We have it!

    Issue #50 of openSUSE Weekly News is now out!
In this week’s issue:

• Pre-order openSUSE 11.1
• Wanted: Tester from SUSE Studio
• Password Protect for GRUB
• KDE4-Repository changes
• SELinux in openSUSE 11.1

The openSUSE Weekly News is available in:
German,
Indonesian,
Japanese,
Polish,
Portuguese (delay),
Russian and
Spanish.

On Saturday, 13th December, the SSL certificate used by iChain for secure login to *.opensuse.org sites (like openSUSE Forums, Build Service, Wiki and others) has expired. Login to Bugzilla is not affected. We are aware of the problem and are working on fixing it. Most browsers will issue a warning about the expiration and deny a direct connection. You may add a (temporary) exception for the old certificate, after that you will be able to login and continue to work on the sites as usual.

Update: The new certificate is up so this problem doesn’t exist anymore.

Welcome to the first in a series of Sneak Peeks at openSUSE 11.1! With less than a week to go until the release of openSUSE 11.1,we’ll be talking about the great new innovations included with openSUSE 11.1. To kick things off, we’ll be discussing how most people will be kicking off their openSUSE 11.1 experience: the installer.

The Installation: Building on a great base

openSUSE’s installation has long been regarded as one of the best in the Linux world. Never before has that compliment been more accurate than in openSUSE 11.1. We started by building on the great base built in openSUSE 11.0 this past summer: a sleek new look, and a simpler installation process.

New Partitioner

The updated new installer features an updated look, as seen above, but there is one very big improvement, and most users won’t even see it. It’s the new hard drive partitioner. Luckily, in most cases, the installer can recognize what needs to be done to a user’s hard disk to enable them to use openSUSE, often while keeping their previous operating system and files intact. However, many times advanced users wish to make their own custom partition table, and the improved partitioner helps them do just that.

This partitioner was the subject of usability testing, and was designed to accommodate the needs of our users.

You can also get a quick guide to the installation of openSUSE 11.1 in our Installation Walkthrough.

Help driver development with Smolt

Upon logging into your openSUSE desktop, you’ll be asked to send some hardware information to the Smolt Project. Smolt is a combined effort of Linux distributions and projects including the Fedora Project and openSUSE. Together, collecting the types of hardware in computers running Linux helps put pressure on hardware manufacturers to support Linux better, which is better for everyone.

Getting a rough estimate of the number of users for different types of hardware is also helpful to the developers of device drivers for Linux, which gives them a better idea of what drivers they should help work on to help the most amount of users. It’s one click, it helps you, it helps openSUSE, and it helps the entire Linux community!

Continual improvements to managing software

Recommended Software

openSUSE 11.1 features even more improvements to installing, removing, and maintaining software. In addition to openSUSE’s famous 1-Click Install feature, openSUSE now features a new way to discover new software.

The software manager now recommends or suggests software for your computer depending on what is already installed. These packages aren’t required by another applications, but instead extends their functionality or compliments them. It’s a fun way to discover new things you can do with your computer! Simply select the software, click Install, and the rest is taken care of.

The new KDE updater

KDE users now have a new method of keeping their computer up-to-date. Introducing the new openSUSE Updater for KDE, based on PackageKit. This new updater brings openSUSE into a cross-distro standard with PackageKit, plus enables new functionality within the updater.

The new updater still uses the openSUSE software management system, libzypp, so users still get the speed and other advantages of using our modern, state-of-the-art software management system. Advanced, modern tools wrapped up in one easy to use updating application for KDE.

GNOME users will continue to use their PackageKit-based updating application.

Ready for openSUSE 11.1?

This is just the start of what’s available in openSUSE 11.1! openSUSE 11.1 ships December 18th, 2008 for both download and boxed editions, so stay tuned for more Sneak Peeks and all other news about openSUSE 11.1!

	Just a reminder, we will have a party on the releasy day in Nuremberg. If you are nearby, don’t miss it! We plan to have some demo systems, burn service and of course some food and drinks. It’s on December, 18th, 18:00-21:00 CET.
	The address is Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuremberg, Germany
	Google Maps, Stairs up, turn left and you will see the entrance like in the picture.
	Please send an email to me if you want to come to the party, mlasars _at! suse !dot_ de (subject: party).

If you are not from Nuremberg, look first at the party locations at the wiki, or make your own party!

Some parts of the openSUSE Project’s infrastructure will be down briefly for maintenance tomorrow, December 11th, starting at 10:00 UTC (11:00 CET / 05:00 EST). This should last between 5 and 15 minutes, so the impact on project services should be minimal.

This will impact download servers, the mirror stage server, and the Subversion/git server. See Peter Poeml’s email to opensuse-announce for more information.

openSUSE 11.1 is gold, and available for pre-order! The release date is still the 18th of December, just in time to have some fun over the holidays …

So what do you get for your money?

	dual layer DVD9, with 32 and 64bit version(not available for download)
	NON-OSS add-on CD with programs like flash, acrobat reader, mp3 support etc.
	Printed manual
	90 days of installation support

All this in a nice and shiny grey Box. Still not impressed? Ok, this time we have a special gift for you. If you buy the box you will get an openSUSE branded LED flashlight for free! (limited to the first run of boxes) Now hurry, head over to our shops!

BTW: For our German users: if you pre-order from the German shop, shipping is free …

UPDATE:I just heard that only the German Box have the flashlights. There are to many problems to send them to other countries because of taxes/customs, batteries are mostly a no-go and other annoying stuff. Sorry.

Meeting page

Meeting page

    Issue #49 of openSUSE Weekly News is now out!
In this week’s issue:

• Andreas Jaeger: openSUSE 11.1 Goes RC2
• Joe Brockmeier: Mounting remote directories using FUSE and sshfs on openSUSE
• Henne Vogelsang: What’s Working Well and What To Do With It
• RedDwarf: Check your multimedia problem in ten steps
• arstechnica.com: Distro(s) of the Year: OpenSUSE and Foresight

The openSUSE Weekly News is available in:
German,
Indonesian,
Japanese,
Polish,
Portuguese (delay),
Russian and
Spanish (delay).