linux.conf.au (often abbreviated as lca or LCA) is Australasia's regional Linux and open source conference. It is a roaming conference, held in a different Australian or New Zealand city every year, coordinated by Linux Australia and organised by local volunteers.
The conference is a non-profit event, with any surplus funds being used to seed the following year's conference and to support the Australian Linux and open source communities. The name is the conference's URL, using the uncommon second-level domain .conf.au.
Although several online events were ran post-COVID, since 2023 Linux Australia has instead auspiced Everything Open. This is a shorter three-day conference that follows a similar format - but without the additional two days of Miniconfs.
In 1999, Linux kernel hacker Rusty Russell organised the Conference of Australian Linux Users in Melbourne. The first conference held under the linux.conf.au name was held two years later in Sydney. The conference is generally held in a different Australian city each time; although from 2006 onward, New Zealand cities have also been hosts.
Highlights from past conferences include:
Since 2002, a key feature of the conference are the associated "miniconfs". These are half – 2 days streamed gatherings run before the main conference. They have their own programme, but are open for any conference attendee to participate in.
The first event to have a miniconf was in 2002, with the Debian Miniconf, organised by James Bromberger. This was based upon the idea that DebConf 1 in Bordeaux was a "mini-conf" of the French Libre Software Meeting. The concept grew in 2004, with the Open-Source in Government (ossig) miniconf, EducationaLinux, Debian Miniconf and GNOME.conf.au. In 2010 the Arduino Miniconf was introduced by Jonathan Oxer, the author of Practical Arduino.
Miniconfs have included those devoted to computer programming, education, security, multimedia, arduino and system administration.
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