The conference was initially named Ottawa Linux Symposium and was held only in Ottawa, but was renamed after being held in other cities in Canada.
The conference featured 100+ paper presentations, tutorials, birds of a feather sessions and mini summits on a wide range of topics.
In 2014, OLS organizers put together an unsuccessful campaign on Indiegogo to raise funds in order to pay off debts from previous events.
[1] The Symposium hosted "mini-summits" on the day before the conference.
There were two mini-summits in 2009: Linux Power Management and Tracing.