We are pleased to announce our openSUSE Weekly News Issue 120!
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Archive for April, 2010
Weekly News Meeting
April 23rd, 2010 by Sascha Manns| May 1, 2010 | ||
| 16:30 | to | 17:30 |
| May 15, 2010 | ||
| 16:30 | to | 17:30 |
| May 29, 2010 | ||
| 16:30 | to | 17:30 |
| June 12, 2010 | ||
| 16:30 | to | 17:30 |
| June 26, 2010 | ||
| 16:30 | to | 17:30 |
We are pleased zo announce our next meeting times.
Topics for the Meetings can placed there: http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/Meetings/Topics_current
Marketing Meeting
April 20th, 2010 by Andreas Jaeger| April 20, 2010 | ||
| 15:00 | to | 16:00 |
| May 4, 2010 | ||
| 15:00 | to | 16:00 |
| May 18, 2010 | ||
| 15:00 | to | 16:00 |
| June 1, 2010 | ||
| 15:00 | to | 16:00 |
| June 15, 2010 | ||
| 15:00 | to | 16:00 |
| June 29, 2010 | ||
| 15:00 | to | 16:00 |
IRC meeting of the openSUSE marketing team on freenode, IRC channel #opensuse-marketing (details).
People of openSUSE: Andrew Wafaa
April 19th, 2010 by Sascha MannsPeople of openSUSE
Your Full Name: Andrew Wafaa
IRC Nick: FunkyPenguin, FunkyPenguin_mob
Favorite Season: Whichever one my favorite team wins.
Motto:
Personal: Be true to yourself and learn from your mistakes
For openSUSE: Green the original distro colour, accept no imitations
Please Introduce Yourself:
Aloha, I’m Andrew Wafaa. Most people call me Andy or Wafaa. I’m a married, father of three living in the UK. I’m a Scotsman born and bred in Aberdeen (The Granite City), but have some Egyptian blood in me, this led to my old General Manager calling me a “Camel Herder With A Skirt”, which stuck with me ever since.
Professionally I’m a Solutions Architect mainly dealing with SLES for one of the big service providers. The title is all grand but I basically pen push now and do a load of documentation which is really boring. Thankfully openSUSE is there to keep me alive and interested in life ;-)
What made you choose this IRC nick ?
To be honest I forget why I chose it. I think at the time it seemed sensible, in hindsight I’d probably choose something simpler. Depending on which machine I’m on depends which nick is in use.
Tell us about your first computer usage and the machines that you currently own
The first computer I used was the family’s BBC B machine. The first machine that was truly my own was a Gateway 486DX2 66MHz, I then replaced it with a P3 550MHz machine which limped on until a few years ago. Currently my main machine is my netbook (eeePC 1000HE), I also use a Dell (D820) and Vaio (AR11S). I also have a pile of old Dells under my desk (Latitude CS & C600) which I’m most likely going to get rid of.
When and why did you start using openSUSE ?
I first started with 6.2 which for some reason came free with a magazine. I didn’t really know what I was holding in my hand at the time, just that it said it was “New, exciting, and feature packed!”. Duh OK, lets roll with it. So I blew my Win98 install away without thinking (more to the point realising :-D) and had fun. I’ve been on it ever since.
Which areas of openSUSE are you involved with currently and in the past ?
I originally started out as an ordinary user, I wasn’t interested in programming or anything else. I was just after something different and cool, and you cant get much cooler then the Geeko ;-) As part of my involvement with the Hula project at the time, I started packaging. I then got more involved with openSUSE, mainly the GNOME Team but to a lesser extent KDE (I like to see what’s going on around). I slowly started to be more active generally throughout openSUSE. I started creating easy install custom images for netbooks when I got my eeePC 701, which is how I got involved with Moblin/Goblin. I’ve been a member of the Board Election Committee for the last two years too.
Tell us about Goblin. What are the areas we as openSUSE contribute to the upstream moblin project ?
Well for those that don’t know Goblin is just Moblin sitting on top of openSUSE. It is very similar to what Novell offer for sale, and is close to upstream. Basically openSUSE as the base OS and Moblin as the environment sitting on top, you have access to all the great stuff that your regular openSUSE machine can get. As for contributions to upstream, we provide a lot of things. One of the big things we contribute upstream is the OBS, yes they use an instance of OBS to build all the packages just like we do. We also provide code, a lot of the stuff that goes into the SLE version also goes into openSUSE – Kernel optimisations, application improvements (like banshee), etc. Other parts of openSUSE’s toolset are also under consideration by upstream.
Will it be possible for us to see Moblin as a Desktop option with the openSUSE 11.3 Installer ?
That is my hope, although I may have missed the boat on this :-( I’m hoping to see it show up in the installer but we’ll just have to wait and see. Unfortunately work hasn’t been too kind with timing, and we were a bit late to the Factory party – there were too many blockers in the way before we could get things submitted.
Are there any areas where it will be immensely helpful for Goblin to get some community contributions ?
In general Goblin would benefit from the same contributions as any other openSUSE project – packaging, testing, translation, etc. Currently I think the biggest ones are packaging and testing.
If someone asks you why they should use openSUSE, what will you suggest ?
First I’d ask what they use currently, and how they use it. Try and get a feel for the issues they run into. Then I would highlight how openSUSE can help resolve their issues and also improve their usage experience. If they couldn’t answer any of those and just wanted and out right why it would be along the lines of – openSUSE provides a stable platform with some of the latest and greatest on offer from the wider open source community. It is a Swiss Army Knife or Leathermans of operating systems; perfectly happy with whatever task you throw at it be it on netbook, laptop, desktop, server. We are open by name and open by nature, all walks of life are welcome to use and contribute.
Share the most memorable moment(s) in your openSUSE community involvement ?
To be honest I struggle to pick out particular moments, I’ve had and continue to have a blast. I really enjoyed going to the SUSE offices in Nuremberg for HackWeek II, where I did a few video interviews with people. Going to the likes of FOSDEM is great, meeting people from all over the globe and catching up. I think the best bit from my involvement in openSUSE is either going to events or logging on online and getting a good honest warm greeting from people. I think from a historical point of view, my involvement with the first elected Board stands out a bit – it’s kind of nice to reminisce and say “I had a part to play in that”.
What application/feature do you think should be invented soon ?
I’d love to see a Troll Muting function. Not just for e-mail but for IRC and also real life :-)
Favorite Movie Scene
Just basing on recently watch movies as I genuinely couldn’t choose and all time favourite – I’d have to say the trailer scene in Sex Drive. I loved watching my wife and mother inlaw cringe! I generally love all of Monty Python’s work and most animated films, especially Dreamworks & Pixar.
Favorite Food
I’d say most Mediterranean food, especially from Egypt. Although I love a good curry too.
Which place/city would you like to visit ?
I would love to go to South America, there’s just so many places there I’d like to visit.
What do you think is missing or underrated in the distribution or the project?
The community is vastly underrated by outsiders to openSUSE. Sure we may not be as viral and prolific as some of the other distributions but we are sincere and passionate about the Geeko, and I think some of the older hands are just sick fed up of the constant FUD bashing that they see and hear on IRC. Relative to other distros our community is fairly young (in regards to influence/contribution) but that gives us more scope to grow and influence things.
You get 10 Million US dollars. What will you do ?
First I’d be boring and settle all my debts etc and put a couple of million into savings for me and my family’s future. Then I’d buy every gadget I wanted (maybe twice in case I break one). After that I’d probably travel, I’d try and meet all the people I’ve met online in person and buy them a drink :-)
Any other questions that you wished we ask you ?
Do you prefer Star Wars or Star Trek? Personally I prefer Babylon5 :-D
OBS MeeGo Developer Meeting
April 19th, 2010 by News TeamOBS Developers from MeeGo project visited the SUSE OBS Developers in Nürnberg on friday and saturday. Not everybody managed to come due to the ash over europe, but at least
- Anas Nashif from Intel
- Alexander(Sasha) Kanevskiy from Nokia
- Martin Mohring from Linux Foundation
- Jan-Simon Möller from Linux Foundation
- Andreas Jaeger from Novell/SUSE
- Michael Schröder from Novell/SUSE
- Adrian Schröter from Novell/SUSE
spoke about a lot of features and wanted design changes in OBS. The MeeGo project uses OBS to create their packages and products in similar setup and with needs as openSUSE. In short this is having multiple code streams, which are used to create multiple products, which require maintenance updates and QA validations. This give us plenty areas of collaboration and makes us hoping to drive OBS in a good direction for all of us.
The features which have been declared as relevant for MeeGo are currently collected in fate together with all other OBS features.
You can find detailed meeting minutes in the mailing list archive.
openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 5: The Community Strikes Back
April 14th, 2010 by News TeamMilestone 5 (of 7), a snapshot of the Factory “work in progress” build, leading up to openSUSE 11.3 release in July, is now available for download.
M5 was marked by significant contributions from both the openSUSE Community, and the larger Linux community. We’ve added some interesting new packages, made some updates to core processes, and participated in a coordinated multi-distribution upgrade of a major multimedia component. Over 50 bugs were fixed and 8 new features were implemented.
Warning: The media cannot be installed on 64-bit x86-64 systems due to Bug #595545. Also if you update with zypper dup to current factory, wait until the next rebuild is finished, for details see Bug #595545.
Release News:
- Update to Perl 5.12 (release notes)
- Update to parted 2.2; M5 has a complete toolkit for supporting 4K phyisical sector disks. (openSUSE-factory list)
- KMS integration for Intel and Nvidia (via nouveau driver) graphics, and the ability to disable it. (bugzilla 591400)
- Update to PackageKit 0.6.2, requiring revisions to KPackageKit (openSUSE-factory list)
- Added librcd and librcc, which provide on-the-fly language translation/detection, from the RusXMMS project. (openSUSE-factory list)
- Added xdiskusage, a visual disk-space analyzer. (openSUSE-factory list)
- A bug in OpenOffice.org that caused crashes when copying spreadsheet cells has been resolved. (bugzilla 588957)
- Access to the official SUSE manuals has been improved. (bugzilla 586682)
- Documentation has been corrected for the smbfs to cifs changes. (bugzilla 561993, bugzilla 578621)
- The installation slideshow now talks about version 11.3 instead of 11.2. (bugzilla 588396)
- Lithuanian keyboard layout added. (bugzilla 569554)
- Encrypted swap volumes no longer need to be formatted during install; YaST will prompt for LUKS volume passwords. (bugzilla 581341)
- A locking issue with reiserfs has been resolved and no longer prevents installs. (bugzilla 591807)
- An M4 annoyance with udev init scripts has been fixed. (bugzilla 592445) (more…)
openSUSE Weekly News, Issue 117 is out!
April 3rd, 2010 by Sascha Manns
Issue #117 of openSUSE Weekly News is now out!
Contents
- 1 Editors Note
- 2 Announcements
- 2.1 Novell Wins Again – Jury Rules Copyrights Didn’t Go to SCO!
- 2.2 Klaas Freitag: Announce: openSUSE Beego
- 2.3 Pascal Bleser: Planet openSUSE #2
- 2.4 Pascal Bleser: Planet openSUSE #2.1
- 3 In the Community
- 3.1 Lenz Grimmer: Upcoming speaking engagements: Grazer Linuxtage and amoocon
- 3.2 Alexander Naumov: Russian openSUSE community
- 4 Status Updates
- 4.1 Distribution
- 4.1.1 Distribution Schedule
- 4.2 Build Service
- 4.2.1 Build Service Team Meeting
- 4.3 Wiki / Communication / Events
- 4.3.1 Novell OpenPR/John Dragoon
- 4.1 Distribution
- 5 Tips and Tricks
- 5.1 For Commandline/Script Newbies
- 5.1.1 Holger Macht: z-shell (zsh) completion for osc and zypper
- 5.1.2 Linux.com/Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier: Learning GNU Text Utilities
- 5.2 For Developers and Programmers
- 5.2.1 Hans Petter Jansson: Hash Table Shootout!
- 5.3 For System Administrators
- 5.3.1 Masim Sugianto: How To : Samba PDC+OpenLDAP on openSUSE/SLES Part 1
- 5.3.2 Masim Sugianto: User Account Integration between Samba PDC & Zimbra Mail Server on openSUSE/SLES
- 5.3.3 Masim Sugianto: Zimbra Mail Server with External Authentication using Samba PDC+OpenLDAP
- 5.3.4 The Geek Stuff/Sathiya Moorthy: UNIX / Linux: 10 Netstat Command Examples
- 5.3.5 HowtoForge/Falko Timme: Virtual Hosting With PureFTPd And MySQL (Incl. Quota And Bandwidth Management) On OpenSUSE 11.2
- 5.3.6 nixCraft/Vivek Gite: Linux / UNIX: Encrypt Backup Tape Using Tar & OpenSSL
- 5.1 For Commandline/Script Newbies
- 6 New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE
- 6.1 Packman: mjpegtools 1.9.0.0
- 6.2 Packman: vlc 1.0.5-2
- 6.3 Packman: gpodder 2.4
- 6.4 Packman: quvi 0.1.3
- 6.5 Packman: cclive 0.6.2
- 6.6 OBS/Petr Mladek: OpenOffice_org 3.2.1 beta2 available for openSUSE
- 6.7 OBS/Gabriel Burt: Banshee 1.6!
- 6.8 OBS/Jigish Gohil: Annuncing KIWI-LTSP package updates
- 7 Projects Corner
- 7.1 KDE Project
- 7.1.1 Valorie Zimmerman (valorie): The Adventure Begins!
- 7.1.2 Milian Wolff (milianw): Profiling Rocks – KDevelop CMake Support now 20x faster
- 7.2 GNOME Project
- 7.2.1 Fridrich Strba: ISensNetwork based network monitor for Evolution
- 7.2.2 Vincent Untz: Enjoy GNOME 2.30!=
- 7.1 KDE Project
- 8 Planet SUSE
- 8.1 Robert Schweikert: Into the Cloud
- 8.2 Holger Hetterich: The future of SMB Traffic Analyzer – introducing protocol version 2
- 8.3 Andrew Wafaa: Blogged about: Community Discussion – Part 3
- 8.4 James Ogley: The N900: My experiences
- 8.5 Pascal Bleser: openSUSE FAIL page
- 8.6 Thomas Biege: SELinux and openSUSE 11.3
- 9 openSUSE Forums
- 9.1 Best kde4 Application?
- 9.2 User needs .wmv files
- 9.3 No Sound in Amarok
- 9.4 Milestone LiveCD on USB Flash device
- 10 On the Web
- 10.1 Announcements
- 10.1.1 KDE Software Compilation 4.4.2 Out Now: Codename “Colibri”
- 10.1.2 Sirko Kemter: Happy Birthday – RadioTux
- 10.2 Reports
- 10.2.1 Roger Whittaker: UKUUG Conference
- 10.2.2 OStatic/Joe Brockmeier: Motivation and Contributions in Open Source: Stop Romanticizing Unpaid Contributions
- 10.2.3 ZDNET/Christopher Dawson: OpenSUSE Li-F-E vs. Edubuntu vs. Ubuntu
- 10.3 Reviews and Essays
- 10.3.1 Linus Torvalds: The New Linux Is Gnu Linux
- 10.3.2 Junauza: Linux users? Who are these people?
- 10.3.3 Chema Martin/The Linux Experience: KDE SC 4.4.1 Review
- 10.3.4 The ERACC Web Log/Gene: Desktop Linux: An Average User Success Story
- 10.1 Announcements
- 11 Past Events & Meetings
- 12 Upcoming Events & Meetings
- 13 Security Updates
- 14 Statistics
- 14.1 opensuse.org
- 14.2 openFATE
- 14.3 Bugzilla
- 14.4 Localization
- 14.5 openSUSE for your ears
- 15 Feedback / Communicate / Get Involved
- 16 Credits
- 17 Translations
For a list of available translations see this page:
http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/117/Translations.
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