Planet openSUSE

openSUSE News: openSUSE Weekly News, Issue 134 is out!

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:04:25 +0000

We are pleased to announce our brand new openSUSE Weekly News 134!

In the issue 134 you can read

Content:

Editors Note

We are pleased to announce our 134 issue of the openSUSE Weekly News.

Welcome to this issue. This week was very interesting- The openSUSE Project has become a new Community Manager. The old Manager Joe ‘zonker’ Brockmeier has gone a few month ago. Now we have our new Community Manager. His Name is Jos Poortvliet from the Netherlands. If you would like to have a first impression, just visit his Blog. We are looking forward to work with Jos from 1 August on. The Editors Team wishes Jos many joy with us

We hope that you will enjoy reading.

Announcements

The openSUSE Project welcomes Jos Poortvliet as new Community Manager

“We’re proud to announce today that Jos Poortvliet will join the openSUSE project and Novell as openSUSE Community Manager starting on August 1. With Jos we’ve found a leader with excellent community building experience combined with a very welcoming nature, many fresh, promising ideas and a strong drive to grow the openSUSE Project. Jos holds a degree in Organisational Psychology from the University of Utrecht and has gained valuable experience in several professional roles ranging from Project Manager at KPN to Service Level Manager at Royal Bank of Scotland. Last but not least, Jos is a leading member of the KDE Marketing Team and has helped Akademy and the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit attract a vibrant and collaborative audience. (…)”

SUSE Studio: SUSE Gallery launch

“We’re proud to announce that SUSE Gallery is now available to all Studio users! That’s right, it’s finally out of beta and you no longer need to opt-in to access it. SUSE Gallery now has its own domain at susegallery.com. This will be the destination site for users who want to find an existing appliance that they can download and use immediately. It is tightly integrated with SUSE Studio, so you can still easily customize the appliances if you want to do so.”

Jos Poortvliet: New job…

“openSUSE just announced that I will be joining them. Yay, I’ll be part of the masses of Free Software contributors who are doing what they love to do, full time, supported by a paycheck! The job Novell has hired me as the new openSUSE community manager. I’ve got some big shoes to fill, Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier did a great job. I’ve been diving into openSUSE (way too much to grasp in a short time…) and I’ve read several comments from people who miss him. I’m no Zonker – different people, different ideas & habits. However, I can tell you I greatly look forward to the work and I’ll put all my love and energy into it ”

Status Updates

Distribution

Maintainance Updates

NetworkManager-NovellVPN: Fix for NovellVPN Connection Requires to Accept Advanced Options to Work

yast2-gtk: updated to version 2.21.68 fixing bnc#609778 and bnc#620513

udisks: Fixed ejecting usb-drives or disks as normal user

postfix: Chrooted mysql.sock lost on mysql restart. Fixed by this update.

lvm2: Fixed lvcreate –snapshot .. results in scary messages to console and /var/log/messages

gnome-panel: Fix newly created panels to be visible

release-notes-openSUSE: Various additions and translations

unscd: Fixed unscd does not start issue

wine: Update from 1.2-rc6 to 1.2 release

k3b: Update to 2.0 final

gtkglext: This update fixes the gtkglext library to not reference non-existing symbols

digiKam, gwenview: Failed to rotate image. Fixed by this update.

bundle-lang-common-gnome: Updated to match current update state

build: Version upgrade to build-2010.02.11

Bugzilla

The numbers for all openSUSE project products are this week:

All Open Reports: 5313 (+129)
Blocker: 3 (+0)
Critical: 331 (+13)
Major: 1014 (+27)
Normal: 2953 (+63)
Minor: 446 (+18)
Enhancements: 566 (+8)

Important links:

Team Reports

Boosters Team

Michal Hrušecký: openSUSE Paste

“It’s been some time since I started working on openSUSE pastebin clone with Bento theme. I had some other duties so it took some time to find some final resting place for that. Some of you asked me for a better URL. I finally found it and since today SUSE Paste is running again on new address and it is ready to serve you face-wink.png I also wrote a simple script to make it easier to use it. So you can start using it, promoting openSUSE and if you encounter any problems, don’t hesitate to report them. If you are interested in details behind this paste, continue reading, otherwise start pasting face-wink.png ”

Build Service Team

Build Team Meeting

Meeting Minutes

Build Service Statistics

Projects: 14047 (+147)
Packages: 100500 (+332)
Repositories: 22181 (+406) by 24059 (+119) confirmed users.

openFATE Team

#310232: kde addressbook integration in openoffice

“As openoffice is the choice for most users and the only option with regards to more advanced features, core functionality needed in an office environment is still missing. Like addressbooks being available across applications to be used in e.g. mail merge.”

#310234: Show total update size in Yast2 package manager

“It would be very useful if the installation summary feature of Yast2 package manager would include the overall size of all the files that you are about to download when you do an update. I’ve been missing a feature like this recently, and the provided information would be useful.”

#310236: KDE-metapackages for avoid mixing packages versions from different repos

“KDE have many repos and often user get mismatch of packages versions and various strange bugs due this. create KDE-metapackages for avoid mixing packages versions from different repos”

#310238: Restore KDE3 as part of OpenSUSE

“I suggest to restore KDE3 as part of OpenSUSE distribution and include the possibility to install KDE3 into installer. (…)”

#310244: Zypper – Change logs and File lists for all packages

“I would like to see Change logs and File lists for all packages not just the ones installed.This would make it easier to see changes between package updates. I frequently see updated packages with Zypper and have no idea what has been changed until I have installed them.”

#310256: Include bluedevil in 11.4

“Bluetooth has always been a weak link in KDE. Bluedevil has been announced, and should be tested, and included in 11.4. We can have native KDE bluetooth that works similar to gnome bluetooth, or blueman. My limited testing includes 2 phones, keyboard/mouse, and headphones. None of these devices would connect with kdebluetooth. All of them setup and connected flawlessly with bluedevil KCM module. The only problem so far is not being able to see files in dolphin when trying to browse phone files. http://www.afiestas.org/bluedevil-the-new-kde-bluetooth-stack-is-here/ ”

Statistics

Feature statistics for openSUSE 11.4:

Total: 60 (+12)
Unconfirmed: 52 (+12)
New: 5 (+0)
Evaluation: 3 (+0)
Candidate: 0 (+0)
Done: 0 (+0)
Rejected: 0 (+0)
Duplicate: 0 (+0)

More information on openFATE

Translation Team

Localization

Daily updated translation statistics are available on the openSUSE Localization Portal.
Trunk Top-List – Localization Guide

In the Community

Pavol Rusnak: openSUSE 11.3

“This article is about openSUSE 11.3 & KDE SC 4.5 Launch Party in Prague, Czech Republic and is probably not very interesting for people living abroad. ” This Post is written in Czech.

Welcome new Members (Corner for new acknowledged Members)

“We are pleased to announce the new openSUSE Members:

Jim Henderson (hendersj)j Active in the Forums and in the project Lists.
Gertjan Lettink (Knurpht) He works as Moderator in the Forums.
Guido Berhörster (gberh) He works as Tester in Bugzilla, and works in the openSUSE BuildService.”

Events & Meetings

Past:

You can find more informations on other events at:

openSUSE News/Events – Local events

openSUSE for your ears

The openSUSE Weekly News are available as Livestream or Podcast in the German Language. You can hear it or download it on http://blog.radiotux.de/podcast.

openSUSE in $COUNTRY

“Details”

Communication

The mail lists have: 37679 (+54) subscribers.
The openSUSE Forums] have:

48464 (+341) registered users
The most users ever online was 30559, 08-Jan-2010 at 13:06.

Contributors

4861 (+24) of 12372 (+48) registered contributors in the User Directory have signed the Guiding Principles. The board has acknowledged 431 (+2) members.

New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE

OBS openSUSE:11.2:Update/seamonkey r4 commited

“Updated to seamonkey-2.0.6″

OBS openSUSE:11.2:Update/MozillaThunderbird r5 commited

“Updated to thunderbird-3.0.6″

Sascha Manns: New Package for openSUSE: Skrooge 0.7.2

“I’m pleased to announce the new Package 0.7.2 of the financial Software skrooge.”

OBS openSUSE:11.2:Update/MozillaFirefox r8 commited

“Updated to firefox-3.5.11″

OBS openSUSE:11.2:Update/mozilla-xulrunner191 r8 commited

“Updated to xulrunner-source-1.9.1.11″

You can find other interesting Packages at:
Packman – OBS

Security Updates

To view the security announcements in full, or to receive them as soon as they’re released, refer to the openSUSE Security Announce mailing list.

SUSE Security Announcement: Mozilla Firefox (SUSE-SA:2010:032)

Package: MozillaFirefox,MozillaThunderbird,seamonkey
Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2010:032
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:00:00 +0000
Affected Products: openSUSE 11.1
openSUSE 11.2
openSUSE 11.3
SLE SDK 10 SP3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 SP3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Software Development Kit 11
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
SUSE Linux Enterprise Software Development Kit 11 SP1
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 SP1
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1

openSUSE 11.0 has reached End of Life

“With the release of a rpm security fix on Friday 23rd of July we have released the last update for openSUSE 11.0. It is now officially discontinued and out of support. openSUSE 11.0 was released on June 17 2008, making it 2 years and 1 month of security and bugfix support. (…)”

bogofilter: heap corruption overrun in bogofilter/bogolexer

Kernel Review

h-online/Thorsten Leemhuis: Kernel Log: Coming in 2.6.35 (Part 4) – Architecture and infrastructure

“Measures to optimise the power management code and fully support the Turbo Core function of recent AMD six-core processors increase the data throughput and processing speed of Linux 2.6.35. Further kernel additions include tracing interfaces for KVM, another kernel configuration program, and functions for de-fragmenting the working memory.”

h-online/Thorsten Leemhuis: Kernel Log: Coming in 2.6.35 (Part 5) – Drivers

“Expanded support for USB 3.0, a new subsystem for the use of infra-red remote controls, and an EDAC driver for Nehalem processors are just a few of the many new or improved drivers. In the release email on the sixth beta version of Linux 2.6.35, Torvalds indicated that it could be the last beta for this kernel version, so it’s probable that the final of 2.6.35 will be released in the next few days. ”

Tips and Tricks

For Desktop Users

HowtoForge/Falko Timme: The Perfect Desktop – OpenSUSE 11.3 (GNOME)

“This tutorial shows how you can set up an OpenSUSE 11.3 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.”

For Commandline/Script Newbies

The Geek Stuff/Sasikala: 3 Unix Shell Scripts – User Activity, View Processes, Display Memory

“You might find the following three Linux / Unix shell scripts helpful. * Display processes based on either %CPU or Memory Usage. * Display which user is utilizing the CPU the most. * Display system’s memory information – total, used and free.”

For Developers and Programmers

K.S. Bhaskar: Demonstrating multi-processing in Bash 4

“I have an on-going project, to code the Collatz sequence in as many languages as I can. So far, I’ve implemented it in C (integer and floating-point), assembly (x86, x86_64, and SPARC32), Java, BASIC in Open Office.org, Tcl, Lisp, Ada, Python, and Bash. Naturally, the fastest method is assembly, which can by-pass all the cautions of the other, translated languages. (…)”

For System Administrators

Coly Li: Don’t waste your SSD blocks

“These days, one of my colleagues asked me a question, he formatted an ~80G Ext3 file system on SSD. After mounted the file system, the df output was, …”

Planet SUSE

Andrea Florio: openSUSE-LXDE 11.3 RC1 live-cd available for download

“After announcing few days ago the first beta of the openSUSE-LXDE live CD based on openSUSE 11.3, the openSUSE-LXDE team is proud to announce the openSUSE-LXDE 11.3 RC1 Live-CD. The isos finally fit into a CD, the sizes are 666MB for the 32bit version and 680MB for the 64bit version.”

Andrew Wafaa: News from the Goblin

“I thought I should let anyone that cares know what the latest status of my work is. What work? Getting MeeGo on openSUSE, of course! I’m calling it Smeegol – SUSE MeeGo Linux, and this just happens to be the Teal Goblin – Teal is the code name for 11.3 Well I’m not quite there yet (unfortunately) I have one major issue which is the Network Panel not displaying properly, and as such is difficult to use. I also have a smaller issue with the web panel, but that is more of an annoyance rather than a blocker.”

Mike McCallister: openSUSE Strategy Discussion Takes Shape

“A few weeks ago, I noted that the openSUSE Community Project was working on a new strategy. The purpose of the discussion is essentially to answer the question “Why openSUSE?” I have to admit that, while I have a knee-jerk positive response to any democratic process that ends in a vote on something important, I wasn’t completely certain what the point of this exercise was. Today I’ve got a clue: (…)”

R. Tyler Ballance: New Community Manager Jos Poortvliet joins openSUSE

“The openSUSE project announced today that Jos Poortvliet is joining the project as the new Community Manager! Jos’ has recently worked on the KDE Marketing team and has a degree in Organisational Psychology from the University of Utrecht. While we’re all really happy to have Jos on board, I’m a little concerned that we might all be part of a thesis paper in the future; either way, welcome aboard Jos! Jos has some pretty big clown-sized shoes to fill left by former Community Manager and all around nice guy, Joe “Zonker” Brockenmeier who acted as Community Manager for the project from early 2008 until February of this year.”

R. Tyler Ballance: Work starting on openSUSE 11.4

“There has been some speculation on the forums about what the next release of openSUSE is going to be called, it seems pretty definite now that it will be 11.4 (instead of a jump to 12). openSUSE Program Manager, Andreas Jaeger announced on the “opensuse-factory” mailing list that the bug tracker has been updated to contain a project for the next release of openSUSE, scheduled to ship in March 2011.”

openSUSE Forums

11.2 > 11.3 Upgrade and System Boot Hangs

“Whilst a in place upgrade is possible, it doesn’t seem to be working out well for many. We sorted this one out eventually.”

Boot Problems

“Bit of an epic thread this, but determination paid off and all was well in the end.”

About Trash

“OK – This all seemed easy enough. But then the OP managed to ‘Nuke’ his system somehow. Interesting one to follow.”

Auto DVD Play Question

“Our user want to have DVD’s auto play or at least offer the option to to play in a media player.”

On the Web

Announcements

Win $10,000 building your software appliances using SUSE Studio

“Fame and a modest fortune await! We’re looking for inventive minds to build the most innovative software appliances. Publish your unique appliance to the new SUSE® Gallery™ and enter into a contest to win $10,000!”

Call for participation

LinuxCon 2010 – Just for Fun – Poll

“As we prepare for LinuxCon (just two short weeks away), we’re inviting you to share what you think are the most important milestones to have taken place since last year’s LinuxCon (Sept 2009) as well as what are some of your favorite projects. By taking this brief poll (just 6 questions), you can have your voice heard and help promote your favorite features, tools and projects or companies. Please vote as many times as you like and share the poll with your followers and fans. ”

Reports

Linux Journal/Susan Linton: OpenOffice.org 3.3 Definitely On Its Way

“OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 was released on June 4 and a new master workspace was branched off for the upcoming 3.3 on June 5. The code in this branch will be stabilized and later become the product release that will find its way onto your desktops.”

Ars Technica/Matthew Lasar: Court: breaking DRM for a “fair use” is legal

“A federal appeals court has just ruled that breaking through a digital security system to access software doesn’t trigger the “anti-circumvention” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Any other interpretation of the DMCA, declared the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, would permit infringement liability for tapping into a work simply to “view it or to use it within the purview of ‘fair use’ permitted under the Copyright Act.” (…)”

Ars Technica/Ryan Paul: GNOME 3 not ready yet, release pushed back to 2011

“The developers behind the GNOME project have gathered in the Netherlands this week for the annual GUADEC conference. During a meeting that took place at the event, the GNOME release team made the difficult decision to delay the launch of GNOME 3, the next major version of the popular open source desktop environment. The new version has been deemed unready for mass consumption and will need another round of refinements before it can achieve the level of maturity and robustness that is expected by the software’s users. Although the news will likely disappoint some enthusiasts, it is consistent with the GNOME development community’s conservative approach to release management and strong emphasis on predictability.”

LinuxDevices.com/Jonathan Angel: Compact POS devices run SUSE Linux

“NCR announced two compact POS (point of sale) devices that run SUSE Linux for Point of Service, as well as a number of Windows operating systems. The RealPOS 40 and RealPOS 60 use Intel Atom and Celeron processors, respectively, offer enhanced energy efficiency, and provide both four powered serial ports and up to eight powered USB ports, the company says.”

Reviews and Essays

Tuxradar: Reviewed: OpenSUSE 11.3

“The recent series of OpenSUSE releases seems to have been oscillating between trying to deliver the finest up-to-date apps and providing the easiest, most intuitive experience for users. History tells us that it’s hard to do both simultaneously, but this release might just have managed to pull it off. We reckon it’s worth 9 out of 10 – but why? SUSE has always been a KDE kind of distro, but although they’ve stuck with it for the 4.x series, there’s certainly a lot more Gnome love in the OpenSUSE camp these days. That doesn’t extend to leaving it alone of course. The SUSE version of Gnome still uses a bottom panel and the ‘slab’ launcher, which makes it mimic KDE 4.x somewhat, but clearly at least an equal amount of effort has been made to make it not feel like a second-choice option. ”

Feedback / Communicate / Get Involved

Do you have comments on any of the things mentioned in this article? Then head right over to the comment section and let us know!
Or if you would like to be part of the openSUSE:Weekly news team then check out our team page and join!
Or Communicate with or get help from the wider openSUSE community — via IRC, forums, or mailing lists — see Communicate.

You can subscribe to the openSUSE Weekly News RSS feed at http://news.opensuse.org/category/weekly-news/feed/

Credits

saigkill ^{Talk – Contributions} Sascha Manns (Editor in Chief)
STS301 ^{Talk – Contributions} Sebastian Schöbinger (Tips/Tricks)
HeliosReds ^{Talk – Contributions} Satoru Matsumoto (Editorial Office)
Caf4926 ^{Talk – Contributions} Carl Fletcher (Main-Newsletter, Forums Sec.)
Okuro ^{Talk – Contributions} Thomas Hofstätter (Events & Meetings)
add translators

Translations

openSUSE Weekly News is translated into many languages.Issue #134 of the openSUSE Weekly News is available in:

English

Delayed / to be translated:

Pavel Machek: Electrical collar

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:11:28 +0000

Repairing electrical dog collar is a lot of fun, especially if you succeed... but it kind of trains you not to succeed. It also raises some ethical issues with testing.

Well, maybe... one of my coworkers asked if it is my new headlamp when he seen that. So perhaps human testing is a possibility.

Michal Hrusecky: openSUSE Paste

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:35:00 +0000

It's been some time since I started working on openSUSE pastebin clone with Bento theme. I had some other duties so it took some time to find some final resting place for that. Some of you asked me for a better URL. I finally found it and since today SUSE Paste is running again on new address and it is ready to serve you I also wrote a simple script to make it easier to use it. So you can start using it, promoting openSUSE and if you encounter any problems, don't hesitate to report them. If you are interested in details behind this paste, continue reading, otherwise start pasting

Joe Brockmeier: GNOME 3.0 Slips to 2011

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:27:12 +0000

During GUADEC 2010, the GNOME Release Team met and decided to hold the GNOME 3.0 release for the March 2011 release instead of September 2010. Even though it means an additional six months to GNOME 3.0 is officially released, it could be a good thing.

So, why is GNOME 3.0 slipping? That was the first question I had for GNOME’s Executive Director and GNOME developer Vincent Untz when they contacted me earlier this week. The simple answer is that the GNOME Release Team evaluated the components that make up GNOME 3.0 and decided that they’re not ready to go gold. GNOME 3.0 is more ambitious than the average GNOME release.

Read the rest on Linux.com… »

Jeffrey Stedfast: Re: Red Hat, 16%. Canonical, 1%.

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:11:40 +0000

While some people are busy complaining that Canonical doesn't contribute as much as others, I'd like for everyone to take a step back and ask themselves, "what would Gunny say?"

I'll tell you what he'd say. He'd say,

Hmm, that's interesting. Do you know what makes me sad? YOU DO! Maybe we should chug on over to mamby-pamby land where maybe we can find some self-confidence for you, you jack-wagon! Want a tissue?

After he finished ripping someone a new one, he'd point out that in that very same GNOME Census slide deck, I am ranked #8 in the top contributors list and I haven't contributed much of anything to any of the core GNOME components in about 5 years.

Yeah, that's right you cry babies, I put all y'all to shame.

On a more serious note, for better or worse, we all knew what we were getting into when we decided to take up the Free Software baton and start running with it. This is just how Free Software works. Don't like it? Cry me a river.

tl;dr

Update: It seems my post here has been misinterpreted. Allow me to try and rectify this. I'm not pissed off at Greg for voicing his opinion. We all do it. I'm just making a mockery of the whole situation because I was itching to trollcat and because I wanted to pat myself on the back for being #8 on the individual contributors list in terms of commits (as meaningless as that is). Also because I was up late last night and saw that Geico commercial with R. Lee Ermey which just cracks me up every time I see it.

Shayon Mukherjee: Rupee symbol in openSUSE Edu li-f-e