The idea is to select broad topic areas early, and then let microconf owners determine actual content when we're much closer to the conference date. This gives organizers enough info to request paper submissions and potential attendees to determine if they want to come, but still will let the miniconf be about current issues in September, not our guesses in January.

We're relying on getting a person from each topic area – the microconf owner – to determine the actual course of discussion, so it's also very important that we find the right 10 people for that role.

What are significant problems that need work in Linux today?

1. Performance (where does it still need work?)
2. Kernel/userspace interaction, how this can be done better
3. Putting the Linux kernel in non-traditional places
4. Hands-on kernel experience (tutorials/new-hardware enablement)
5. Embedded issues
6. Free software desktop common standards
7. Free software desktop future directions
   • Samba, OpenLDAP, Kolab, other “non-desktop” projects that could have better desktop integration
   • “Network desktop” – meaning what exactly?
8. Linux Audio
   • Open Source Sound, ALSA, hardware drivers
   • The Big Picture of multimedia on the platform (video, codecs availability, media frameworks such as NMM and GStreamer, etc.)
9. X, randr rox, what next?
   • Tungsten's MESA work
   • invite Zack Russin + team?
10. Networking: going to 10Gb and beyond.
    • What are the necessary API and infrastructure changes
    • Existing poll and RDMA interfaces are rarely used
    • Realtime and latency?
11. Hardware support (wired net, wireless, USB) if not supported it's useless
    • GregKH “how to write a driver” tutorial
12. Next UI innovation (multitouch?) toolkit integration
13. Toolkits using xcb directly, why not? rewards vs. work
14. Linux annoyances, how to eliminate
15. Server manageability, dtrace, portability, IPMI and configuration management
16. Virtualization, containers, namespaces, “putting more than 1 app on a server and keeping things tidy”
17. Flash Caches and Solid State Disks - are we ready to take advantage? What interesting things can we do in both userspace and kernel to take advantage of these technologies.
18. Creating Open Software for Open Hardware: obstacles and opportunities - problem solving, not just “I created an open hardware project and ported linux to it” type talks.
19. Cameras and V4L - Why is Linux behind in supporting web cameras? And how do we fix it? (Focus on UVC)
    • the video driver framework, how should it work (userspace/kernelspace interaction, mix/match of tuners and decoder chip drivers, how can we finally implement the promises that v4l2 made years ago, “simple” userspace interaction with the video driver layers, etc.)
20. Firefox integration, instead of just shipping it
21. Instrumentation, tuning, markers, trace, probes, systemtap, tuning, etc. Getting to the end-game.
22. Next-gen filesystems, redoing VFS layer
23. Platform consistency across distros, proper documentation, is entering error messages in google really what we want people to do?
24. Things implemented well on other OSes that Linux should adopt

Already solved?

1. Power management, D-Bus, acpid
2. Making X and the kernel play nice with each other