SouthEast LinuxFest ‘23¶
Event Report¶
SELF is a long-running regional Linux festival for homelab enthusiasts, held annually in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Rocky Linux made its second annual appearance this year, hosting a table and sponsoring after-hours parties both nights of the festival, including food and a local craft beer share. It was a great chance to network and grow the community.
We gave away Rocky swag including stickers, tees, and koozies throughout the event. We promoed a slide show.
Several key team members attended, including Louis, Ben, Krista, Pablo, Skip, Neil, and Taylor. This allowed us to answer lots of questions about Rocky, the RESF, and the relationship between the two.
Neil gave a talk about Peridot Build System, teasing several features of the completely overhauled v2.
Having so many team members in one place for a few days created some great synergy. Louis celebrated that, “The real win of the South East Linux Fest isn't that all of us were here... it's that we A) solved two package build issues and B) solved MTU problems, with Skip, Neil, Pablo, and Taylor all in person at the booth with some folks witnessing it in person.”
Various posts about the event from our socials and individual team members:
One of the questions we heard a lot this weekend was, “What makes Rocky Linux stand out?” As a bug-for-bug compatible RHEL clone, in some ways it’s just a matter of preference. One strength of open source is in its diverse solutions.
But on the other hand, we think this community is something special. We formed around the shared purpose of providing and maintaining a stable Enterprise Linux solution with a commitment to keeping the promise of a ten-year release cycle, in a way that ensures control of it can never be taken from the community by a single person or corporation. And we’ve kept going through the shared value of collaboration, and staying focused on the goal.
In two and a half years we have encountered tricky problems, and shed a little blood, sweat, and tears together to find solutions. We have weathered setbacks and come back stronger each time. We’ve learned from each other, pushed each other to be better, and developed enduring friendships with people around the globe.
As everyone headed home (or for some of us, onward to another event) at the end, the messages poured into the chat channel.
From the airport Pablo sent, “Really amazing to have been there, already at the airport waiting to go back. Hopefully we'll see each other gain soon.”
Neil reflected, “so glad to have gotten us all together. I'm excited - our project is feeling so much more "real" now that so many of us have met in person. love y'all 
and safe travels.”
Meanwhile when Skip got home he sent this message, “Skip Grube has marked himself safe from the North Carolina freeway.”
Louis chimed in, “Landed safely. Till we all meet again…”
The Rocky Linux community intends to be around for the long haul, which means, relatively, we are still just getting started. There’s still lots of room for more people to get involved! Whether you are a developer, a security expert, a graphic designer, or a technical writer; whether you’re a seasoned genius or an enthusiastic baby beginner; whether your interest is in Rocky Linux itself or in how you can use it to pursue your own special interest project: we’d love to meet you.
You can meet Rocky community members in several channels, listed in the “community” tab at RockyLinux.org. And maybe one of these days, we’ll meet up with you at a conference, too!