Today’s People of openSUSE features a female YaST developer and the maintainer of ncurses user interface library - Katarina Machalkova!

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With the new year beginning we kick start major development into the next version of openSUSE: openSUSE 11.0 (roadmap). A very early alpha version, Alpha 1, is now available for download and testing.

More screenshots are available at The Coding Studio

Despite many other products being developed in parallel to Factory, we have seen a heavy stream of development on it, so it is really worth a try if you have time for testing. Note, however, that it is not suitable for production systems.

Changes since openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 0

We have seen 1026 package check-ins since Alpha0 and countless bugs fixed. The main changes against Alpha0 are:

• Sat Solver integration
  • Michael Schröder’s “sat solver” library is now the default package solver for libzypp, so make sure you doublecheck the selected packages - there might be suprises ahead. Please note that we need test cases for things that look funny to you (wiki link)
• Heavy changes to the appearance of the Qt installation (ported to qt4)
  • Note that it’s still in draft state and your feedback is welcome
• KDE 4.0.0
• perl 5.10
• glibc 2.7
• NetworkManager 0.7
• CUPS 1.3.5
• Pulseaudio

Most Annoying Bugs

Due to the huge amount of changes, there are also several noticeable bugs:

• The new solver does not yet have a “ignore this requirement” choice, i.e. it’s not possible to create a broken system. We’re still discussing if this is a bug or a feature
• the CDs lack a huge amount of software. Many packages had to be taken out to make way for others. The CDs should still have a a completely working desktop, however.
• the Qt port and its theme are early releases and create noticeably more flickering and drawing glitches, e.g. the progress bar is only visible on some installations
• jpackage packages are broken and one package will complain during installation - just ignore
• the installation crashes at the end when creating the x11 proposal: in this case, your desktop will still have a working X config, it just might not be the perfect one. You may need to call sax2 after it happens
• PPC cannot be installed as the bootloader config can’t be written out. However, you can get a working PPC system when updating from alpha0

Media and Download

Please refer to software.openSUSE.org/developer for direct links to all the available media.

Have a lot of fun!

http://en.opensuse.org/Meetings/GNOME_Meeting_2008-01-17

The fifth issue of openSUSE Weekly News is now out!

In this week’s issue:

• KDE 4.0 Released with openSUSE Packages and openSUSE-based live CD
• openSUSE Shop Now Live
• Lenovo delivers preloaded SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10
• Temporary Download Failure (now fixed)
• In Tips and Tricks: Webpin: Package Search from the Web or from your Shell
• …and much more!

The KDE Community has announced the immediate availability of KDE 4.0.0. This significant release marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the beginning of the KDE 4 era. KDE developers, including our openSUSE KDE Team, have been working on getting toward KDE 4.0 for over 2 years.

The Start of Something Amazing: A Revolutionary New Desktop

The KDE 4 Libraries have seen major improvements in almost all areas. The Phonon multimedia framework provides platform independent multimedia support to all KDE applications, the Solid hardware integration framework makes interacting with (removable) devices easier and provides tools for better powermanagement.

The KDE 4 Desktop has gained some major new capabilities. The Plasma desktop shell offers a new desktop interface, including panel, menu and widgets on the desktop as well as a dashboard function. KWin, the KDE Window manager now supports advanced graphical effects to ease interaction with your windows.

Lots of KDE Applications have seen improvements as well. Visual updates through using vector-based artwork, changes in the underlying libraries, user interface enhancements, new features, even new applications — you name it, KDE 4.0 has it. Okular, the new document viewer and Dolphin, the new filemanager are only two applications that leverage KDE 4.0’s new technologies.

The Oxygen Artwork team provides a breath of fresh air on the desktop. Nearly all user-visible parts of the KDE desktop and applications have been given a facelift. Beauty and consistency are two of the basic concepts behind Oxygen.

See the rest of the visual guide for more information and images.

KDE 4.0 Packages, openSUSE-based KDE 4.0 Live CD

Regular KDE 4 Packages and an openSUSE-based KDE Four Live CD have been available throughout the whole cycle, and final versions of them are also available now. On openSUSE 10.3 you can use 1-click-install to get the KDE 4.0 desktop environment:

Or you can choose to install a more basic KDE 4 desktop. Developers can also optionally install the KDE 4 build dependencies: all the packages you need to have installed for compiling KDE 4.0 from source (experts only).

openSUSE Education founder James Tremblay was caught up by ‘People of openSUSE’ to an interesting interview.

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Meeting page

Meeting page

We proudly announce shop.openSUSE.org. This is the place to find official openSUSE gear: T-shirts, mugs, caps, bags and more are available.

As many times requested by the community the shop will fulfill the need to offer openSUSE branded gear to a large audience at a reasonable price. The shop itself is driven by an external shop provider who offers us a broad variety of different products to sell. We are bound to his selection. If you wanna see more or other products out there or just want to give us feedback please contact us at shop@opensuse.org

Have a lot of fun!

http://en.opensuse.org/Meetings/GNOME_Meeting_2008-01-10