Rocky Linux at All Things Open 2026

Another year of All Things Open is in the books. Even though AI dominated the talks, the conversations were about community. The event took place on October 19-20, 2026 at Atlantic Union Bank Convention Center (formerly known as the Raleigh Convention Center) in Raleigh, North Carolina. This year saw a change in scheduling from the prior year. On Monday, the Community Leadership Summit (CLS), deep dives and workshops took place. The registration line was long, wrapping around the front corner of the building. Given this year's attendance numbers, that wasn't a surprise, and it was a good sign of the enthusiasm to be part of the event.

Community leaders share

From our Release Engineering and Community team, Michael Young attended CLS which is organized by Jono Bacon. We heard that there were over 500 registrations for CLS. The breakout sessions were a mix of individuals from different industries and with different experiences. This is what makes CLS a great program to participate in since it provides insight on many different topics.

For instance, there was a discussion around how to get the proper story told now that we have AI in the mix. A professor shared his concern that students miss out on the lasting benefits of working through hard problems themselves. This will not happen if AI is doing this for the students. The consensus in that one discussion was to use AI to help augment our work but that we need to keep the human factor present. There was another discussion on using AI for non-profit work and administration.

Those are just a couple of examples of the many topics that the community leaders discussed.

The teams that represented

At our Rocky Linux booth, which was located near one of the ballrooms, Steven Spencer represented our Documentation team.

From our Release Engineering team we had Jonathan Dieter, Skip Grube and Michael Young.

We had the opportunity to network and share information with university students, members from other open source projects, builders, vendors and anyone who was curious to learn more about Linux in general or what an Enterprise Linux operating system is.

Out of these discussions, we had some ask how they can jump in and help with the project. Our Documentation and Testing teams are always looking for help, especially the Documentation team. We were able to provide guidance on how to join in and help out. We look forward to welcoming them and their contributions.

If you would like to join in the fun, please connect with us on chat.rockylinux.org and say "Hi!". Hanging out with us is cool too.

A wonderful talk from the team

On the second day at ATO, our Engineering Lead, Jonathan Dieter, gave a talk on “Threading The Needle: Balancing Open Source Philosophy Against Corporate Responsibility”. This is a balance that is crucial in any open source project. Appropriate communication is vital. He highlighted the difficulties that can be faced and how each side can contribute to the success of a project with outcomes that benefit everyone.

Jonathan’s talk went by fast and it was refreshing to listen to reminders on how to have the right perspective.

What everyone was talking about

The main point of discussion this year was artificial intelligence (AI). The main track talks centered around AI in one way or another. We saw it at the various booths as we walked around the convention center.

While there was a lot of talk around AI, it didn’t feel one-sided. There was plenty of room for conversations around traditional tools and operating systems. A few conversations at the booth included discussions about the cost and availability of hardware, ironically driven in large part by the AI boom.

Giveaway

We had a giveaway that generated a good amount of interest. We gave away a Raspberry Pi 5 with 16GB of RAM along with all necessary accessories to get up and running. The keen-eyed might notice our banner says a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB of RAM. We upgraded the prize after the banner was printed.

On the second day of the event at 3:00 PM, Skip Grube helped us to draw a random entry by using, of course, a geeky bash script. It was a fun way to do the drawing and the winner was there along with a handful of others who were hoping to have their entry matched to the winning number. Congratulations Nathan Holzworth!

Final thoughts

One of the things that is always enjoyable about ATO is that feeling of community. Every year, you make new friends. At all the socials, you can see new faces and you invite them into your circle. You can be yourself and learn a great deal through various conversations. We look forward to attending and spending time with you all at ATO in 2027.