After quite a few rebuilds and testing, the openSUSE team is happy to announce that RC1 looks brilliant and is now available for download. We consider this release to be feature complete, stable, and suitable for testing from any user. For more information on the release schedule, take a look at the Roadmap.

For more screenshots, head over to openSUSE.org/Screenshots/openSUSE_10.3

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AMD has recently released register specifications for the ATI Radeon R5xx and R6xx graphic devices. Engineers from Novell have now released a first alpha quality Open Source driver which currently supports initial mode settings. Next steps are adding support for more hardware, RandR 1.2 support, video overlay support and 2D acceleration.

The developers are now seeking for help to extend support for all graphics cards and motherboards out there. You can get the alpha driver from the multi-distribution packages (Fedora, Mandriva, SUSE Linux Enterprise, and of course openSUSE) in the openSUSE Build Service at:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/Drivers:/Video:/radeonhd/

If you like to check out the latest source code, clone it via git with:

git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/driver/xf86-video-radeonhd

A mailing list has been created at radeonhd@opensuse.org (subscribe). The developers are also discussing the development on the IRC channel: #radeonhd on irc.freenode.net.

Bugs can be filed at http:/bugs.freedesktop.org under the X.Org product, component radeonhd.

Thanks to Egbert Eich, Luc Verhaegen and Matthias Hopf for their great work!

I’m looking forward to seeing the driver in the openSUSE 11.0 release next year.

Andreas

The JPackage project aims to provide rpm packages with lots of Java programs and libraries. The main focus is on free and open source software. Currently there are about 450 packages maintained. Examples of packaged software are: ant, jakarta, jboss, jeronimo, excalibur and plexus.

Due to differences between Linux distributions most of the packages from JPackage do not build currently on openSUSE. We would like to change this state. We’ve already started with adjusting of packages to fit our distribution and moved now further packages into the Build Service. Please, visit the Java:jpackage-1.7 project in the openSUSE Build Service to get the feel.

If you like Java and want to help us we would like to welcome you in our team. Please, get involved and help us to get JPackage fully into openSUSE. If you prefer other distributions like Fedora or Mandriva we would like to hear from you as well as BuildService is also perfectly suitable for you.

Ales, anosek@novell.com

KIWI-LTSP team is very happy to announce the new project on Novell Forge. The project aims to  combine the Linux Terminal Server and openSUSE KIWI imaging technologies.

LTSP offers immense benefit of being able to use obsolete/lower configuration PCs as a diskless thin clients. The thin clients can be put to any use just like normal desktops without even installing any operating system on them, for example, browse the Web, send e-mail, create documents, and run other desktop applications.

Many schools and corporates are now realizing the huge cost (TCO) advantage of using thin client computing. Thin client computing is the only way for many of the third world countries that cannot afford to purchase software licenses and new hardwares to run today’s softwares.

The openSUSE KIWI Image System provides a complete operating system image solution for Linux supported hardware platforms as well as for virtualisation systems like Xen, Qemu or VMware. KIWI features distribution independent design, support for virtual systems, network deployed images, live CDs, thick clients and now with KIWI-LTSP diskless clients too.

KIWI-LTSP utilizes this ease of deployment and management provided by KIWI to bring our awesome distribution openSUSE 10.3 to everyone that wishes to use thin client computing.

The project page is located here:
http://developer.novell.com/wiki/index.php/KIWI-LTSP

The step-by-step instructions to get you started are here:
http://en.opensuse.org/LTSP

Have a lot of fun!

The technical manager of the JackLab project, Oliver Bengs, released the final 1.0 version of the JackLab Audio Distribution (JAD) today after a development period of over eight months. JAD 1.0 is based upon openSUSE 10.2 with the addition of a real-time Kernel for fast audio processing with the professional audio server JACK. JackLab 1.0 is the most comprehensive selection of open source audio and multimedia software to date. The Enlightenment D17 window manager (with ‘KDE-lite’ tweaks) is used by default, with the option of using the full KDE 3.5.7 instead.

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Stephan Kulow has announced Live-CD builds (GNOME, KDE ISOs) based on the openSUSE 10.3 Beta3plus packages. tuxmachines.org published their report on and screenshots of openSUSE 10.3 Beta 3. The openSUSE-Community site got a facelift and offers 1-click-install definitions for 10.3 packages. KDE 4.0 Beta 2 has been released and as usual unsupported packages are available as well as a new “KDE Four Live” CD which was created with Kiwi.

Meeting page

openSUSE 10.3 will see the first small parts of KDE 4 creeping into the distribution. KDE 3 will still be the default KDE session for openSUSE 10.3, but KDE 4 will be making its way in steadily. The online repository will contain a current KDE 4 development snapshot, the DVD will have a fully functional and working KDE 4 session, and even on the KDE Installation CD you will have some KDE 4 games, KRDC and KRFB.

Today we will see what exactly is new in openSUSE 10.3’s KDE 4 applications and we’ll also be talking to Dirk Müller, a long-time openSUSE and KDE core developer.

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Here are Edith Parzefall’s answers to the ‘People of openSUSE’ questions. Have a lot of fun…

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Weekly status reports from the different areas of the openSUSE project are now posted to the mailing lists and get linked on the IRC meeting wiki pages (current) - the bi-weekly meeting has been renamed from status meeting to project meeting as a consequence. Klaas Freitag has been appointed as architect of the SUSE department which develops the openSUSE Build Service, he introduced himself with this post. This preloading announcement of SLED and openSUSE on machines in Europe may make a computer of Shuttle worth to buy. Microsoft will deliver the specifications and codecs to allow to implement and run an implementation of Silverlight for Linux called Moonlight.