Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference North America 2026

As computing systems evolve, memory-safety exploits such as return-oriented programming (ROP) and jump-oriented programming (JOP) remain a serious threat. These attacks manipulate control flow within valid address space, reusing existing code “gadgets” to achieve the attackers desired results. Arm AArch64 provides architectural defenses against these attacks through Pointer Authentication Codes (PAC), Guarded Control Stack (GCS), and Branch Target Identification (BTI).

This talk explains how these technologies work and, more importantly, what Linux developers, distributions, packagers, and toolchains must do to deploy them correctly. We cover the AArch64 Linux ABI implications, including requirements for hand-written assembly, use of BTI and PAC instructions, and PAC key management. We dive into real-world toolchain and language impacts, including changes to C code generation, C++ exception unwinding, DWARF metadata updates, and use of Arm's hint space instructions. Attendees will also learn common pitfalls, debugging challenges, and deployment trade-offs observed in practice.

By the end of this session, participants will understand how to deploy PAC, GCS, and BTI across Linux.

Where are the Open Source techs of tomorrow right now? They're in class!

In this session, Stu Keroff shares real-world lessons from launching and leading school-based Linux clubs that introduce students to open source through hands-on exploration, community building, and authentic technical problem-solving.

Drawing on firsthand experience, this talk covers:

1. How to start a Linux club from scratch in a school environment.
2. Structuring meetings to balance curiosity, chaos, and meaningful learning.
3. Working with school administrators and navigating policy constraints.
4. Keeping students engaged across skill levels.
5. Connecting students to the broader open source ecosystem
6. Using Open Source to help your community.

Attendees will leave with a practical framework for starting similar programs in their own communities—whether as educators, parents, open source maintainers, or industry professionals looking to strengthen the next generation of contributors.

Meet the techs of tomorrow where they are right now: in school.

S3 APIs power modern Linux infrastructure, yet most object storage traffic still relies on TCP/IP. Under high concurrency and large transfers, TCP becomes CPU-intensive and limits throughput. RDMA promises Accelerated I/O through kernel bypass and zero-copy data movement—but applying RDMA to S3 workloads is not the same as NFS or block storage.

This session explores how RDMA can accelerate S3-style object transfers in distributed storage systems. We examine memory registration strategies, connection scalability, and what changes when dealing with multipart uploads, HTTP range reads, and parallel clients.

Through real validation scenarios, we compare throughput, latency, and CPU usage across TCP and RDMA paths. We’ll also highlight where RDMA excels, and where it falls short, such as in small-object or metadata-heavy workloads.

Attendees will gain a practical framework for evaluating Accelerated I/O in their own Linux storage environments: what to measure, what to tune, and what performance gains to realistically expect.

Linux Live Patching enables the application of critical kernel updates without requiring system reboots, addressing the growing demand for continuous availability in modern Linux deployments. As Linux underpins cloud infrastructure, telecommunications platforms, and mission-critical enterprise systems, rebootless patching has moved from a niche capability to an operational necessity.

This talk provides a practical overview of Linux live patching as implemented in the mainline kernel. It explains how live patching works at the function level, the kernel infrastructure that enables it, and the trade-offs involved in applying kernel changes at runtime. Attendees will gain insight into where live patching is effective, where it is not, and how it is used in real-world production environments.

System call tracing is critical for security monitoring, auditing, and debugging in large-scale Linux deployments. This talk explores kernel-level syscall tracing mechanisms, comparing their architectures, performance characteristics, and operational trade-offs.

We'll examine multiple approaches using eBPF, kernel tracepoints, and the Linux audit subsystem.
The presentation covers technical implementation details: how each mechanism hooks into the kernel syscall path, overhead characteristics under load, and the types of data they capture. I'll discuss performance implications and optimizations through real-world examples.