TVLinux was a live, community-produced television talk show devoted to the Linux operating system and open-source software. It was co-hosted by Shaun Savage and Jesse Black, produced by Dark Wing Productions (founded by Dennis Gleason, who occasionally filled in as host), and recorded before a live studio audience at TVCTV — Tualatin Valley Community Television — in Beaverton, Oregon. The show ran from 2002 to 2008.
Each episode mixed plain-language explanation, live demonstrations, viewer questions, and interviews with people from the Linux and free-software community — covering distributions like Red Hat and Ubuntu and the software people actually used day to day.
As its organizer described it at the time, TVLinux was "a local cable access TV program filmed twice a month and shown 4 times a week in Portland and surrounding communities" — a show that "talks about open source, Linux and freedom."
A footnote in Linux history
In 2005 the Linux Mark Institute — the body that manages the "Linux" trademark on behalf of Linus Torvalds — began asking projects and companies that used "Linux" in their names to hold a paid sublicense. Whether tiny, non-commercial projects should have to pay was argued publicly, including on Slashdot.
TVLinux became one of the small-guy examples in that debate. On the August 19, 2005 Slashdot story "Australian Linux Trademark Holds Water," the show spoke up:
"IBM and Novell can afford $5000, a small linux project of just a few people $200 is a major burden. It costs about $100 per TVLinux show (tapes, food, equipment), all paid by one person. TVLinux just wants to inform the TV public about open source and Linux." — posted by the TVLinux account on Slashdot, August 19, 2005
The Linux Mark Institute later changed course, replacing the recurring fee with a free, perpetual worldwide sublicense.
Calling the kernel
In January 2007, ahead of the program's 50th episode, Shaun Savage posted an open invitation to the Linux kernel mailing list, asking Portland-area kernel developers to join a roundtable for the milestone taping at TVCTV in Beaverton. (the message, LKML, January 12, 2007)