WineConf Likely Over But There May Be A Proton / Gaming Developer Conference

[phoronix]

Phoronix: WineConf Likely Over But There May Be A Proton / Gaming Developer Conference

WineConf as what had been the regularly hosted Wine developer conference for this open-source project devoted to running Windows games/applications on Linux and other platforms is likely over. Due to dwindling attendance and no one stepping up to organize the next WineConf, the developer conference is on hiatus but in place there may end up being something like a Proton conference in the future...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/WineConf-Possibly-Over

[tildearrow]

Typo;

Alexandre Juliard does raise the prospect though that

[Namelesswonder]

Would probably be a good idea to join another larger Linux or programming conference, to reduce the overhead of organizing and management while opening it up to a larger audience.

[skeevy420]

If I had to put any blame on COVID and WineConf attendance it would be the average person having less money due to inflation combined with companies being stingy and hypocritical. By hypocritical, I mean by ending remote work, forcing y'all into the offices, and then making y'all do conferences remotely -- ending remote to enable remote.

IMHO, they need to change the format of WineConf by joining forces with other open source conferences to make it one to two weeks long. Two days of people talking and showing videos and slideshows is something that can be done all remote without a real need for an in-person conference regardless of who you are or what your trying to show. I propose something like this:

Day 1-2: Wine
Day 3-4: Wayland & HDR
Day 4-5: Desktop Environments
Day 5-6: Proton and Games
Day 7: Off Day/Group Lunch
Day 8-9: Multimedia
Day 10-11: File Systems, Containers, Security
Day 12-13: Asahi/non-Windows "emulation"/non-x86 platforms
Day 14: Group Breakfast, Good byes

Make a real event out of it. Make something that people are excited to attend. Make something that allows mass in-person meetups and collaboration.

Make a FOSS Desktop Festival. The FDF.

[skeevy420]

ROFL, look at our timestamps

[Weasel]

Digital age, man. Showing up in person is so 1990s.

[TheLexMachine]

In the age of global Internet, webcams, and group chats and forums, I think a conference for a particular software project's development seems a bit like overkill and not worth the effort. Plenty of things get done without those and I think it's time they moved on.

[brucethemoose]

In the age of global Internet, webcams, and group chats and forums, I think a conference for a particular software project's development seems a bit like overkill and not worth the effort. Plenty of things get done without those and I think it's time they moved on.

Its not just utilitarian. Some conferences are like a social working/hobby vacations, and shooting the breeze with another expert in person can lead to different paths than text chat or online voice chat.

[andrei_me]

Also Wine had a bad record in allowing fixes there not considered by them as a "proper fix", so a downstream Wine conf makes more sense, like Proton and Wine Staging, where one can push code to make some apps work, even if the fix is a workaround.

Also, it took 15 years to Wine 1.0, nowadays most of the legacy and current stuff works, even so that we reached a point where we are surprised when some game doesn't work on Proton instead of the opposite

[skeevy420]

Its not just utilitarian. Some conferences are like a social working/hobby vacations, and shooting the breeze with another expert in person can lead to different paths than text chat or online voice chat.

That was my inspiration for an entire Linux desktop fest. A way to get everybody together for a week or two to collaborate in person.

IMHO, going halfway around the world for one piece of software for two days is kind of boring. Turn it into the E3 of Linux for a week or two and now we have something exciting.