At the last Feminist Linux meetup before summer, we get hands on, down to the wire and will have a soldering workshop. Whether you’ve never soldered before or are a total pro – feel free to come and share a nice June evening together. You can have a look at our previous topics here: https://feminist-linux.diebin.at/2025/12/20/save-the-dates-meetup-cycle-2026/

About the workshop

Soldering means using a soldering iron to melt solder from a wire to make or repair things, often circuits. We will do an introduction but the main focus of the evening will be to let the participants (that’s you) try soldering projects for themselves. There will be some soldering kits which are beginner friendly and some more challenging ones.

We will provide some soldering irons, but if you do have one yourself, please bring it along.

Because of the costs for the materials we will have a donation box at the event this time. Depending on the kit, we suggest a 5€-15€ donation. If that’s too much, don’t worry. It is a free donation. If you can pay more, please do so to give others the opportunity to participate for less or free. (Pay as you can)

All parts needed are included in the kits. Come and make some fun things!

Note: Soldering produces a small amount of melting fumes so we will be ventilating the room. If you notice that you are reacting to the fumes, please let us know.

Time flies and it’s already the fifth iteration of the current Feminist Linux Meetup cycle! Find the announcement with all the dates and topics here: https://feminist-linux.diebin.at/2025/12/20/save-the-dates-meetup-cycle-2026/

About the talk

On May 6, we will take a look at the basics of cryptography. We will visually explore some concepts while looking at concrete examples. Learn what cryptography even is, what its goals are and why it is so essential for modern computing and communication. No special math knowledge is required to join!

Get ready to understand the famous Diffie-Hellman key exchange! One of the core building blocks of the Signal protocol. Crypto-coins? Not part of this talk, sorry bros! Quantum?? We will not dive into that, but you will learn why people care. Signatures? Yes!

After the talk, motivated people can join up to tackle some riddles from the fun CrypoHack website using Python (or some other language of your choice). Sounds interesting? Then bring your programming device or watch along with somebody else: https://cryptohack.org/

We want to warmly invite you to the fourth Feminist Linux Meetup of 2026. Check out the announcement for the whole cycle here https://feminist-linux.diebin.at/2025/12/20/save-the-dates-meetup-cycle-2026/

About the talk

This session will focus on the physical and sensory side of programming. Common ways of interacting with computers have been normalized, such as keyboards and using a mouse. We will discuss their historical emergence, how the established keyboard layout QWERTY has persisted in different physical shapes from typewriters to keyboards to mobile touchscreens. I will demo different keyboard layouts, Talon which is a hands-free input mechanism enabling you to control your computer with your voice. 

Schedule

• 17:30 : Arrival and open chatting
• 18:00 : General intro to the Feminist Linux Meetup and intro of participants
• 18:10 : Talk and open space for discussion afterwards

Location information

 at Vordere Zollamtstraße 7, in the room Flux1 on the 3rd floor. The room is in a building of the
University of Applied Arts next to Wien Mitte / The Mall, here on the map: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/176477793

(*) Invitation policy and social conduct

The meetup (and workshop) is open to all women*, non-binary*, inter*, and trans* people, who are interested to talk about Linux and related topics. In this case, non-binary does mean that you neither fully identify as „woman“ or „man“. It does not mean, that you only programme in fuzzy-logic and don’t use binary numbers. This would of course be fantasticly queer, but believe us, our computers also work with binary code most of the time.

With the * we mark certain words to point to the fact, that all these categories are socially constructed. That means, that they do not exist „in nature“, but that we humans interpret nature in this specific way. Therefore it is also legitimate, that people choose these categories for themselves in a way that best fits them. If that unsettles you or you want to know more about it, take a look at our article on invitation policy: https://feminist-linux.diebin.at/invitation-policy/

Beyond that, we want to create an atmosphere and environment that is encouraging everyone. To do so, we created a Code of Conduct, that describes what we all can do, that no one has to be uncomfortable: https://feminist-linux.diebin.at/code-of-conduct/

In order for everyone to feel really welcome and accepted though, we want to be actively aware and foster a social environment that we describe here: https://feminist-linux.diebin.at/social-framework/

The spring cycle of the Feminist Linux Meetup continues! Every first Wednesday of the month until summer. Check out the rest of the dates and topics too: Save the dates – meetup cycle 2026

On March 4, we will dive into LaTeX, a pretty fancy document preparation system that is widely used in scientific, math and technical writing. After a short history and exploration of use cases, we will learn the very basics to setup our first document and explore more of LaTeXs features. It will be a choose-your-own-adventure kind of workshop that may take you into different directions depending on your experience and interest.

In February we continue with the second event of our current meetup cycle – every first Wednesday of the month until summer. Check out the rest of the dates and topics too: https://feminist-linux.diebin.at/2025/12/20/save-the-dates-meetup-cycle-2026/

Coming up on on February 4, we will do some text-wrangling with Vim. So if you ever wondered why people actually like to use this very un-intuitive way of editing text-files, which is nevertheless the default on Linux server systems, this session might be for you.

We want to warmly invite you to the first feminist linux meetup of 2026. lorb will be giving a talk about FLOSS and Linux. This is the first of our 6 sessions in 2026, check out the announcement for the whole cycle here https://feminist-linux.diebin.at/2025/12/20/save-the-dates-meetup-cycle-2026/

About the talk

Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) and Linux are often celebrated as technical successes and as proof that collaborative, decentralized development can outperform proprietary models. This talk explores why FLOSS has been so successful and looks at the political and societal values and ideas that are at the foundation of this way to develop software. As part of this it also offers a feminist critique of the less welcoming aspects. We will see how the movement enforces its values, both the good and the bad and how the movement can evolve and overcome structural problems of the past.

Schedule

• 17:30 : Arrival and open chatting
• 18:00 : General intro to the Feminist Linux Meetup and intro of participants
• 18:10 : Talk and open space for discussion afterwards

Location information

 at Vordere Zollamtstraße 7, in the room Flux1 on the 3rd floor. The room is in a building of the
University of Applied Arts next to Wien Mitte / The Mall, here on the map: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/176477793

(*) Invitation policy and social conduct

The meetup (and workshop) is open to all women*, non-binary*, inter*, and trans* people, who are interested to talk about Linux and related topics. In this case, non-binary does mean that you neither fully identify as „woman“ or „man“. It does not mean, that you only programme in fuzzy-logic and don’t use binary numbers. This would of course be fantasticly queer, but believe us, our computers also work with binary code most of the time.

With the * we mark certain words to point to the fact, that all these categories are socially constructed. That means, that they do not exist „in nature“, but that we humans interpret nature in this specific way. Therefore it is also legitimate, that people choose these categories for themselves in a way that best fits them. If that unsettles you or you want to know more about it, take a look at our article on invitation policy: https://feminist-linux.diebin.at/invitation-policy/

Beyond that, we want to create an atmosphere and environment that is encouraging everyone. To do so, we created a Code of Conduct, that describes what we all can do, that no one has to be uncomfortable: https://feminist-linux.diebin.at/code-of-conduct/

In order for everyone to feel really welcome and accepted though, we want to be actively aware and foster a social environment that we describe here: https://feminist-linux.diebin.at/social-framework/

To smoothen out the organization work behind this meetup, there will be a few differences in how the meetup is run in 2026! Instead of agreeing on a date each month, we have decided to host the meetup every first Wednesday of the month at 6pm. This i

In the past, the meetup was primarily held in German as the meetup initially attracted a more German-speaking crowd. This does not hold true now for the regular members of the meetup, so we have decided to do most of the communication in English but in case you feel more comfortable asking questions in German, that will also be possible. We will announce the language of each session’s talk separately.

Our goal is to make the meetup accessible to as many people as possible and have concluded that universities tend to have the most wheelchair accessible facilities. The meetups will be hosted at the Angewandte art university in Vordere Zollamtstraße 7. Due to room availability, the exact room will vary per session, but all locations will be wheelchair accessible.

We realize that an (art) academy may not be the most inviting space if you have not navigated this type of environment before. Our meetup is not tied to the university or any set curriculum and there are no knowledge prerequisites. We believe that people who don’t program (yet) also have a say in how digital spaces and software should be developed and recognize that everyone has a technical background of some kind, even if it isn’t of the „straightforward“ or institutionally legible type. Please let us know if there is any way we can make you feel more comfortable in this space.

We have planned a six-month cycle for January to June of 2026. This is an outline of the planned schedule (that might still be subject to change).

• 7.1.2026 – Free Software and Linux
• 4.2.2026 – Text wrangling with Vim
• 4.3.2026 – LaTeX hangout
• 1.4.2026 – Alternative input sources for computing
• 6.5.2026 – Intro to Cryptography
• 3.6.2026 – Soldering Workshop

We will start off by thinking about the political and societal values that form the basis for Free/Libre and Open Source Software. The talk will also offer a feminist critique of the less welcoming aspects of the movement. We will have a session about text editing and manipulating: how can we get tedious, routine tasks done more quickly so we can make time for more fun? The session will focus on Vim, a text editor with various modes, which is almost a glitch in the history of software. We will also have a laid-back LaTeX meetup to explore what typesetting opportunities lie outside of the closed ecosystems of Microsoft Word and Adobe tools and their exorbitant licensing fees. Another session will focus on the sensory side of computing. Well-established ways of interfacing with computers, such as keyboards and trackpads, have effectively become naturalized. We will try to examine these as a historically contingent techniques and explore alternative input sources. We will also have a session on cryptography, the theoretical foundation supporting encrypted online communication, among other things. To bring things back into the physical realm, we will finish with an introduction to soldering workshop.

Our lives are mediated by software in exceedingly confounding ways. We hope this space can be a way to explore different, more emancipatory approaches to technology. We hope to see you at some of the sessions!

With the next international feminist action day coming up, we want to call for a broader, regular feminist IT meetup/networking/exchange/*. This is not one of our regular feminist linux meetups, we want to initiate something that is connecting all those different initiatives out there. So we are inviting all women* and non-binary* folks (details on invitation policy below) to join us on