Contest Winner Bjarne Rosengren Will Follow Tux to LinuxCon New Orleans

Embedded developer Bjarne Rosengren has never been to the Southern United States. But he’s got a better idea of the fun that lies ahead at LinuxCon in New Orleans this September – and the chance to go — thanks to Tux.

Earlier this month we sent Tux to New Orleans during Mardi Gras to scout out the best landmarks, food, drinks and fun. He sent back a video travel log of some of the highlights of his trip (see below). Then we held a contest – anyone who shared the video on Twitter or Google Plus was entered into a random drawing to win a free pass to LinuxCon North America.

Bjarne was the lucky winner and plans to live it up in NOLA, Tux-style. This will be his third LinuxCon North America conference, after attending events in Portland and San Diego in previous years.

“Whenever I go to conferences (and other places) I try to get a few days to look around, checking out local sights and trying local food, etc. This time will be no exception,” he said via email.

“The thing about LinuxCon is the great diversity of people presenting and attending it,” he wrote. “There are always sessions that are of interest and it gets even better when it is collocated with other conferences like Linux Plumbers and ELC.”

The 42-year-old software engineer at Axis Communications has been using Linux since his days at Lund University. He remembers getting access to the school’s computer rooms and FTP’ing to funet.fi to download and make disks for his 386sx.

He’s used it ever since at home, beginning with Debian and now on Ubuntu. Linux is also the main operating system on his company’s development workstations and runs in many, but not all of its embedded products.

He has worked with Axis since 1997, when he started writing embedded software in the company’s proprietary OS and Systems-on-a-Chip (SoCs). Ten years ago he moved on to work with the Axis network cameras that run Linux on the SoCs. And he’s now an architect responsible for one of the main software functions in their products.

“I think one of the greatest things about Linux is that you can run it on almost any kind of devices,” he said, “from big server parks down to workstations and the further down to smaller systems like the ones produced by Axis.”