Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference North America 2026

Startups need to monetize fast with high quality code, and open source is a proven path to that objective. Integrators of open source solutions and COSS companies have an incredibly important and urgent role to play to bridge the gap between open source R&D and commercialization, especially in the context of trade uncertainty, digital independence and sovereignty movements, and economic headwinds.

Attendees will come away with empirical proof points that open source is an accelerator of value for COSS companies: at IPO, and M&A. And with a new survey in the field, they'll have the opportunity to influence outcomes for the benefit of startups and COSS companies everywhere!

Open source projects often struggle not with code, but with scale: issue triage, pull request validation, release automation, and community operations all consume maintainer time. Serverless, when built on open standards, offers a powerful way to automate these workflows without adding operational overhead.
This talk explores how open source maintainers can use event‑driven, serverless patterns to automate project workflows such as issue labeling, CI triggers, release orchestration, and contributor notifications. Using open technologies like CloudEvents, CDEvents, OpenTelemetry, and container‑based functions on Kubernetes, we show how to build portable, vendor‑neutral serverless automation that works across environments.
Attendees will learn practical design patterns, common pitfalls, and real‑world examples of using serverless automation to improve project reliability, contributor experience, and maintainer sustainability without locking into any single platform.

From the moment you press the power button to the instant the login prompt appears, a complex sequence of events happens behind the scenes to get your Linux system up and running. This talk aims to demystify the Linux boot process through a deep dive into each stage.
Starting from the role of system firmware, we compare legacy BIOS with modern UEFI and see why there has been a shift to UEFI. From there, we move on to the bootloader stage, discussing its function in loading the kernel and passing control over to it. Using GRUB as an example, we show how to view and customize bootloader configurations. Next, we explore the kernel initialization stage, including the role of initrd/initramfs, how the real root filesystem is mounted, and how the kernel initializes essential system components and launches the first userspace process. From there, control transitions to the init system. We examine SysVinit and its more modern alternative, systemd, and their roles in bringing the rest of the system online.
Finally, we cover practical debugging techniques, such as viewing boot logs, analyzing boot performance, optimizing boot up time, and improving security with features like Secure Boot.