What is the Linux Apps Devroom?

The premise of the devroom is to encourage building a sustainable ecosystem to encourage applications and gaming on the Linux platform. This includes WSL on Windows and FOSS frameworks that work on all platforms and architectures.

As this topic can be quite broad, here are some helpful topics that would be in scope for this devroom. This is not an exhaustive list. Surprise us!

Topics and Criteria

Gaming engines and tools
Distribution of applications like Flatpak and Snap
App store models that encourage sustainable 3rd party devloper compensation
App Frameworks like Qt, GTK, Electron, Tauri, Flutter etc
OSes invested in promoting desktop patterns like GNOME OS and KDE Linux
Application runtimes like Freedesktop SDK.
Open Source Design
Gaps, Successful approches, and Opportunities to improve the ecosystem
Security, Privacy, and Safety

Out of Scope:

Apps and games that are exclusively on closed source operating systems
Commercials that masquerade as a talk by companies
Recycled talks that have been presented elsewhere
Talks on topics that touch on topics that are well covered in other devrooms like legal, Android, and community

Our desired audience:

  • Third party developers from Linux and other platforms
  • Maintainers, contributors, and supporters of apps on Linux
  • Linux kernel, graphics, and userspace maintainers and contributors
  • Anyone interested in writing apps on Linux or use apps on Linux
  • Desktop maintainers not from KDE and GNOME
  • Distributions
  • Regular folks who use applications on their computer on any platform

Submission Guide

Submissions must be submitted through the FOSDEM pretalx system

https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2027/cfp.

Your submission must include the following information:

Please select the “Linux Apps” as the track.

Name

Short bio

Contact info

Title

Abstract

Duration (Please make sure to not submit talks that are over 30 minutes, those will be disqualified)

We look forward to hearing from you all for the first ever devroom of this type!

Why does this proposal fit FOSDEM: With the focus on digital soveriegnty globally there is renewed interest in building democratized technology stacks. FOSDEM 2025 has seen sustained interest in this and we believe that 2026 will continue this focus on digital sovereignty as the world re-aligns.

The realization that there is a single source for how we interact with our computers has driven a renewed interest in exploring alternatives. This devroom will help drive that exploration of robust alternatives on the only platform that is community driven, Linux.