Cassidy’s Blog

Endless ♥ GNOME at GUADEC 2023

Collaborating within GNOME to widen our impact far beyond Endless OS

In July, my employer Endless sponsored and attended the annual GNOME conference, GUADEC, in Rīga, Latvia. Endless has a long history of supporting and collaborating within the GNOME open source project, and it was great to support GUADEC again this year as the platinum sponsor of the event.

Our support of GUADEC and GNOME is more than just a sponsorship, though; we showed up and participated all week to present and plan for our continued contributions to GNOME. The conference is designed around a one-day advisory board meeting, a few days of talks, and a few days of working sessions.

Advisory Board Meeting

We joined representatives from other organizations using and invested in the success of GNOME in meeting with the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors for an all-day Advisory Board meeting. There we discussed improving the accessibility of GNOME, the travel sponsorship process, reproducible builds for apps, how organizations can better upstream their non-code contributions to GNOME, and other topics raised by member organizations.

Talks

Endless OS Foundation employees presented a total of nine talks across three broad topics:

1. Design

• GNOME Design State of the Union: I co-presented as part of the GNOME design team, showing our work over the past year and some plans for the future

• How to Make a Delightful App Listing: I taught app developers how to present their apps in their best light in app stores like GNOME Software, Flathub, and more

2. Sharing Knowledge

• Reaching New Users With GNOME: Robert McQueen shared insights, knowledge, and ways forward learned by our work at Endless

• Maintaining Healthy Upstream Relationships as a Small Team: Dylan McCall shared techniques for effectively communicating upstream, fostering a culture of collaboration, and managing disagreements

• What is the GNOME Advisory Board? I gave this impromptu “lightning talk” (five-minute talk prepared day-of) about my experience on the GNOME Advisory Board including what it is, how it works, and why more organizations should join

3. Technical

• State of the Shell: Georges Basile Stavracas Neto and other GNOME Shell developers shared the improvements, highlights, and latest development plans in Mutter and GNOME Shell

• Reducing Power & Bandwidth Use in Apps to Keep Users Happy: Philip Withnall taught app developers how and why to change app behavior to save power and bandwidth when appropriate

• Slow Progress on App Save/Restore Support: Philip Withnall shared an overview of the progress towards saving and restoring app state across restarts, including what’s left to do

Working Sessions

Endless OS Foundation employees attended a variety of workshops including GTK Planning, GNOME Release Team, and GNOME OS. Throughout the week we also had countless conversations in hallways and over meals with other GNOME contributors—all of which helps share knowledge and shape the direction of GNOME.

I’m proud to be part of an organization that takes this critical work seriously, collaborating deeply with and within GNOME to widen our impact far beyond just users of Endless OS.

Read More

• Cassidy James Blaede: I’m back from GUADEC 2023
• Philip Withnall: GUADEC 2023
• This Week In GNOME #106: GUADEC 2023
• Endless: Why Does Open Source Matter? Takeaways from GUADEC 2023

What is GNOME?

GNOME is an expansive open source community developing an entirely free and open source modern computing ecosystem. GNOME technologies serve as the user interface and much of the technical stack of the most popular Linux-based operating systems including Endless OS, Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and more.

Anyone can use and contribute to GNOME technologies to provide an alternative to Microsoft Windows, Google ChromeOS and Android, or Apple macOS and iOS.

GNOME Advisory Board

The GNOME Foundation is the non-profit organization that supports the GNOME community with staff, infrastructure, trademarks, legal framework, etc. The GNOME Foundation Board of Directors is democratically elected by the community to support and guide GNOME.

Since GNOME technologies are so widely used, it’s beneficial to get the input and advice from other organizations that are invested in the success of GNOME—like Endless OS Foundation! The GNOME Advisory Board is an advisory committee made up of such organizations and meets with each other and the elected GNOME Foundation Board of Directors twice annually. There’s no decision-making authority, but it’s a way to collaborate and share individual organizations’ plans as they relate to their financial, technical, or labor investments into GNOME for the coming year.