Michael Opdenacker

Picture of Michael Opdenacker

Michael has been working on embedded Linux since 2004.

He started his career by working on Electronic Design Automation for STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments. He then moved to embedded software in 2004 by creating Bootlin (Free Electrons at that time), which contributed to the increasing popularity of Linux in embedded systems, thanks to publicly available training materials and experience sharing through technical articles and conference presentations.

Michael founded Root Commit in 2024, to pursue new research on embedded software, and to explore more effective ways of training and sharing knowledge.

Michael lives in Orange, France.

Technical experience

Here are Michael’s main areas of expertise:

  • Embedded Linux system development, through multiple angles, mostly on the ARM and RISC-V architectures.
  • Linux kernel, board support and device driver development.
  • Embedded Linux build systems: OpenEmbedded / Yocto Project and Buildroot
  • Boot time and size reduction for embedded Linux
  • Git usage and contributing to Open Source projects.
  • Technical writing (WordPress, Sphinx, LaTeX)

Here are Michael’s main contributions to Open Source projects:

Training experience

Michael has taught more than 200 training sessions on all continents since 2004. He always did his best to optimize the learning experience and maximize the satisfaction of the participants to his sessions.

Here are some comments received when he was teaching courses for Bootlin:

I did not know Michael before the course, but if I had known it it would have been a reason to choose the course 🙂

Michael was very professional and always ready to help 🙂

Michael is a perfect balance between a deep expert and a communicator/teacher.

Michael was an excellent teacher. He is very knowledgeable, easy-going and makes the time fly. Despite being in-depth topics, and complex in nature he has such a deep understanding that he makes it easy to understand. He also has a lot of knowledge in the industry and
technologies which allows him to provide extra information and knowledge beyond to what is covered in the slides. He is also very open and welcoming of questions and very friendly. I really enjoyed having the course with him and feel it was a privilege to be able to learn from
someone with so much experience and talent.

Michael is an absolute professional and top chap! Thoroughly enjoyed learning from him. It is clear he loves what he does.

Michael went into great detail in the labs and explained things in a beginner friendly way.

Very enthusiastic, informative and always willing to answer questions.

Conferences and publications

Introduction to Embedded Linux

Embedded Linux Development

Yocto Project

Linux kernel

Optimizing Embedded Linux Boot Time

Reducing System Size

Keynotes

Promoting Free Software

Miscellaneous

Books

Latest blog posts
Upcoming training sessions

Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded
In-person – Feb. 25-28, Avignon, France
Online – Mar 18-20, 25-27

Embedded Linux
Online, Apr. 14-17, 22-25
In-person, May 5-9, Avignon, France