---

title: "CentOS Connect 2025"

title_lead: "January 30 – 31, 2025 • Brussels, Belgium"

talks:

  - title: "CentOS Stream - a preview of RHEL, a solid base for CentOS SIGs"

    youtube: "1P7xYLt7rYk"

    speakers:

      - name: Troy Dawson

    desc: |

      
CentOS Stream is a Linux distribution built by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

      engineers as part of RHEL development.

      
Innovation within the OS happens in Fedora.

      CentOS Stream provides a solid base for innovation on top of an OS.

      Many CentOS Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are building on and extending it in all

      sorts of interesting ways without needing to reinvent the wheel.

      
CentOS Stream also serves as a contribution path to RHEL itself.

      The source, the builds, the release, it all happens in the open.

      
Come and learn about what's new, what's coming,

      how to get involved both directly and through CentOS SIGs.

  - title: "Leveraging the Kubernetes Enqueue Scheduling Plugin for Smarter Workload Placement"

    youtube: "vfuJsB8MCko"

    speakers:

      - name: Alessandro Di Stefano

      - name: Dennis Gilmore

    desc: |

      
This session highlights the OKD community’s initiative to evolve

      Kubernetes scheduling into a dynamic, collaborative framework.

      Building on the experience gained from developing the Multiarch

      Tuning Operator for OpenShift, the initiative leverages Kubernetes'

      2scheduling gates mechanism to go beyond multi-architecture-aware scheduling.

      It introduces a framework where multiple controllers can compete to inject

      augmented information into pod specifications, enabling smarter and more

      efficient pod placement across Kubernetes clusters.

      
Rooted in OKD, the upstream distribution of OpenShift, and running on

      CentOS Stream CoreOS, this effort showcases how the OKD community is driving

      innovation for scheduling in Kubernetes Clusters.

      The framework optimizes workload placement while coordinating with

      descheduling and autoscaling components.

      
This talk will explore how OKD’s community-driven approach connects

      observability platforms with Kubernetes’ scheduling ecosystem, closing

      the feedback loop for improved performance, SLA guarantees, cost savings,

      and energy efficiency.

      Attendees will also learn how this framework lays the foundation for a fully

      distributed, intelligent placement system for Kubernetes workloads.

      
Join us to discover how the OKD community is extending its vision through

      CentOS Stream CoreOS, fostering collaboration and innovation to advance

      Kubernetes scheduling.

  - title: "Web revamp: We did it! (sort of...)"

    youtube: "e5POjZcmLXY"

    speakers:

      - name: Shaun McCance

    desc: |

      
After a long time working on it, we finally launched the new website

      and docs site with the CentOS Stream 10 announcement.

      There was a lot of frantic scrambling among the Artwork, Infra, Docs,

      and Promo SIGs. There were snags. There were delays.

      But we finally got it out the door.

      
This talk will explore what we did.

      But more importantly, it will explore what we didn't do.

      We had to think hard about what work we could defer to meet deadlines.

      Learn how you can contribute tonight from the comfort of your hotel room.

  - title: "OKD, kubernetes on CentOS Stream"

    youtube: "UDJzV5SJFRw"

    speakers:

      - name: Dennis Gilmore

    desc: |

      We are currently going through a big shift in OKD. We are working to have

      everything entirely built on CentOS stream.

      This talk will explain what we want OKD to look like and the steps we are

      taking to get there.

  - title: "From RPM to S2I of an OpenStack service in Konflux"

    youtube: "ouTzUKGldko"

    speakers:

      - name: Joel Capitao

    desc: |

      
At RDO, we are experimenting building the OpenStack services from source

      instead of packaging them first with RPM.

      This initiative is conducted alongside the Konflux effort which is taking

      place within the Fedora community.

      
We'll present a PoC of an Openstack service built from source in the

      Cloud SiG Konflux tenant.

  - title: "AlmaLinux: the special derivative"

    youtube: "r6CJwCvNsVw"

    speakers:

      - name: Andrew Lukoshko

    desc: |

      
On the dates of CentOS Connect 2025, we get to celebrate exactly 4 years

      since the release of the very first beta version of AlmaLinux.

      While being RHEL (and later CentOS Stream) derivative AlmaLinux still does

      a lot of things differently both on the distribution and tooling sides.

      Our build system and mirror service are just the tip of the iceberg.

      In my talk I'd like to focus on more things we do differently, like:

      
How we build images

      
How we produce errata

      
How we do OpenSCAP profiles and OVAL data

      
How we support additional hardware and older CPUs

      
How we extend virtualization support

      
... and many more.

      
This can be useful for users and developers to look at familiar

      features and processes from a new angle.

  - title: "OpenScanHub and Packit: Fully automated static analysis of RPM-based distributions"

    youtube: "XYCh1hkCo-o"

    speakers:

      - name: František Lachman

      - name: Siteshwar Vashisht

    desc: |

      
What if detecting bugs and vulnerabilities in RPM-based

      distributions could be seamless and fully automated?

      
OpenScanHub is a service for static and dynamic code analysis.

      It was internally used inside Red Hat to scan releases of RHEL

      for more than a decade and was open-sourced in 2023.

      
OpenScanHub can fully automatically scan RPMs and has the ability

      to do differential scans that helps in finding bugs that may be

      introduced on package updates and new distribution releases.

      By default, it supports static analyzers embedded in GCC, Cppcheck, ShellCheck,

      find-unicode-control, Clippy and is extensible to support other analyzers.

      It can collect reports from various analyzers at a single place to

      make it easy to analyze them.

      
OpenScanHub was recently integrated with Packit, a CI/CD solution for

      automating RPM package builds, tests, and distribution releases.

      This new integration performs differential scans on pull requests,

      so potential bugs may be found during the pull request review process

      and would not be introduced into the codebase.

      
In this talk, we will share ideas about how CentOS Stream and its

      derivatives may benefit from OpenScanHub.

  - title: "CentOS Infra SIG review and updates"

    youtube: "jkc3jdxSZmA"

    speakers:

      - name: Fabian Arrotin

    desc: |

      The CentOS Infra Special Interest Group is there to serve the whole

      CentOS Ecosystem, especially the other SIGs.

      What has been achieved during the 2024 year ?

      What are some other goals for 2025 ?

      Let's present these though slides but also Q&A (hearing from SIGs themselves !)

  - title: "Hyperscale SIG update"

    youtube: "iXTIf4T1i_s"

    speakers:

      - name: Davide Cavalca

      - name: Neal Gompa

    desc: |

      This presentation will provide an update on what the CentOS Hyperscale SIG has

      been working on, what work has been done by the Hyperscale SIG in CentOS Stream,

      what deliverables are available, how to use them, and what's coming up next.

  - title: "CentOS Alt Images - Lets Talk About It"

    youtube: "rXTK-CvB-OE"

    speakers:

      - name: Troy Dawson

    desc: |

      CentOS Alternative Images SIG has progressed alot in the past year.

      Troy will go over all the new Images we adding this past year and what we have planned next.

      He will also do a demo some of his favorite images.

  - title: "Creating content collections for CentOS SIGs"

    youtube: "Hhy14OI9RTA"

    speakers:

      - name: Neal Gompa

    desc: |

      
CentOS Hyperscale is constructed with the combination of CentOS Stream,

      Fedora EPEL, and our own produced packages.

      This gives us a broad content set, but since each of these are released

      with their own cadences, it becomes important to create discrete collections

      of this for various purposes (notably integration testing).

      
This talk will discuss the problem and share the solution created for the

      Hyperscale SIG, and show how other CentOS SIGs and communities can benefit from it.

  - title: "OpenHPC - Running on Multiple Distributions"

    youtube: "bTvWE1ID0sw"

    speakers:

      - name: Adrian Reber

    desc: |

      
OpenHPC is Linux Foundation project which tries to provide an easy

      starting point into High Performance Computing (HPC).

      Currently the OpenHPC projects supports Leap 15.5, openEuler 22.03 and

      different RHEL 9 clones (AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux).

      For those distributions OpenHPC provides RPMs and validated recipes which

      guide the user to a running HPC cluster.

      
In this session I want to give an introduction why OpenHPC exists and

      what special requirements HPC systems have, how OpenHPC builds its RPMs

      and how OpenHPC validates its released recipes with hundreds of tests

      for each release.

  - title: "Something for SIGs: Story of Packit and CBS Koji"

    youtube: "RFxBy8SK_FE"

    speakers:

      - name: František Lachman

    desc: |

      
For some time, Packit’s main target had been Fedora.

      But we have something for the CentOS Stream community as well.

      Specifically for CentOS SIGs this time.

      
Providing builds and CI for your SIG is not easy, and with Packit,

      we thought we could be of help.

      We were asked about this a long long time ago, but last year,

      Christian Glombek sent us the first contribution that kicked off the

      actual work and together with the Packit team, the work on automation

      for CBS Koji builds started for real.

      Just another Koji instance one would say.

      We’ve come a long way since then and learned our lesson.

      Come and see what it takes to automate RPM builds on CBS Koji in

      reality and how you can benefit from our work.

      
During the talk, we’ll show what we’ve managed to finish and what

      are our plans for the future.

  - title: "The Road to EPEL 10"

    youtube: "3pbjS-tD4q8"

    speakers:

      - name: Carl George

    desc: |

      
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) is a yum repository of

      community maintained packages for use on CentOS Stream and Red Hat

      Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

      For most of its history, each version of EPEL was made available after

      the corresponding major version of RHEL.

      This slowed down package availability, which then slowed down adoption

      of new RHEL major versions.

      In EPEL 9, package maintainers were able to build against CentOS Stream 9

      early to have a large number of packages ready before the RHEL 9.0 launch.

      
For EPEL 10, the EPEL Steering Committee is expanding that strategy

      to all minor versions of RHEL 10.

      This will improve support for CentOS Stream and for specific minor versions

      of RHEL, resolving several key pain points of users and maintainers.

      Attend this talk to learn more about this bold initiative and the results

      achieved so far.

  - title: "Automating CentOS Provisioning with Foreman"

    youtube: "psarnHrK89Y"

    speakers:

      - name: Nofar Alfassi

    desc: |

      
Foreman is a robust, open-source solution for provisioning and

      managing CentOS systems at scale.

      This talk will highlight how Foreman simplifies the provisioning

      process for CentOS environments using PXE-based booting, image-based

      workflows, and integrations with hypervisors like Libvirt and VMware.

      
We’ll also explore recent advancements such as Secure Boot and IPv6

      support, ensuring that Foreman remains compatible with modern CentOS

      infrastructure needs.

      A live demo will demonstrate how to efficiently provision CentOS systems,

      helping attendees streamline their workflows and manage environments with

      confidence.

      
Key Takeaways:

      
Learn how to provision CentOS systems efficiently with Foreman.

      
Explore advanced features like Secure Boot and IPv6 for CentOS.

      
Gain practical insights from a live provisioning demo.

  - title: "From ELN to EPEL 10: tracking and bringing up packages with poi-tracker and ebranch"

    youtube: "_yZLOFRw7lU"

    speakers:

      - name: Michel Lind

    desc: |

      Many, if not most, deployments of CentOS Stream and its downstreams

      (RHEL and derivatives) require packages from the Extra Packages for

      Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repositories, which requires bootstrapping

      for every major EL release.

      This is a follow-up to previous CentOS Connect talks, discussing how

      I am using poi-tracker to track packages, export them to ELN Extras

      workloads, and then use ebranch to branch and build these packages

      and their dependencies in EPEL 10.

      I plan to release the first stable versions of poi-tracker and

      ebranch at Connect, after stress-testing ebranch across two EL

      releases (9 and 10).

  - title: "Building RPMs in Konflux"

    youtube: "wORt4PDGf6o"

    speakers:

      - name: Mike McLean

    desc: |

      Konflux is an open-source software factory based on Tekton and Kubernetes.

      In this talk, I'll give a brief overview of the system and talk about how

      we're using it to build RPMs.

  - title: "Bootable Containers in Action: Hands on with Deploying AI Workloads"

    youtube: "KDOySCVhphI"

    speakers:

      - name: Carol Chen

      - name: Cedric Clyburn

    desc: |

      There’s an exciting potential for bootable containers, which allow you to

      build and manage a full operating system just like a container image,

      and recently, Red Hat announced it’s intention to donate the tool to the

      Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

      However, for AI/ML workloads which require a complicated stack of dependencies,

      this technology helps curate the delivery of a full stack for training and

      inferencing, for example with Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI.

      Join us as we put together an operating system for running an AI-enabled

      application with CentOS Stream, using an InstructLab fine-tuned model from

      our local developer workstation.

      With bootable containers, our deployment workflow is simplified, with

      flexibility for dynamic requirements and environments in building the

      next generation of Linux workloads.

  - title: "Foreman & Pulp packaging: maintaining 750+ SRPMs"

    youtube: "8wAS7R6RriE"

    speakers:

      - name: Ewoud Kohl van Wijngaarden

    desc: |

      The Foreman and Pulp projects are upstream to Red Hat Satellite and

      together contain more than 750 SRPMs layered on top of Enterprise Linux.

      To keep this all maintained with a small team we need automation.

      See how we utilize COPR, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, CentOS CI, Ansible,

      gem2rpm, pyp2rpm and more to deliver both nightly and stable releases.

---

CentOS Connect is the contributor conference for CentOS,

focusing on CentOS Stream, Special Interest Groups, and the entire Enterprise

Linux ecosystem. CentOS Connect 2025 happens January 30 – 31, as part of the

FOSDEM Fringe.

{% include event.html %}