LFNW and LPI Over 25 Years: Community, Code, and Conversations

I’ve been attending Linux User Groups and “Fests” since the mid 1990s, but this year was my first LinuxFest Northwest ever, and I now realize what I have been missing for years. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: no matter how much the tech landscape shifts, including distros, desktops, server and desktop market share, cloud versus on-prem deployments, etc., the Linux community events never lose their pulse. But this year—2025—was something special. Both LFNW and the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) celebrated their 25th anniversaries.

And the Fest didn’t just survive that milestone. It exploded with energy!

LFNW 25: The Talk, the Crowd, the Power of Shared Curiosity

I had the privilege of speaking on “Securing Your Web Server with Post-Quantum Cryptography,” a session that unexpectedly drew a packed room and some deep hallway conversations afterward. But honestly, I was just as inspired by the other voices around me, who talked about how Linux conquered supercomputing, software fairness research, underrepresented voices from the Python community, and the story of the first Black software engineer, as well as technical updates from Enterprise and Desktop distros, including Rocky, Centos, Alma, NixOS, and Azure.

Sessions from both seasoned community members and new contributors were equally compelling. Both days culminated in the common sponsor area with a raffle of high-quality donated products from all to help support the next annual LinuxFest.

Being surrounded by this community (old friends and new faces as well) reminded me why I joined the FOSS world in the first place. Back in 1995, I wasn’t yet passionate about Linux. What brought me to my first LUG in Tokyo was something more basic: I was looking for a community. A place to connect with other English speakers, swap tips on great inexpensive restaurants, and make the city feel a little less vast. What I found, unexpectedly, was a welcoming group of tech-minded people who were building more than software: they were building shared knowledge, support, and purpose. I’ve been part of it ever since.

Showing Up, Sharing Knowledge

My fellow LPI board member and long-time open source champion Jon “maddog” Hall gave the closing keynote. (Most of these sessions were carefully recorded and edited by the hard working team of LFNW volunteers.) As usual, he delivered more than just a talk—it was a call to action, a reflection, and a celebration all at once.

Prior to maddog’s talk, Beowulf creator and early Linux kernel contributor Donald Becker gave a talk on “How Linux Conquered Supercomputing”, which expanded on the history of not just Beowulf, but of the Linux kernel and open source itself, including how the focus and priorities of performance led to the domination of Linux as the operating system of choice for internet servers, cloud, servers, phones, and IOT devices.

Every room had something to offer: from hands-on bootcamps such as “Building Your First Game with Godot” to discussions about emerging Linux distributions such as StillOS and Microsoft’s Azure Linux (yes, you read that right…), with a lot of talks on open source tools involved with application development, AI, cybersecurity, and front end and observability tools and use cases. The festival wasn’t just about tools and tech—it was about the stories we tell, like Clyde Ford’s talk on the “first Black software engineer in America”: his father, John Stanley Ford.

That one stayed with me.

Beyond the Talks: What Makes This Fest Real

What’s special about LFNW isn’t just the sessions—it’s the space between them. The breakfasts where you share ideas with someone who just got their first LPI certification. The community dinners where distro wars are debated, passionately but playfully. The offsite meetups that blur the line between social and professional. It’s human. It’s real.

I think we’re all a bit tired of virtual everything. This year felt like a return to something essential—what happens when people who care about open source get in a room together. When questions get asked off-script. When hallway demos turn into job offers or side projects. That’s the magic.

Bellingham, which is about a two-hour drive from either Seattle or Vancouver, Canada, is a laid back town with few traditional malls or chain stores, but full of locally owned quality restaurants, pubs, and shops. Although the volunteers scheduled evening events each night, I was still able to get out to a few restaurants and shops and take in a great sunset view, as Bellingham is situated on Bellingham Bay, which is part of the Salish Sea, and is surrounded by Lake Whatcom, Lake Padden, and the Nooksack River. For those able to schedule a day before or after LFNW, the San Juan Islands, Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, Mt. Baker, and other sights and activities were close by.

A Quarter Century for LPI—and Why That Matters

2025 also marked 25 years of LPI. Our booth at the Fest, our anniversary posters, even the discount codes we shared—they weren’t just marketing. They were a reminder that vendor-neutral certification has always been about people. Helping learners. Helping career changers. Giving anyone with curiosity and a command line the tools to grow.

That message landed at the conference this year. I spoke to multiple attendees who had just passed their Linux Essentials exam—and others who had first heard of LPI at this very Fest years ago. That kind of long-game impact is rare. It matters.

Behind the Scenes—and Ahead

The real heroes? The volunteers. The AV teams, the captioning crew, the folks who spent late nights fixing connectivity issues in the classrooms—every single one of them contributed to making this event accessible and seamless.

I would especially like to extend a thank you to all of the LFNW volunteers at LFNW in Bellingham who worked tirelessly in the months and weeks prior to the event. The LFNW volunteers collaborated seamlessly through all meetings and media channels to ensure that the remote logistics of our joint 25 year Anniversary at LFNW went off seamlessly. LPI’s events manager for worldwide events, Max Roveri, resides in Dublin, and LPI’s worldwide marketing manager, Björn Schönewald, resides in Germany, so the work on the floor of the conference by the community of LFNW volunteers, which includes student volunteers from Bellingham Technical College, was particularly valuable to us.

LFNW’s consistency is what gives it power. This Fest helped inspire events like SeaGL in Seattle and remains a cornerstone of the Pacific Northwest FOSS scene. It’s the kind of gathering that doesn’t just celebrate open source, but sustains it.

So what’s next? Hopefully 25 more years. More hallway chats, more disruptive ideas, more moments where someone says, “Wait, you can do that with Linux?”

See you next time in Bellingham. I wouldn’t miss it!