As the nerds descended upon Denver this past week for The Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit, System76 jumped at the opportunity to connect with as many community members as possible.

On the open source hardware side, we had Thelio Astra posted up at the arm booth with a nice bright red racing stripe to go along with how fast it is.

Carl Richell and Jeremy Soller presented COSMIC Desktop and the most recent developments in a packed room of curious individuals. A copy of the slides can be found here.

Talk attendees flooded to the back of the room after the talk to grab USBs with the Pop!_OS 24.04 iso and COSMIC Desktop loaded up. We invited everyone in the talk to the happy hour we were hosting later in the evening just a few blocks from the convention center.

At Happy Hour, we greeted the nerds with a raffle ticket to try and win a Launch keyboard or other prizes throughout the night. Guests were invited into the event to an open bar and free food like Duck quesadillas, smoked salmon and wagyu beef skewers.

Carl Richell stayed posted up by the COSMIC demo on the laptop by the Launch keyboard displays. He has zero issues talking about COSMIC Desktop all night long. It’s fun to experience.

Ken from Ampere showed off Thelio Astra performing the Tier IV self-driving car safety simulations on loop, demonstrating how autonomous vehicle simulations can be sped up with the 128 cores offered in the arm64 desktop.

After the conference concluded on Wednesday, groups from companies like Embedded TS. Toyota and arm stopped by System76 for a tour of the System76 factory with Emma. They learned how the launch keyboard and Thelio Desktops are manufactured up close and personal, along with fun historical tidbits from Emma's point of view.

System76 loves to connect with the open source community and it was a delight to meet new friends and see familiar faces. Looking forward to our next open source event!