BERLIN -- No word yet on whether they'll be wearing shiny little "Happy Birthday" hats with penguins on them or drinking some special Linux brew cooked up by the local monks, but the night sure won't be dull.
The first day of the third annual Linux Beer Hike -- a weeklong event starting Aug. 25 -- will coincide with the 10th birthday of Linus Torvalds' operating system.
The 150 or more open-source true believers gathering in Bouillon, Belgium, plan to make the most of the occasion, throwing a birthday party in Linux's honor -- and doing their best to hook up with birthday celebrations planned in other countries.
It's been 10 years since Torvalds took to the public the OS he wrote as a college student in Finland. He wrote in a post that day that he was "doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386 (486) AT clones."
"There is talk of getting a Belgian company to make a lot of chocolate penguins," said John Caulfeild, a retired programmer and farmer who has done some organizing for this year's event. "But it's hard to say. This is a holiday, so people don't like being organized. Organizing this bunch is like herding cats. It doesn't happen."
That goes for plans to set up a streaming video link with the other main Linux birthday party, which will take place in Sunnyvale, California's Baylands Park from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., also on Aug. 25.
Los Angeles Linux user groups are also trying to organize an event. Additional celebrations are already planned for Philadelphia, Copenhagen and Caracas, Venezuela.
The big penguin party, however, is the one in Belgium, where revelers will embark on a week of Linux talk, hiking and beer drinking. Last year, the event took place in England's Lake District, and the year before, the first-ever Linux Beer Hike took place in the Northern Bavarian town of Tüchersfeld, Germany, attracting about 40 people.
"It seems as if every year the event has its own soul," said another part-time organizer, Henrik Levkowetz of Stockholm, Sweden. "Last year was a bit more Linux than the year before, but I won't try to prophesize what will happen this year."
"I don't think that any one of them -- Linux, hiking or beer -- will take over and dominate. If it was beer, that would make it both an unhealthy and an expensive week."
Lest anyone discount the ability of the open-source crowd to hold its own in the beer-drinking department, keep in mind these are (mostly) Europeans, and they (mostly) know how to put it away.
"Last year, they had to do an extra round of brewing of the Bluebird Bitter at a pub in Coniston," Levkowetz said. "We were told this was the most of that beer they had ever sold in a week. The last time they sold such an enormous amount was when the British Midland Auto Workers had been there. This means that the Linux geeks drink more beer than the auto workers."
The beauty of having a week together is there is plenty of time for beer, burning off the beer trudging over hilly terrain toward some old chateau -- and listening to a variety of Linux talk in lectures and workshops.
Levkowetz will present a workshop, for example, on "Mobile IP" -- which he describes as "a protocol and infrastructure, which provides a way for IP hosts to stay connected, using the same IP address, while moving across different subnets and networks, worldwide."
Willem Konynenberg, another organizer, will deliver a talk offering "A Historical Perspective," which will attempt to put "our little world of Linux in a wider historical perspective," he wrote on the event website.
"If you know where we came from, you'll have a better idea of where we are heading. We'll be looking at the big picture here, not the evolution of Intel microprocessors."
Revelers will try to take in the big picture locally, too, scheduling side trips to Trappist monasteries, including the famous one in Chimay, where monks have been producing distinctive beer and cheese since the 1850s.
But most of all, as the event has grown, it has become more than ever a way to mix different cultural perspectives. This year, more than 150 people from 15 different countries are expected, maybe more, depending on how many last-minute sign-ups there are.
"It's nice to meet people from different cultures or different environments where they maybe use Linux or open-source software in different ways," said Levkowetz, the Swede. "You always get an opportunity to meet people and get different viewpoints on the whole thing."
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