Flock to Fedora report 2026
This post is tough to write because Flock to Fedora is my favorite conference, and last year’s Flock might have been the best conference I’ve ever been to. I love the Fedora community, Prague is beautiful, the venue is nice, we always have so many interesting talks and workshops, the organizers do an amazing job preparing this event for us, so I feel really guilty saying that I did not have much fun this year. That is 100% on me, though. Flock bears no blame.
It wasn’t exactly the wisest decision ever to run my first half-marathon the very evening before the conference, and then waking up early to commute to Prague. It must have hit me much more than I was willing to admit. I feel fine physically, but I can’t pay attention to anything because nothing feels exciting. That is the most lifeless I’ve felt in a long time.
So, in case anyone is wondering … it was me, not you.
Highlights
Despite all that, these were the highlights of the event for me.
Forging Fedora Project’s Future With Forgejo
Great job on the migration from pagure.io to forge.fedoraproject.org. It was handled exceptionally well. Next, we look forward to the migration of src.fedoraproject.org to Forgejo, which can’t come soon enough. Tomáš Hrčka teased us that this migration may take considerably less time than the previous one because they already know how to do things (e.g., deploy Forgejo, etc).
DIY AI: Build a Private, Customizable Chatbot on Lean Hardware
Ellis Low showed us how to run an LLM on our laptops through Llama and how to interact with it. I really appreciated him saying that, except for this one small text-in, text-out magic black box, everything else is standard software engineering as we know it.
Fedora Council Strategic Proposals + FESCo Q&A
Most of the discussion revolved around a decline of new contributors and us failing to connect with the next generation. “They talk about changing wallpaper, we talk about burnout” – Aleksandra Fedorova.
What’s Cooking in Copr, Testing Farm, tmt, Packit and Log Detective
I found Pavel Raiskup’s return to the stage hilarious.
Scrapers gotta scrape scrape scrape
As presentations go, Kevin Fenzi’s talk about AI scrapers was the best. It started with minor A/V dificulities, which is a nice reminder to not feel bad, the next time it happens to you, because it happens to everybody. Even the main infra guy. Semi-joking aside, I enjoyed the brief history of web scraping and Kevin’s taxonomy of scrapers, clearly showing that not all scrapers are the same (e.g., web.archive.org). However, the current AI scrapers are the plague of the internet, and I am so glad the Fedora Infra team fights them as best as they can to keep our services running.
Chat with Adam
I ran into my former Copr team mate Adam Šamalík in the hallway, and we had a nice chat about life. When we still worked together (10 years ago, oh how the time flies), I randomly asked him what he did on a weekend. “We had no plans, so we bought plane tickets and went on a date to Amsterdam with my girlfriend”. Fucking what?! That was the coolest response ever. Since that day, I remember it every time my creaking, lazy bones struggle to do something spontaneous. Why am I telling it now? Adam is now happily living in the Netherlands full-time. Funny how one impromptu decision can completely change your life.
Chat with Emmanuel
Made friends with Emmanuel Seyman. He said hello after seeing the Fedora Podcast episode with me as a guest. I really enjoyed our chat, and I am going to follow up online because I think he’ll really like Sundaram Krishnan’s project coprtree.
Chat with Miro
Miro Hrončok shared some of his ideas about improving the Fedora Package Review Process with me. This deserves an article on its own, so stay tuned.