Meeting page

Hi all Education fans!

The next openSUSE-Education meeting will take place at the official #opensuse-edu IRC channel on freenode  (irc://irc.freenode.net/opensuse-edu) on Tuesday

Tuesday 2008/09/30 17:00 (UTC/GMT)
(click on the time to convert UTC/GMT to your time zone)

This meeting is meant to discuss the latest developments in and around openSUSE-Education. Please add your topics to the meeting wiki page at:

http://en.opensuse.org/Education/Meetings/Education_Meeting_2008-09-30

Also, if you cannot attend the meeting, but have questions you want to see discussed, please add them to the meeting wiki page as well.

For general info about our IRC meetings read:

http://en.opensuse.org/Meetings/About
http://en.opensuse.org/Education/Meetings

For a general technical introduction to IRC (Internet Relay Chat) see http://www.irchelp.org/ ;(not affiliated with openSUSE) or enter “IRC help” into your preferred search engine.

The network we use is freenode – for more information on this, including how to find a server, visit http://freenode.net/ ;(not affiliated with openSUSE either).

Have a lot of fun …

Lars (on behalf of the openSUSE-Education Team)

The openSUSE-Education Add On for openSUSE 11.0 is ready! Big steps compared to the 10.3 release:

• Better LTSP integration: now Easy-LTSP helps you to configure your whole LTSP server with one graphical tool and the clients can run local applications like Firefox to save resources on the LTSP server.
• Many package updates and new applications (the repository contains >1300 packages now!) – please have a look at the current patterns on your local machine to see the big improvement.
• Direct integration into the community repositories – with “Education” being part of the “YaST2 – Software Repositories” module the online repository is just one click away.
• Separate online update repository: if you like, just enable the education update repository to get the latest updates of your education applications.
• Complete new structure for the development of the next openSUSE-Education releases. Please have a look at the mailing list to get a short overview.

You can either download the ISO image from here:

http://www.opensuse-education.org/download/ISOs/openSUSE-Education-1.0-for-11.0.iso

(md5sum: 8b9a756f775c052ac38d47fe7d46361e)

Or add the online repository as installation source:

http://www.opensuse-education.org/download/repo/1.0/11.0/ (Note: Please re-add it if you’ve added it before – just delete the current repository via YaST and re-add it.)

A delta-iso against RC1 (240MB) is also available.

    Issue #40 of openSUSE Weekly News is now out!
In this week’s issue:

• openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1 Now Available
• Serious e1000e Driver Issue in SLE 11 Beta 1 and openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1
• openSUSE Build Service Did It!
• Board Election Phase 1 Started
• openSUSE Homepage Redesigned

http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME/Meetings/Current

The openSUSE Factory distribution is our permanent moving target, this is the place where all Alpha and Beta versions are mastered from. We are currently in the process of adjusting some things due to the move from SUSE internal AutoBuild to openSUSE Build Service:

We are getting rid of all the historical names. Factory from SUSE internal AutoBuild is currently in the directories “SL-OSS-factory”, “SL-OSS-factory-debug” and “SL-Factory-non-oss” inside of the distribution directory. These names are inconsistent and have lost their meaning to some degree.

The Factory distribution from Build Service is currently in repositories directory as rpm-md tree. This means you can install packages from it, but you can’t make a new installation from it.

So we will remove all these directories and publish Factory directly to the new factory directory. The organization below this directory will be the same as below the official distribution directories. So we will have

• iso directory: containing the latetest mini iso for network installation.
• repo directory: containing the installation source trees:
  • oss directory: The main tree from openSUSE:Factory project, everything for a new installation is inside.
  • non-oss directory: Additional non-free packages from openSUSE:Factory:NonFree project inside.
  • debug directory: All debuginfo and debugsource packages are in this directory. These are usually only needed for debugging or bugreporting.
  • src directory: All source rpms from openSUSE:Factory project are in this directory. Please note that it makes usually more sense to check out the latest sources directly from the Build Service.
  • src-non-oss directory: All source rpms from openSUSE:Factory:NonFree project.

Another important change is that we have moved the PowerPC packages to their own server.

This new setup should make it easier to mirror subsets of the Factory distribution, without breaking any repository metadata. This means mirrors can just sync the most important stuff like the main repository and ignore the rest. We hope to get factory on more mirrors around the world with this setup.

We plan to implement this until next week.

We have an important announcement regarding openSUSE 11.1 beta 1 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 beta 1:

The Intel e1000e driver on openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Beta 1 might have a serious issue with the potential to damage the network card in a way that it cannot be used any longer.

Intel and Novell are currently working to analyze and solve the issue.

For the time being:

Please do NOT USE:

openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1
or
SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Beta 1

on systems with Intel e1000e hardware.

Any other hardware, including systems with Intel e1000 (without -e) network cards, is not affected by this issue.

We will keep you posted. Please watch news.opensuse.org and the opensuse-announce mailing list for more information.

Update: Check this page for a list of devices that use the e1000e driver. It may not be an exhaustive list. If you have an Intel PCI Express PRO/1000 gigabit Ethernet card, it uses the e1000e driver and you should avoid booting or using beta 1. Intel has instructions on how to identify your card.

The openSUSE 11.1 beta 1 release marks a significant change for openSUSE. For the first time in 11 years, a SUSE release was not built in the SUSE internal AutoBuild service — openSUSE 11.1 beta 1 was built using the openSUSE Build Service!

(more…)

The openSUSE Project is happy to announce the first beta release of openSUSE 11.1. openSUSE 11.1 includes quite a few improvements and new features over the 11.0 release, including new versions of KDE, GNOME, the Linux kernel, improved YaST modules, and much more!

The ISOs for this release have been created using KIWI and RPMs created in the openSUSE Build Service. This caused some delay in the release of beta 1, but is part of the transition to using the openSUSE Build Service for all development of openSUSE.

What’s in openSUSE 11.1 beta 1?

There are plenty of changes in 11.1, here are some of the most notable improvements, upgrades, and new features.

GNOME 2.24

• PulseAudio improvements (PulseAudio 0.9.12)
• Ekiga 3.0
• Empathy Instant Messenger based on Telepathy framework
• File manager improvements, including tab support and “compact” view in Nautilus
• New deskbar plugins
• New screen resolution controls
• Accessibility improvements
• Power Manager improvement: Tab added to configure time to automatically wake from suspend/hibernate
• Banshee 1.3

KDE 3.5.10
openSUSE 11.1 will include KDE 3.5.10 on the DVD media, but moved to the “other window managers” selection.

KDE 4.1.x

• KWin has compositing enabled by default, testing welcome!
• Amarok 2.0 beta 1
• KWin cube effect
• Accessibility support
• SVG support “almost everywhere”

Basic SELinux enablement: This was announced on openSUSE News previously.

New YaST Modules

• Re-written YaST Printer module: http://en.opensuse.org/YaST/Development/Printer_Enhancement#Under_construction_for_openSUSE_11.1
• Re-written YaST Partitioner module: Testing wanted!
• Re-written YaST Security module: Checks the security of your system configuration.

Cluster stack features significant usability changes and has adopted OpenAIS, an industry standard also supported by leading vendors, for its core infrastructure.  See http://openais.org/ for more info.

Support for Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) – using KIWI, users can easily create an EC2 cloud based on openSUSE 11.1. (Documented here: http://svn.berlios.de/wsvn/kiwi/kiwi-head/doc/kiwi.pdf?op=file&rev=0&sc=0)

Improvements in OCFS2: Full integration with userspace cluster stack, POSIX file locking, extended attributes, and file system sizes up to four Petabytes (4PiB).

IPv6 improvements: openSUSE can be installed in an IPv6 environment and run an IPv6 Web server.

New BlueTooth features with BlueZ 4.6.

Other major packages:

• Samba 3.2.3
• Python 2.6beta3 and 3.0beta3
• Linux kernel 2.6.27rc5
• Xen 3.3.1 RC
• PackageKit 0.3.2
• GCC 4.3.2
• X.org 7.4
• OpenOffice.org 3.0 RC

See DistroWatch for a full list of packages and versions being shipped in the Factory distribution.

Most Annoying Bugs

• Bug #427678: Build key ring of openSUSE-build-key missing in initrd. Workaround: hit “Import” on Public GnuPG Key error message, to import openSUSE:Factory OBS Project key.
• Bug #427664: openSUSE-images missing from install media. Note: Installation will be slower. Images will be added for Beta2.
• Bug #427692: Desktop selection still offers KDE3. This option will go away in Beta2, and KDE3 will be moved to “other window managers.”
• Bug #418585: Error: Failed to detect print queues. Workaround: Just hit OK.
• Bug #427741: 2nd stage install: Error: no network running. Workaround: hit OK
• Bug #427738: Autostarting compiz doesn’t work on Thinkpad R51 — white screen after login in GNOME. Workaround: remove “ati radeon radeonrandr12″ from /usr/bin/compiz-manager line 71

OpenOffice.org has been split into new packages for 11.1beta1. OpenOffice.org should be usable, but there are a number of known bugs:

• Optional packages are not really optional, because the registry files are not correctly spread over the subpackages.
• Java and Python components are not registered, so wizards do not work.
• Dialog to change macro security level is empty (other dialogs may be affected as well).
• Macro editor does not highlight lines with breakpoints.
• Macro editor does not mark the line where the code is stopped (arrow).
• “Help” and “From Template” dialogs do not have icons.
• Wizard to select document type is not shown.

The most annoying problems should be fixed before beta2 and beta3.

See the wiki for the latest on annoying bugs.

Call for Testing

Please remember that this is a beta release, and is not suitable for use on production systems. However, this release is ready for widespread testing, and we’re encouraging everyone to download and test the beta release. Please run the release through your usual routine, and let us know about any bugs or other issues that you find.

If you want to help testing using the standard test cases, look at openSUSE.org/Testing, and in particular see the new features specific to openSUSE 11.1: http://en.opensuse.org/Testing:Features_11.1 This is a definitive list of new features added into 11.1 that need testing.

To follow the testing and development process, we suggest that you subscribe to the openSUSE-Factory mailing list, and join the #openSUSE-Factory channel on Freenode to discuss openSUSE development.

Media and Download

The 11.1 beta is just one of the releases that will lead to the final 11.1 release. You can find the entire roadmap on the openSUSE wiki: http://en.opensuse.org/Roadmap. Downloads are available here:

http://software.opensuse.org/developer

See http://en.opensuse.org/Mirror_Selection for a full list of mirrors. Note that you don’t need to choose a mirror yourself, but you can use the mirror list if you want or need to select a mirror manually.

Thanks, and have a lot of fun!

    Issue #39 of openSUSE Weekly News is now out!
In this week’s issue:

• Board election
• OpenOffice_org 3.0rc1 available
• Call for SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE Beta Testers
• Duncan Mac-Vicar: Extremely easy driver installation
• Distribution status