Sam Varghese
Monday, 18 January 2010 22:44
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
At 17, Elizabeth Garbee is quite a veteran of the various Linux conferences, having spoken at the Australian conference thrice, beginning in 2005 in Canberra.
She's also been to Brazil and Japan, presenting papers with all the seriousness of a much older person, yet bringing to bear the perspective of a teenager.
Her talk at yesterday's Libre Graphics miniconference, part of the
11th Australian national Linux conference , was titled "How to use FOSS tools to pay for college."
In the end, the title didn't exactly match the content - but that wasn't the point of her talk. The whole focus was the fact that the skills she has acquired by being part of the FOSS community for a number of years will stand her in very good stead at college.
Elizabeth has a famous dad -
Bdale, a senior Debian developer and the head of HP's open source technologies division. But while he has played a role in guiding her along the FOSS path, as we all know, there's only so far you can push a teenager.
She was given her first computer, running Windows, at the age of two. Seven years later she did her first Debian install, with Bdale having to help out only in the partitioning process.
Not your average child, Elizabeth has been studying classical music for many years. On the computing side, her interest lies in graphics manipulation and digital art.
She is set to enter college in the US later this year.
