2026-02-13 –, VYAS - G - Room#VY015
Across the Linux ecosystem, long-term sustaining engineering has become essential. Vendors like Red Hat, openSUSE, Ubuntu, Debian, and Oracle are increasingly investing in extended lifecycle maintenance so enterprises, governments, and regulated institutions can continue running older Linux releases without compromising on security or compliance.
In this talk, I’ll share how sustaining engineering teams support legacy distributions that range from decade-old releases to the latest major versions. I’ll walk through the real engineering work involved in identifying, triaging, and backporting modern CVE and bug fixes into aging codebases—while preserving ABI/API stability for mission-critical workloads. In urgent situations, teams have even delivered high-severity fixes within five business days, ensuring customers stay protected from breaches, downtime, and certification risks.
Drawing from my experience working on printing, networking, security, and cryptography components, I’ll highlight the unique challenges of patching outdated kernels, libraries, and dependency chains that look nothing like upstream. I’ll also show how this work helps governments and large institutions retain regulatory approvals and safeguard secure infrastructure, even when upgrading is operationally difficult or impossible.
I am a dedicated Software Engineer, specializing in Linux packages, with a deep passion for security, open source, and Python. I break down complex security challenges into clear, accessible insights. I have presented a well-received talk at DevConf India, where I helped engineers and students understand Denial of Service attacks with live demos. I have also volunteered to organize tech conferences and hackathons, nurturing a collaborative community that drives innovation and continuous learning.