we presented some statistics to analyze the health of the team, and use this data to try to improve our processes. Also discussed some upcoming transitions, such as Ruby 3.3, Rails 7 and Rack 3. Moreover, we talked about the next sprint, which might happen in Japan (invited by the Debian Japanese community) or India, details of which are a bit unclear right now.
A plan to support source code indexing on debuginfod.d.n
Sergio Durigan Junior presented a proposal to implement source code indexing on Debian’s debuginfod instance. Although Ubuntu already has a partial implementation of this feature, the new proposal is more complete and should directly help Ubuntu’s debuginfod instance by greatly expanding the number of packages whose source code will be available. The proposal was well received by those who attended the talk, including members of the Reproducible Builds and Debian toolchain teams.
Sergio Durigan Junior on stage, during his debuginfod session
The new APT solver
Julian Andres Klode presented the new APT solver in his talk on the main stage. During his session, he started outlining the limitations of the current APT solver, its challenges and shortcomings. He then took us through previous attempts at building new solvers. Finally he showed us the design of the new APT solver.
Julian Andres Klode showcasing the future of the APT solver
Visa Team BoF
Youngbin Han led the eye-opening Visa Team BoF. During this session Youngbin discussed all aspects of the process, explained the difficulties and time consuming tasks, many of which need to be completed by the local team. We all appreciated the contributions of the Korean local team to DebConf 24.
This is even more impressive because Youngbin and the Ubuntu Korea LoCo were preparing for UbuCon Korea 2024 while at DebConf. UbuCon Korea 2024 happened just a few days after DebConf, in Seoul.
Youngbin Han leading the Visa Team BoF on the main stage
Food
South Korea has a lot of fantastic food, and a surprising amount of fantastic coffee around the city of Busan. A great conference, complemented with amazing food and coffee made for an unforgettable experience. On top of that, some of us even got the chance to make some traditional rice cakes!
Traditional Korean BBQ with garlic sauce.
A summer evening dinner with the Korean organizing committee
More Korean barbeque, why not?
Hot stone bibimbap
Day Trips
Day trips can be used for sightseeing and social networking with like-minded people. It is a great opportunity to make new friends and chat with old ones, all while experiencing a great day away from computers and meeting rooms.
Trip A
Day Trip: A “Traditional experience in Busan” was a lot of fun. The day began with a morning visit to the Busan Traditional Culture Experience Center, where we made traditional rice cakes, an introduction of Korean traditional dresses, and then we had a round of engaging and fun Korean games.
A very happy Utkarsh Gupta
After a great lunch where we tasted South Korean Hot Stone bibimbap and Korean seafood pancake, we went for a breathtaking ride on the Blue Line Park beach train Cheongsapo-Songjeong, and then visited the Haedong Yonggungsa Temple.
Haedong Yonggungsa Temple
Trip B
We enjoyed a vibrant Hanbok (traditional clothing) experience at Hwangnidan-gil and visited the fascinating Daereungwon Tomb Complex. After having a fantastic traditional lunch meal, we explored the historic Seokguram Grotto and Bulguksa Temple in the hills outside Busan.
A stunning picture taken during Trip B
Trip C
Ulsan Tour started with a visit to the Simni Bamboo Grove. This is a large forest over the Taehwagang river, where bamboo grows tall. It is considered to be a healing space in the city, as the wind river blowing through the bamboo “whispers”.
The trip continued with a visit to the Ulsandaegyo Observatory. The tower is 63m tall and is placed on top of a 200m mountain, which gives a breathtaking view over the surrounding areas.
Simni Bamboo Grove
Korean Dolsot Bibimbap and Pajeon were perfect for a delicious Korean lunch experience. After lunch, the tour continued to the angsaengpo Whale Culture Village, a reconstruction of an old whaling village.
The last two stops were the Oegosan Onggi Village, where most of the country’s pottery is made, and where the world’s biggest Onggi is located; Ganjeolgot Lighthouse, which provided a beautiful view of the coast.
A picture from the area close to Ganjeolgot Lighthouse
DebConf 24 Closing Ceremony
DebConf has a great closing ceremony, where a wide range of fun facts and stats about the conference are shared. Computer enthusiasts and engineers really love numbers:
Attendees
- Fully registered: 444
- Confirmed payment/bursary: 391
- Arrived/Checked-in: 346
- Registered for at least one catered meal: 247
Bursaries
DebConf 24 organizers sent a special thank you to Utkarsh Gupta for leading the team
- Food : 132 submitted, 122 accepted
- Accommodation : 119 submitted, 110 accepted
- Travel : 93 submitted, 76 accepted at a total value of 127,000 USD
Sponsors
- Total sponsors: 29
- Funds raised from sponsorships: ~200,000 USD
Content
- Submitted talks - 176
- Reviewed talks - 134
- Scheduled talks - 108
- Hours Scheduled - 91.25
- Kernel patches submitted during kernel workshop: 25
Networking
-
Traffic:
- Total upstream bandwidth: 200 Gbps
- KREONET (In) 1.12 TB (Out) 6.75 TB
- KOREN (In) 437 GB (Out) 75 GB
-
Deployments:
- Access Point deployed: 20
- Fibres deployed: 1.6 km
- UTP deployed: 2.2 km
- Cables out of windows: 5 = (3 x UTP) + (2 x Fibres)
Get Involved
The next DebConf will be DebConf 25 in Brest, France in 2025.
Debian is Ubuntu’s upstream distribution, and many Ubuntu contributors also contribute to Debian. If you want to learn more about DebConf, and see if you want to join DebConf 25, you can find information on this website: https://wiki.debian.org/DebConf/25