Meeting page

The next openSUSE Project meeting will take place Wednesday June 3rd at 16:00 UTC. See all time zones on the Fixed Time World Clock. As always, the meeting will be held in IRC on the #opensuse-project channel on Freenode.

Please add your topics to the meeting wiki page at:

http://en.opensuse.org/Meetings/Project_Meeting_2009-06-03

Please add topics as soon as possible. Also, if you have questions for the meeting, but can’t attend (we know that the meeting times can’t work for everyone) please add them to the agenda as well.

For more on IRC meetings, see: http://en.opensuse.org/Meetings/About.

As always, we meet in #opensuse-project on Freenode. Fire up your favorite IRC client and head over to #opensuse-project.

Not familiar with IRC? A good overview can be found at irchelp.org. This site is not affiliated with openSUSE. For more information on Freenode, see http://freenode.net/.

Wondering what meeting times are? Check the openSUSE Meetings page. All project meetings and team meetings should be listed there.

The openSUSE Project is happy to announce the second milestone release for openSUSE 11.2 is ready for download. This release includes Firefox 3.5 beta 4, KDE 4.3 beta 1, GNOME 2.26, and hundreds of other updates from Milestone 1.

This is a Milestone Release, which means that it may not be suitable for production systems. This is one in a series of releases leading to the official openSUSE 11.2 release, scheduled for November 2009.

Screenshots of the 11.2 Milestone 2 release are available on the wiki.

Changes Since openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 1

A lot has changed since the 11.1 M1 release, with many packages being updated for 11.2. Some of the major changes in this release include:

• The distribution is built with GCC 4.4
• M2 uses the 2.6.30rc6 kernel
• Live CDs include The GIMP
• Default filesystem is Ext4
• Firefox 3.5 beta 4
• GNOME 2.26 packages and some preview packages from GNOME 2.27.1
• KDE 4.3 beta 1
• OpenOffice.org 3.1
• VirtualBox 2.2.2

See the openSUSE Wiki for additional changes in 11.2 Milestone 2. You can see the latest packages in Factory on DistroWatch, which tracks 203 major packages.

Getting Milestone 2

The latest development versions are available from http://software.opensuse.org/developer/. Choose from x86 or x86-64 install DVDs or the KDE and GNOME Live CDs.

Testing

Help us make openSUSE 11.2 the best release yet! Please run the release through your usual routine, and let us know about any bugs or other issues that you find. Remember that this is a milestone release, and is not suitable for use on production systems.

Though many openSUSE users can and do use the Factory distribution and/or testing releases for day-to-day work we want to stress that it’s entirely possible that you will encounter serious bugs. See openSUSE.org/Testing for more information on 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.

    Issue #73 of openSUSE Weekly News is now out!

In this week’s issue:

• Moblin v2.0 Beta on openSUSE
• Andrew Wafaa: New openSUSE Netbook Images
• Dominique Leuenberger: RPM packaging for beginners
• Stephen Shaw: iFolder on openSUSE 11.1
• eweekeurope: OpenOffice.org 3.1 – Better Performance

For a list of available translations see this page:
http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/73/Translations

Want to help spread the word about the openSUSE Project and encourage more people to become part of the openSUSE Community? Are you ready to roll up your sleeves and spread the word about the openSUSE Project? Do you want to teach new users about Linux, speak about openSUSE at local events, help distribute openSUSE media, and mentor new contributors to the openSUSE Project? Then you’re ready to become an openSUSE Ambassador!

What do Ambassadors Do?

Since this is a new program for openSUSE, the Ambassadors will help define the role over time. But the general scope is clear: openSUSE Ambassadors help introduce openSUSE (the distribution and the project) to new users and contributors.

Ambassadors act as evangelists for the openSUSE Project and free and open source software. They help to mentor new users and contributors by answering questions on the mailing lists and in forums, by assisting users at installfests, or by helping new contributors get started with the openSUSE project.

openSUSE Ambassadors help to spread openSUSE DVDs at events, to local Linux User Groups, schools, universities, and businesses that might benefit from using openSUSE. Ambassadors staff booths at Linux events and answer questions about openSUSE, and explain the benefits of the project and how to get started with openSUSE.

Ambassadors promote the project and spread openSUSE by speaking at events, LUG meetings, computer user groups, or any group that might be interested in learning about the openSUSE Linux distribution and openSUSE Project. Ambassadors help bring new contributors to the project and help them become productive within the project.

In general, openSUSE Ambassadors are friendly openSUSE enthusiasts who help introduce openSUSE to new users and contributors. Ambassadors make “first contact” with new Linux users and help them get started and excited about openSUSE and Linux. They spread excitement about the project and (of course) have a lot of fun.

Signing Up

If you’d like to sign up for the openSUSE Ambassador Program, see the “How do I Join?” section on the openSUSE wiki. If you have questions about the Ambassador’s program not answered on the wiki, feel free to bring them up on the openSUSE Marketing mailing list.

You don’t need approval to get started. Just follow the steps on the openSUSE wiki and have a lot of fun!

Meeting page

    Issue #72 of openSUSE Weekly News is now out!

In this week’s issue:

• Community Week
• Pascal Bleser : vnstat on openSUSE
• SUSE Linux Enterprise in the Americas: KDE: Social Desktop Starts to Arrive
• Forums: Why Are We Not Helping More in the Wiki?
• compiz-fusion.org: Beryl back from the ashes

For a list of available translations see this page:
http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/72/Translations

The next openSUSE Project meeting will take place Wednesday May 20th at 12:00 UTC. See all time zones on the Fixed Time World Clock. As always, the meeting will be held in IRC on the #opensuse-project channel on Freenode.

Please add your topics to the meeting wiki page at:

http://en.opensuse.org/Meetings/Project_Meeting_2009-05-20

Please add topics as soon as possible. Also, if you have questions for the meeting, but can’t attend (we know that the meeting times can’t work for everyone) please add them to the agenda as well.

For more on IRC meetings, see: http://en.opensuse.org/Meetings/About.

As always, we meet in #opensuse-project on Freenode. Fire up your favorite IRC client and head over to #opensuse-project.

Not familiar with IRC? A good overview can be found at irchelp.org. This site is not affiliated with openSUSE. For more information on Freenode, see http://freenode.net/.

Wondering what meeting times are? Check the openSUSE Meetings page. All project meetings and team meetings should be listed there.

Today Intel and the Linux Foundation released a technology preview of the Moblin v2 beta, including the Moblin User Interface (UI) that is optimized for netbooks. To give a sneak preview of the future of Linux on mobile devices, the openSUSE Project is providing a preview release of the Moblin UI on top of openSUSE.

To get a feel for the Moblin UI, we’re providing installable ISO and USB images, as well as screenshots of the Moblin interface. As you can see from the screenshots, the new UI makes the most of the netbook form factor while providing a rich user interface that’s easy to use.

Installing openSUSE with the Moblin UI

This is not a final release, and should be considered a technology preview only. You should install this release only on a testing machine. At this time, the installer does not provide partitioning options. This will delete all data on the target machine’s hard drive. Repeat: THIS WILL DELETE ALL INFORMATION ON YOUR HARD DRIVE.

In addition to the installable images, we’ve also provided RPMs and Source RPMs (SRPMs), which are available on Novell Forge.

The current release is targeted at Intel Atom-based Netbooks and may or may not load properly on other hardware. However, for those users who do have compatible hardware, we wanted to provide this tech preview to give a chance to get hands-on access to Moblin v2 as it’s being developed.

For a look at the UI, hit the Flickr set or slideshow below: