I'm currently sitting at a table in the still empty Qt Software / KDAB booth, listening to the awesome KDE Linuxtag team get the KDE / Amarok / Kubuntu presence behind me ready for another day. Throughout all of Linuxtag they have been, and will continue to be, proudly showcasing what we have collectively already achieved and helping new contributors make their way into our community so we can do even greater things in the future, with their help. Today the conference program features a KDE track, full of diverse and interesting presentations for a wide range of audiences. Claudia, Luca and their team have done an amazing job getting this conference presence and the many talks lined up. KDE is again making a very good impression, I think. Yeah, us!

The joking and chatter behind me has reminded me how much I'm looking forward to the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit next week. It will be great to catch up with everyone, like every year, but unlike every year, this time I'll also be able to catch up with friends from outside the usual KDE circles, since many friends from Gnome and related projects will be there. I'm sure this co-located event will be awesome and will bring our two communities, which share so many of their core goals and ideals, even closer together. I'm going there a few days early to do some hanging out on the beach, diving and general R&R. Good times.

But now I need to get going, the KDE track starts in a few minutes and my presentation on transitioning from Qt/KDE 3 to 4 as a developer is the second one.

Just a short late summary: LinuxTag 2008 was fun and interesting, met some new faces both from openSUSE and KDE communities and many familiar ones. I have uploaded some pictures mostly of the openSUSE and KDE booths. The German "KDE 4.0 auf openSUSE 11.0" talk which me and Will gave on Saturday in the openSUSE track had about 150 listeners, the slides are uploaded like the others on the LinuxTag page in the openSUSE wiki.

This year I was again at LinuxTag, after I missed the one last year. LinuxTag in Karlsruhe was always very nice, the one two years ago in Wiesbaden somehow didn't feel that good, but this time in Berlin it was really great again.

LinuxTag is a blast. I'm here for the third day, have met a lot of fantastic people, listened to great talks, and had a lot of fun. On Wednesday there was Aaron's KDE 4 keynote, where he also showed the tremendously exciting Marble with OpenStreetMap integration. Yesterday Till talked about Kontact, which now runs on all platforms including Windows. Liquidat has screenshots, or check it out live at the BSI booth. Another fascinating project I saw is the Open Bicycle Computer, a bike computer built from scratch as open project.

Today at 13:30 there is Nat's keynote The future of Linux is software appliances. Go to room London to see it or check out the live stream. It will be worth it

Today there also is the KDE track and tomorrow will be the openSUSE track with more great talks.

Linuxtag excitement!

In two and half weeks the likely biggest Linux Event kicks off: LinuxTag 2008 in Berlin. Four days of exhibition and more talks (the organizers say 240, German/English mixed) than ever before. I plan to be around all the time.

On Wednesday everyone's darling, the multi-headed president of KDE e.V. and the galaxy, Aaron Seigo will give a keynote about KDE4. On Friday is a day-long track with KDE talks, on Saturday is openSUSE day and there are separate talks about Amarok and Kontact planned. Additionally there will be of course KDE and openSUSE booths all the time.

Special tip: one can travel for 59 Euro from everywhere in Germany with ICE to LinuxTag/IT Profits and back.