openSUSE Weekly News, Issue 152

5. Dec 2010 | Sascha Manns | No License

We are pleased to announce our new openSUSE Weekly News 152.

openSUSE Weekly News

openSUSE Weekly News

Sascha Manns

editor in chief

Satoru Matsumoto

Editorial office

Gertjan Lettink

Forums section

Thomas Hofstätter

Events & meetings

Thomas Schraitle

DocBook-Consultant

2010-12-04


Table of Contents

Announcements openSUSE Board Election 2010 Status Updates

Distribution Team Report In the Community

Postings from the Community Welcome new openSUSE Members Events & Meetings openSUSE for your Ears From Ambassadors Communication Contributors New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE Security Updates Kernel Review Tips and Tricks

For Desktop Users For System Administrators Planet SUSE openSUSE Forums On the Web

Announcements Reports Feedback Translations

Abstract

We are pleased to announce our 152 issue of the openSUSE Weekly News. Now this issue 152 is the first issue, who are completly written in XML/DocBook. This allows us to publish with some XML Files other Outputformats like PDF or HTML. In future versions we planning other features too. This new workaround simplifies the whole process. Now we hope that you will enjoy reading.

Header PictureAnnouncements

> > ** [Announcing openSUSE Tumbleweed project](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2010-11/msg00206.html) ** > > There's been many discussions over the past years about a "rolling update" version of openSUSE on lots of different mailing lists and in person a different conferences. So the time now is to stop talking about it, and actually trying to do it :) So, I'd like to propose "openSUSE Tumbleweed" a repo that is a rolling updated version of openSUSE containing the latest "stable" versions of packages for people to use. (...) Other Sources: [LWN](//lwn.net/Articles/417946/rss) [LinuxJournal](//www.linuxjournal.com/content/opensuse-and-ubuntu-rollercoasters) [h-online](//www.h-online.com/open/news/item/openSUSE-Rolling-release-project-Tumbleweed-proposed-1146308.html)

Figure 1. Geeko wants you

![Geeko wants you](//zonker.opensuse.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/uncle_geeko.jpg)
> > **[Third openSUSE Board Election 2010](//news.opensuse.org/2010/12/01/third-opensuse-board-election-2010/)** > > We are pleased to announce the [openSUSE Board Election 2010](//en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_2010)! The Election Committee this year is staffed by: geeko wants you [Stathis Iosifidis](//en.opensuse.org/User:Diamond_gr) , [Sascha Manns](//en.opensuse.org/User:saigkill), [Satoru Matsumoto](//en.opensuse.org/User:HeliosReds), [Thomas Schmidt](//en.opensuse.org/User:Digitaltomm) The Committee has prepared the timeline for this year’s election. As last year the election process consists of 3 phases: (...)Figure 1, “Geeko wants you”

Figure 2. openFATE Picture

openFATE Picture

> > **[Feature handling for openSUSE reworked](//news.opensuse.org/2010/11/30/feature-handling-for-opensuse-reworked/)** > > openFATE, the feature tracking tool used in openSUSE has been completely reworked and the new version is live now on features.opensuse.org. A team has started driving the handling of features and we’d like to update you with the current state and invite you to participate. The new version is now live and contains a long list of new features so that features can be handled completely with the new web user interface. The interface uses the new openSUSE Bento theme to fit in better in the openSUSE site family, has several search options to allow the screening team to find features easily, it’s possible to edit all fields and also the product states. Thanks to the openSUSE boosters, especially to Thomas Schmidt, for the new version. The new team has defined a workflow to handle features and described it in the openSUSE wiki. Figure 2, “openFATE Picture”
> > ** [openSUSE Announces Fourth Development Milestone with Kernel Interactivity Patch](//news.opensuse.org/2010/12/02/opensuse-announces-fourth-development-milestone-with-kernel-interactivity-patch/) ** > > On Monday, the openSUSE project released the fourth of six milestones in the development of openSUSE 11.4. Milestone 4 (M4) brings a wide range of updates, both major and minor. Kernel 2.6.37rc3 is the basis of M4, including the famous “200 line” per tty task groups patch to improve desktop interactivity, and featuring the removal of the so-called ‘Big Kernel Lock’ that will improve scalability. NetworkManager was updated to 0.8.2, seeing several last minute fixes in cooperation with upstream developers. Libzypp 8.8 adds support for metalinks, the multiple download URL specification. On the desktops, KDE makes the leap to version 4.6 beta 1. This includes a complete rewrite of Kontact and is undergoing heavy testing. GNOME 2.32.2 is the final version planned for openSUSE 11.4, which is notable for being the last stable release before GNOME 3 in March. Zeitgeist, the activity tracker, is updated to 0.6. KOffice is updated to 2.3beta1, bringing the exciting Krita natural media painting app to M4, while OpenOffice.org is removed, having been succeeded by LibreOffice in M3. Qt 4.7.1 and Qt Creator 2.1beta2 will allow improved Qt Quick development. Other major updates include the addition of the Midori lightweight browser, the Rosegarden musical notation editor in version 10.10 and monodevelop 2.4. Gnash, the free Flash viewer, comes in version 0.8.8, which has “100% Youtube support” and supports hardware acceleration. And finally, the prize for biggest version number leap goes to xmahjong, which went from 2006.8.10 to 2010.11.8. xmahjong fans will be happy to hear that the version bump is only due to a packaging change removing build support for SUSE versions earlier than 9.1. The graphics and gameplay remain as they were in 1990. A [list of most annoying bugs](//en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Most_annoying_bugs_11.4_dev#openSUSE_11.4_Milestone_4_of_6) is being compiled; please check it before installing. We look forward to [your bug reports](//bit.ly/el1dv8) and test experiences too. Automated testing and the openSUSE Factory team have been active to ensure that your download of M4 will be at least minimally functional. The next milestone is scheduled for December 16. openSUSE 11.4 is planned to be released in March 2011.
> > **[Marketing Collaboration Days](//news.opensuse.org/2010/12/02/marketing-collaboration-days/)** > > The openSUSE Marketing Team is proud to host Collaboration Days during the month of December. Each designated day, we will focus on a specifc area related to marketing. The purpose of this is to get some work done on that topic to strengthen our ability to promote openSUSE to the world. It is a day that is meant to be busy and productive for the team as well as an opportunity for non-team members to stop by and offer their perspectives and help out as we hack away. As this is an open process, we encourage everyone to come join us, even if you are not directly related to openSUSE. All perspectives are important and we welcome you all.

openSUSE Board Election 2010

> > **[Sebastian 'sebas' Kügler: Running for the openSUSE Board.](//nmarques.digitalwhores.net/2010/10/16/to-nuremberg/)** > > Following up on the call for candidates, I’d like to let you know that I’m intending to run for the openSUSE Board. In my dayjob, I am responsible for user experience at open-slx, and will be able to invest time on a regular basis into participating in the openSUSE board. I have a degree in business science, which gives me some formal insight into organisational processes, this has helped my work for the KDE e.V. in the past, and it will surely be benefitial for openSUSE. I am 34 years old, and live in Nijmegen, in the east of the Netherlands. I have more than 4 years of experience in administering a Free software project (I’m member of the KDE e.V. board since 2006), and during this period have helped turning the KDE e.V. into an effective community representation and supporting organisation, which in many ways acts as a role model to other, similar organisations. The Geeko in me is about 9 years old, it started with openSUSE 7.2, which got me hooked on Linux. After a period of trying all kinds of Linuxen, I’m firmly back to openSUSE for about two years now. openSUSE represents to me a technically excellent product with a friendly, helpful and skilled community around it that is failing to realise its potential, and in many ways is searching for orientation and a clear mission. Aside from organisational topics, this process I’d like to facilitate. My platform for the elections is to help set up the openSUSE e.V. (or rather a legal representation of the community, as outlined in the current plans), and to help the community through the process of becoming more independent from Novell, which in my opinion is important for the growth and sustainability of openSUSE as product and community. I’m a Free software dude by heart, and the principle and ethics of the Free software community will be what drives my decisions as executive. My experience as "cat-herder" will be beneficial in the same way. I do realise that my involvement in the openSUSE community has been fairly transparant, following things from the sideline, stepping in actively here and there, and certainly far from taking on any role as rock-star. I am planning to further ramp up my profile, since that a) will make the members’ decision during the elections a lot easier, and b) it improves accessibility and visibility of the TOTRoS (The Organisation That Represents openSUSE). This email is just to let you know in advance that I’m intending to run for the board. As I /also/ intend to go on vacation on Friday, I might appear unresponsive until ~christmas. Still, I opted for letting everybody know early on that I’m intending to run (rather than sending my note of intent to run after christmas), as planning will likely make the work of the election committee a bit easier. Surely, if you’ve questions already, feel free to ask. I will, after returning from vacation be more outgoing about my involvement with openSUSE and my ideas and plans for the openSUSE board. Thanks for your attention, and your support.
> > **[Chuck 'terrorpup' Payne: Throwing my name as a candidate for board of openSUSE](//opensuse.terrorpup.net/?p=176)** > > I like to throw my name in as a candidate for board of openSUSE. For the past two years I have been helping out as Ambassador, but I have been a SUSE user since 5.3. I love my work with openSUSE, and I want to do more. I think my experince as System Administrator, End User, Mentor, and Ambassador, plus years of experience would be a big plus to board and to the community. I started out with Linux in 96′ as an end, tried of Mac OS, and fearing that it would died. This was before the return of Steve Jobs. Start with Slackware 96 then move to Red Hat and Turbo Linux, then moving to S.u.S.E and never leaving it. I have worked in the IT field as System Administrator since 98. My first job, I was able to get S.u.S.E 6.2 in to replace Red Hat 6.0. Personally I have used it since 5.3 as server. It was until openSUSE 10.2 that I started using as a Desktop replacement at work for daily to daily, replacing Windows XP and Macintosh OS X OS’es. I can be honest, I still use Mac OS for some desktop publishing, but I use my openSUSE desktop for the other 90%. When the call came for people to become Ambassador back in 2008, I jumped at the chance to give back to openSUSE in return for everything it has giving to me. I have been to three linux fest. Give a couple of number of talks to local user group. I have even wrote for a Polish Linux this summer called Linux Identity. I have even done a video for the OSC, which was the best but did put some faces to aliases. I am working on other projects that once are done I will show the community. The other thing I am doing currently for openSUSE is I help with the Facebook page. Trying to post links and events. And I have even set up a twitter account for the openSUSE Ambassador that I hope in the furture and help get out their great work to community and others. I am currently rebuilding the Georgia openSUSE User Group. I am active in ALE. And love to go to Linux Fest and help spread the word about openSUSE and open source software to the masses. My daily-to-daily life, I am System Administrator for a start company called Vocalocity that does a lot with SIP/Telecommunications in their NOC team. Before that I worked at Travel Channel Media. I am married. I am very much international. I know that a lot of people don’ t think that of American. But I have lived in Japan for three and half years and taught English Communications. My wife is Turkish. I do travel from here to there no as much as I would like. I have a six year son that know I love Linux and every time he see a penguin points out that, “There that software you work with Daddy”. I also have a black cat that loves to sit in my lap while I am computer working. I am a bit old I think than most, I am 43 but with that I bring a lot of experience to the table, one not being a developer, but as a end user, a system administrator. Which covers both every day-to-day users and business.
> > **[Kostas 'warlordfff' Koudaras: Board Member Application](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2010-12/msg00034.html)** > > Hello world I would like you to know that I want to run as a candidate for the board of openSUSE. I am a seasonal forest firefighter in my 'day' job, so as you can understand, contributing for the common good is all I do in my life. I am into FOSS for a couple of years now but I am a man of action so I do most of the things I plan and do not stay in plans.I am currently the event manager of Association of Greek Users and Friends of FS / OSS (GREEKLUG) and I was responsible for organizing the host and speech of Richard Stallman here in Thessaloniki, which was a huge success. I spend four days with him and I learned many things about the meaning of Free Software, among other things, and got deeply effected and motivated by his words. I started working with openSUSE almost a year ago and I became ambassador on that summer. Since I became ambassador I made quite a few things about it, as I said a man of action. Me along with Stathis 'Diamond_gr' Iosifidis organized the Greek openSUSE community from scratch. We re-activated the Greek IRC channel which was almost dead. We started the [//amb.opensuse.gr](//amb.opensuse.gr) so that the world can see our actions as ambassadors. We were the openSUSE team at the 75th International Trade Fair of Thessaloniki. We made a call for all Greek Geekos to gather and for a community, although at that time (a few months ago) almost every 'expert' told us that it would end up a great failure, we never stopped fighting and finally we prove them wrong. We recently started translating the openSUSE Weekly news and I am responsible for gathering and checking the translation. We started re-organize and translating the Greek wiki. We went to Athens were we actually met suseRocks and spoke with him about several matters about the community and the project.I went to several city’s all over Greece in order to meet in person people of the Greek community because I strongly believe that face to face communication builds actual trust and I do whatever is possible to prove people that I truly deserve their trust. Greek ambassador team trusted me to be the one communicating the board if needed in order to separate jobs inside the Greek community. I participated in several innovating events for openSUSE like the Xariseto Free festival. I represented openSUSE to an event at primary school in Thessaloniki for celebrating Software Freedom Day 2010. Beyond the Greek community I participate actively in the marketing and the ambassador teams and I am trying to do the same at other teams too. Andreas Jaeger recently trusted me to be the one of three at the Ambassador Welcome Team. I probably forgot some of the things I do but the general idea about me as a person and also my moto for my campaign is 'Planning is good, but acting is better'. I totally believe in team working and I think that I co-operate great with others. I am a Hacker in life more than I am a hacker in programming,in fact I don't know almost no programming at all nor I am good at solving technically nature problems. I tend to like my disadvantages and use them as actual advantages. I think outside of the box and try to think with as much playful cleverness as I can get. I believe deeply in evolution and I am not afraid to bleed my ego for evolution to come. I don't stare at targets, I hit them till I get them and I never give up. If you read the whole text above I truly thank you,if not I can understand you I hope for your support
> > **[Jos Poortvliet: openSUSE Board elections](//nowwhatthe.blogspot.com/2010/12/opensuse-board-elections.html)** > > Awesomeness. I just heard that already 3 people stepped up for the 2010 openSUSE Board elections. And Sascha posted the announcement only yesterday! Really, this is something that shows how openSUSE is a healthy community. We have plenty of people who are able and willing to do this - which is really great. Thanks to those who stepped up - there are only 2 positions, but even the act of stepping forward and saying you're willing to do this is very important! The openSUSE Board work is very important and becoming more so. Currently work is being done on setting up an openSUSE Foundation - and the board plays a crucial role there. We need people with some experience and willingness to work hard on this, there is a lot of work. If you fit that bill - apply!

Header PictureStatus Updates

Header PictureDistribution

> > **[Rajko Matovic: Bug days in openSUSE](//rajkov-blog.blogspot.com/2010/11/bug-days-in-opensuse.html)** > > We had quite successful openSUSE Bug Day organized by A. Naumov on Saturday, November 27, and once rolling we continued through Sunday. The goal was to clear old bugs that refused to die for quite some time. You can see what is done in the wiki article. November 28th, evening by US Central Time: > > > > > * openSUSE 10.2: Start 40 bugs now we have 14 bugs left. > > * openSUSE 10.3: Start 162 bugs now is 87 bugs left. > > * openSUSE 11.0: Start 526 bugs now is 346 bugs left. > > > We started with 728 bugs and now we have 447, which is 281 bug lesser. I hope that A. Naumov will repeat call for the next Bug Day right next weekend.

Important Links

Team Report

Header PictureArt Team

Figure 3. openSUSE Coverart for the future

![openSUSE Coverart for the future](//karl-tux-stadt.de/graph/newface.png)
> > **[Sirko Kemter: Give openSUSE](//karl-tux-stadt.de/ktuxs/?p=2922)** > > I working since a few weeks on a series, that can represent openSUSE and they other software from us in the future. They are still not all ready yet only what I have in mind, nearly all need some improvements. So what yout think, I am on the right way with this? Dont look at the text on them, thats then really up to the marketing guys. What I want to show is, that openSUSE is more as a distribution we have cool tools for creating software and some cool derivates too. I try to show some of cool feature that openSUSE have. So what u think?Figure 3, “openSUSE Coverart for the future”

Header PictureBuild Service Team

> > **[Jos Poortvliet: Notes on OBS](//nowwhatthe.blogspot.com/2010/10/notes-on-obs.html)** > > Having an awesome time here at the conference - esp last night with the Movie Night, the Movies were cool. As was the beer during and afterwards… During the day I followed talk by Lubos Lunak about the Build Service as I wanted to learn more about it. As I made notes I decided to share them :D In the introduction Lubos shared that apparently you have to package each application by hand - however, automatic downloading of random tarballs from the internet and turning them into packages for all linux distributions on distrowatch.org is planned for OBS 3.0! (…)
> > **[Martin Mohring: OBS 2.1: Status of SuperH (sh4) support with QEMU](//lizards.opensuse.org/2010/10/24/obs-2-1-status-of-superh-sh4-support-with-qemu/)** > > With established ARM support in OBS the as well as emulated MIPS and PowerPC is getting more mature, the last big embedded architecture not working in OBS with QEMU user mode was SH4. QEMU developers community had done a lot of work in improving QEMU user mode during the last months, so I can proudly present with currently only a few patches to QEMU git master OBS builds working with the SH4 port of Debian Sid. The new QEMU 0.13 released recently is a big milestone for this. (…)

**Build Service Statistics. **Statistics can found at Buildservice

Header PictureGNOME Team

> > **[Vincent Untz: JDLL 2010](//www.vuntz.net/journal/post/2010/10/21/JDLL-2010)** > > Last Friday, I headed to Lyon for the JDLL 2010. It's an event that feels always a bit special for me since the JDLL was the first event I attended a long while ago. Even though it's not the biggest event in France, for some reason, all the usual suspects from the french-speaking free software community is coming. So a good place to be to catch up with various people (Alexandre, Didier, FrédéricP, Michael from the GNOME-FR conspiracycommunity, as well as our friends from Mageia, and more). (…)

Header PictureKDE Team

> > **Andreas Demmer: Dashboard animation** > > Yesterday evening, I added the first animation to the KWin dashboard effect: Saturation and brightness of the background do now change over a configurable time span when the dashboard appears. The smooth fade of the background adds some eye candy without being to obstrusive (hopefully). I posted the [according patch](//reviewboard.kde.org/r/5658/) to the KDE review board. If everything works out fine, the patch will be in trunk for KDE SC 4.6 before code freeze.

Header PictureopenFATE Team

Feature Statistics

Header PictureTranslation Team

Header PictureIn the Community

Postings from the Community

> > **[Nelson Marques: Christmas Dinner: 11th December @ Aveiro, Portugal](//lizards.opensuse.org/2010/12/02/christmas-dinner-11th-december-aveiro-portugal/)** > > On the next 11th of November the Portuguese enthusiasts are meeting up for a friendly Christmas Dinner in the beautiful city of Aveiro in the Silver Coast of Portugal (Litoral Center, the famous Aveiro Geographical Delta, the biggest natural geographical delta in Europe). This isn’t a formal meeting, but instead an effort to get the existing enthusiasts to know themselves personally, to have some fun and trade ideas. During our Christmas Dinner we expect to receive input from our enthusiasts regarding the assembly of a Portuguese Task Force to handle our representation in the openSUSE International Community. Though we don’t have a stone set script for the topics some of us would like to approach, I would like at least to approach the following ones: * **openSUSE Iberia** – When I was superficially enrolled with the Fedora Project, I’ve tried to rebuild the Portuguese Community associated with the Spanish Community. It didn’t happened back then, but I rejoiced in happiness when this possibility was approached by Javier Lorentte and directed to Carlos Gonçalves. I am a great supporter of such initiative for the following reasons: > > > > > * Geography stands as an Opportunity; Both Portugal and Spain are the two countries on the ‘Peninsula Iberica’ (Iberian Peninsula) and share at least the last 1000 years of history. By working together we can accomplish outstanding deeds, specially related to Events and promotion. > > > > > > > > * Culture stands as an Opportunity; Culturally speaking, Portugal and Spain are very similar in many ways and share the last 1000 years of History. Both countries present a strong Roman Catholic background, this means that societies behaviors, values and identity are pretty much shared between us. The language itself becomes friendly as most Spanish and Portuguese can actually dialog in a mix of our languages. For example the Portuguese language was born from Galaic-Portuguese, which is also the root of the language spoken in Galicia (Spain). > > >

Welcome new openSUSE Members

> > ** [New Member: Stephan Barth (cyberiad)](https://users.opensuse.org/show/cyberiad) ** > > He is involved in some openSUSE Build Service Projects, he is active in Bugreporting and is active in Wiki and IRC.

Events & Meetings

Past

Upcoming

You can find more informations on other events at: openSUSE News/Events. - Local Events

openSUSE for your Ears

The openSUSE Weekly News are available as livestream or podcast in German. You can hear it or download it on Radiotux.

From Ambassadors

Figure 4. Linux Day

Linux Day

> > ** [Thomas Thym: LinuxDay in Dornbirn, AT ... or an extraordinary day of success stories](//ungethym.blogspot.com/2010/11/linuxday-in-dornbirn-at-or.html) ** > > It is 11pm and I am on my way home from LinuxDay in Dornbirn, Austria. It was a long but amazing day. Myriam, Mark and myself were at the KDE and Amarok booth. Surprisingly Christoph (a local KDE on Gentoo user/hacker) supported us rather the whole day. We were demonstrating our software to potentially new users talked about upcoming awesome features with more experienced users; we were selling some KDE merchandise articles and were giving a way a lot of openSUSE 11.3 CDs. Furthermore it was an excellent possibility to intensify the cooperation with other projects. Figure 4, “Linux Day”

Communication

Contributors

Header PictureNew/Updated Applications @ openSUSE

> > ** [OBS openSUSE:11.3:Update/clamav r2 commited ](//hermes.opensuse.org/messages/6195364)** > > Updated to clamav-0.96.4.
> > **[Holger Hetterich: SMB Traffic Analyzer 1.2.1 released](//holger123.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/smb-traffic-analyzer-1-2-1-released/)** > > The team is happy to announce the release of SMB Traffic Analyzer (SMBTA in the following) version 1.2.1. This is a very important release, as many fixes have been done for the build, making both smbtad and smbtatools much more portable. Also, the build has been adapted to work with libraries that are not installed at the usual places on the system (bnc#654930). On the feature side, we have two really cool things to say. First off, we are introducing rrddriver with this release. It is an interface to rrdtool, and allows to build a round robin database from the data smbtad is receiving, in real time. Having data in a rrdtool database allows you to create all the fancy graphics SMBTA was missing until today (bnc#655149). (...)
> > **[Packman: handbrake-unstable 0.9.4+3697-0](//packman.links2linux.org/package/handbrake-unstable)** > > HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder.
> > **[Packman: lightspark 0.4.4-0.pm.1.6](//packman.links2linux.org/package/lightspark)** > > Lightspark is a FLOSS Flash player entirely rewritten from scratch based on Adobe's released SWF documentation. Lightspark features: > > > > > * JIT compilation of Actionscript to native x86 bytecode using LLVM. > > * Hardware accelerated rendering using OpenGL Shaders (GLSL). > > * Very good and robust support for current-generation Actionscript3. > > * A new, clean, codebase exploiting multithreading and optimized for modern hardware. Designed from scratch after the official Flash documentation was released. > > >
> > **[Packman: FrostWire 4.20.6_svn1467-0.pm.1.9](//packman.links2linux.org/package/FrostWire)** > > FrostWire is a gnutella client written in Java. It supports a number of advanced features like ultrapeers (like FastTrack's supernodes), automatic download retries, freeloader punishment, etc. FrostWire is a fork of the very popular LimeWire Gnutella client. The purpose of FrostWire is to keep and maintain the freedoms that LimeWire LLC may be forced to withdraw.
> > **[Packman: vlc 1.1.5-1.pm.3.13](//packman.links2linux.org/package/vlc)** > > VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
> > **[Packman: Scrabble 3.1.0rc8-0.pm.1.3](//packman.links2linux.org/package/Scrabble)** > > Play Scrabble against computer, other local or network connected player. Full configurable, different languages available and user editable, user defined libraries etc. Basically designed to develop a 3D version of the well known board game.
> > **[Packman: frinika 0.6.0-0.pm.2.14](//packman.links2linux.org/package/frinika/195819)** > > Frinika is a free, complete music workstation software for Linux, Windows, Mac OSX Tiger and other operating systems running Java 1.5. It features sequencer, soft-synths, realtime effects and audio recording. Frinika is compact, self-contained and simple - yet powerful enough to boost your musical creativity.
> > **[OBS openSUSE:11.3:Update/java-1_6_0-openjdk r3 commited](//hermes.opensuse.org/messages/6369500)** > > Updated to icedtea6-1.9.2 (EDITMARK)
> > **[Petr Mladek: LibreOffice 3.3 rc1 available for openSUSE](//lizards.opensuse.org/2010/12/03/libreoffice-3_3_0_/)** > > I’m happy to announce LibreOffice 3.3 rc1 packages for openSUSE. They are available in the Build Service[ LibreOffice:Unstable](//download.opensuse.org/repositories/LibreOffice:/Unstable/) project. They are based on the [libreoffice-3.3.0.1 release](//cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/build/plain/NEWS?id=LIBREOFFICE_3_3_0_1). Please, look for more details about the openSUSE LibreOffice build on the [wiki page](//en.opensuse.org/OpenOffice.org). The packages are based on release candidate sources but they have not passed full QA round yet and might include even serious bugs. Therefore they are not intended for data-critical usage. A good practice is to archive any important data before an use, … As usual, we kindly ask any interested beta testers to try the package and[ report bugs](//en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Bugreport_OOo) against the product LibreOffice . **Known Bugs:** > > > > > * unopkg crashes ([bug #655912](https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=655912)) > > * shell wrappers are still ooffice, oowriter, …; we need to discuss the new wrapper names with other distros first > > * some packages were not renamed, .e.g. OpenOffice_org-thesaurus, …; they are not built from the main LibO sources; we will do it later > > * user configuration is stored into ~/.libreoffice/3-suse; we might try to share the directory ~/.libreoffice/3 after we fix the incompatible BerkleyDB; Well, we are not sure if it is enough and it is a good idea, so it will need some more testing > > * GNOME quickstarter is started by default; you might disable it in Tools/Options/OpenOffice.org/Memory/Enable systray Quickstarter > > * SLED10 build is not available; need more love > > > **More known Bugs:** > > > > > * [Free Desktop bugzilla](//alturl.com/dmqve) > > * [Novell bugzilla](//alturl.com/qaq5) > > * [OOo issuezilla](//qa.openoffice.org/issues/query.cgi) > > > **Other informations and plans:** The package are based on LibreOffice-3.3-rc1 sources. There are still some openSUSE-specific bugs that needed to be fixed. I hope that they do not break the base function, though. We expect that rc2 will be needed within next two weeks. We will try to fix more openSUSE-specific bugs in the meantime…

You can find other interesting Packages at:

Header PictureSecurity Updates

To view the security announcements in full, or to receive them as soon as they’re released, refer to the openSUSE Security Announce mailing list.

Header PictureKernel Review

> > **[h-online/Thorsten Leemhuis: Kernel Log: Coming in 2.6.37 (Part 1) - Graphics](//www.h-online.com/open/features/Kernel-Log-Coming-in-2-6-37-Part-1-Graphics-1144218.html)** > > **The Nouveau driver now supports power management and can address the GeForce 320M, and the code for Intel graphics cores now supports the video units on Sandy Bridge processors, which are due to be released shortly. A number of changes to the Radeon KMS driver should improve its performance. ** Linus Torvalds [released](//thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1066261) the third pre-release version of Linux 2.6.37 ten days ago and then despite Thanksgiving and a [trip to Tokyo](//thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.pci/9946/focus%3D9947), he kept to his usual tempo and the fourth pre-release version was released two days ago. The final release of 2.6.37 will probably be in late December or early January next year. The current developer version already resembles the final version pretty closely, since kernel hackers have, as ever, used the merge window which opens the development cycle, to merge all major changes into the main development tree. The current stabilisation phase is reserved primarily for bug-fixes rather than major changes, to avoid introducing further bugs. (...)
> > **[Linux.com/Amanda McPherson: Our Annual Kernel Development Report: New (and Old) Faces ](//www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/amanda-mcpherson/386194:our-annual-kernel-development-report-new-and-old-faces)** > > Today we are pleased to publish [annual report on Linux kernel development](//www.linuxfoundation.org/docs/lf_linux_kernel_development_2010.pdf), detailing who does the work, who sponsors it and how fast the Linux kernel is growing. The paper documents how hard at work the Linux community has been. There have been 1.5 million lines of code added to the kernel since the 2009 update. Since that last paper, additions and changes translate to an amazing 9,058 lines added, 4,495 lines removed, and 1,978 lines changed every day, ­ weekends and holidays included. The other good news is that in the list of sponsoring entities we see more mobile and embedded companies participating in Linux kernel development. We see companies such as Nokia, Texas Instruments and Renasas moving up the list of companies who sponsor Linux development. This certainly should not be a surprise given the rise of Linux usage in devices over the last few years. This is great to see, even though the traditional Linux supporters are still at the top of the list: Red Hat, Intel, Novell and IBM. This paper documents a bit less frenzied development than the last one, which was expected given all the new features of 2.6.30 (ext4, ftrace, btrfs, perf etc) as well as the peak of merged drivers from Linux stable tree. Regardless, this report continues to paint a picture of a very strong and vibrant development community. I’d like to congratulate Paul Mundt who had the most individual contributions to the kernel, equally 1.3%, since our paper last year, and give my heartfelt thanks to Jon Corbet and Greg Kroah-Hartman, kernel developers and members of our Technical Advisory Board, who really do all the work on this paper. This publication is an important one as it gives a rare glimpse into the world of kernel development. Without their knowledge of the participants and their technical tools to analyze the code, this analysis would not be possible. If you’re interested in kernel development and want to support the work of Jon, please consider buying a subscription at [lwn.net](//www.lwn.net/). Read more at [News and Thoughts from Inside the Linux Foundation](//www.linux-foundation.org/weblogs/amanda/2010/12/01/our-annual-kernel-development-report-new-and-old-faces/).
> > **[Arstechnika/Ryan Paul: Linux kernel: 13 million lines, over 5 patches per hour](//arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/12/linux-kernel-13-million-lines-over-5-patches-per-hour.ars)** > > The Linux Foundation has published its third annual report about Linux kernel authorship. The statistics included in the paper illustrate growth trends in the kernel development process and provide insight into how the labor is distributed among individual contributors and corporate sponsors. The kernel has seen modest growth in its base of contributors over the past year, though the rate of development has seen a marginal decline. The latest version of the Linux kernel currently consists of approximately 13 million lines of code across over 33,000 files. The rate of development peaked with version 2.6.30 last year, which saw an average of 6.40 patches per hour. The rate declined to an average of 5.30 patches per hour in version 2.6.35.

Header PictureTips and Tricks

For Desktop Users

> > ** [Jared Ottley: Alfresco: Alfresco PDF Tool Kit – Insert PDF Action](//jared.ottleys.net/alfresco/alfresco-alfresco-pdf-tool-kit-insert-pdf-action) ** > > I’ve taken a bit of Holiday time to update the Alfresco PDF Toolkit. [Nate](//www.unorganizedmachines.com/) has been doing an outstanding job adding [Watermarking](//www.unorganizedmachines.com/site/software-and-technology/34-software-development/99-watermarking-pdf-documents-with-alfresco), [Digital Signatures](//www.unorganizedmachines.com/site/software-and-technology/34-software-development/106-alfresco-pdf-toolkit-digital-signatures), [Encryption](//www.unorganizedmachines.com/site/software-and-technology/34-software-development/101-encrypting-pdf-documents-with-alfresco) and cleaning up my messy code. But it was time to add a little bit myself. So I took sometime this evening to add in one of my planned actions: Insert PDF. This action allows you to insert a PDF into another PDF at a specific page. This is a pretty straight forward action to test: From the Document Details page of the PDF you want to insert content into, select Run Action (This action can also be run through the rules engine or scripted). (...)
> > **[Bruno Friedmann: GoogleEarth 6.0 running in opensuse 11.4 factory 64Bits](//lizards.opensuse.org/2010/12/01/googleearth-6-0-running-in-opensuse-11-4-factory-64bits/)** > > Sometimes we need some of those applications running under our favorite OS. If you can stick with [marble](//kde.org/applications/education/marble/). So the new googleearth 6.0 version hit the street. And if like me you want to give it a try, there’s some tricks to make it installing under your 64bits opensuse factory. My first attempt just result in a nice crash … (...)
> > **[Unixmen/zinovsky: Install and configure wine to Play latest windows games in Linux](//www.unixmen.com/linux-tutorials/1300-install-and-configure-wine-to-play-latest-windows-games-in-linux-ubuntu-linuxmint-fedora)** > > In this post i will show you how to install latest windows applications and games using wine in Linux. When you install wine the first time, wine will work but not all windows application and games will work properly because most of them need a special configuration, some installed dlls and libraries. There are severals opensource software based on wine like for example [PlayOnLinux](//www.unixmen.com/tag/playonlinux), a great software that can install and use windows games and applications. (...)

For System Administrators

> > **[Manu Gupta: Installing Broadcom Wireless – BCM43225 on openSUSE 11.3](//suseware.com/blog/2010/11/28/installing-broadcom-wireless-bcm43225-opensuse-113/)** > > Again I am with a blog post, this time I am troubleshooting the Broadcom driver, BCM 43225. Ok, to start with we need to do the following (...)
> > **[Jared Ottley: Alfresco: Simple File Diff](//feeds.ottleys.net/~r/jaredottley/~3/FvOzTp4RrCY/alfresco-simple-file-diff)** > > I’ve heard asked many times by customers and community members if there was a way to diff files in Alfresco and alas there isn’t an OTB way to do this. A month ago the discussion came up again internally. And I thought it might be fun to tackle this as side project just to see if/what was possible. So I took an evening and hammered out a simple Java class that did a comparison between two text files. Once I saw that I had at least the basics (annotate the differences between two files) and had gotten the question of basic possibility/difficulty out of the way I moved on to other projects. Today almost the entire family is sick so I thought I’d pick up the project again, moving the Java class to a Java Backed web script. The web script is a simple GET that takes the nodeRef of two files, or two versions of the same file and outputs a simple HTML page that highlights the differences between the two. There are no complex algorithms that take into account shifts in blocks or identifies just the text in a line that has changed. It is a simple line by line comparison of two pieces of content. It is not integrated in to Share or Explorer at this time. I might take that as a separate sick day project (or accept any code contributions to add that). (...)

Header PicturePlanet SUSE

> > **[Jos Poortvliet: catching up](//nowwhatthe.blogspot.com/2010/11/catching-up.html)** > > Hi! It feels like ages since I blogged, so here goes. A lot has happened since my last blog - Latinoware is over (and was frickin' awesome), I had a week off which I enjoyed in Brazil and now I'm at the Nuremberg offices due to Michl who just left. We had some catching up to do before he went - same with AJ who has decided to enjoy some parental leave. And Jaqueline who will have to fill the shoes of these two fine gentlemen. Meanwhile I am trying to catch up to mail and news - there is a lot of both. Mail catching up has been limited quite a bit by the KDE Factory OBS repository for 11.3 upgrading to KDE's 4.6 release of platform (Akonadi!), apps (KMail2) and desktop workspace. The two I mentioned (Akonadi & kmail2) have been a royal pain in the ass, to be honest. The migration of my old accounts took a night (>100.000 mails) but didn't actually import those mails. Hence they had to be downloaded from gmail. With the VERY frequent disconnections and regular hanging of the Akonadi resource this has taken a while to say the least - lots of babysitting (restarting Akonadi etc) required. I hope the KDE Pim* dudes and dudettes can get this stable (and faster!) before the release... Oh, and Virtuoso-t keeps hogging 100% CPU untill I decide to just kill it - after which I don't notice any bad or strange behavior. Maybe I should auto-kill it on login ;-) but in the end, it's all working reasonably well now, albeit a bit slower than KMail1.x. Yay yay. (...)
> > **[Wolfgang Rosenauer: community powered long term support for openSUSE?](//www.rosenauer.org/blog/2010/11/30/community-powered-long-term-support-for-opensuse/)** > > Just recently I found again that openSUSE is not really positioned for some usecases. In my personal case that is especially the usage as a web/mail/dns/etc server on hosted environments. IMHO it just doesn’t make sense to roll out a distribution which is supported for only 18 months to a hosted system with limited access to it. I still have been doing that with previous openSUSE releases but it’s so annoying that I really regret it. Also the possibility to zypper dup doesn’t really fix that issue for different reasons. Anyway this post is not about whining about that fact or to explain why I don’t like to update these type of systems remotely every <= 18 months. **A possible solution?** Sometime last year there was a discussion about options for something like an “openSLE” or “openSUSE LTS” distribution. There is an external page where some outcome was documented here. The dicussions stopped mainly because of health issues of the main initiator. There was done some planning and voting on the different options but no real results ever happened (as far as I know). So I’m trying to resurrect that topic a bit once again: The amount of work related to such a project is the critical part and therefore my proposal is to try to start off with a “lightweight” approach. (...)
> > **[Mike McCallister: The Future of openSUSE: Looks pretty bright to me](//metaverse.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/the-future-of-opensuse-looks-pretty-bright-to-me/)** > > I’ll be the first to tell you I am close to clueless about business trends. Anyone who’s ever read [my reaction to the Novell-Microsoft agreement](//metaverse.wordpress.com/2006/11/02/suse-windows-dual-booting-to-get-easier/) can figure that out pretty quickly. That said, it’s been a week since Attachmate “agreed to acquire” (amazing phrase, that) Novell, the parent company of the SUSE Linux products, and unquestionably a major sponsor of the [openSUSE community](//www.opensuse.org). Since then, there’s been a fair amount of activity among the openSUSE faithful: > > > > > * The community board [released this statement](//news.opensuse.org/2010/11/22/novell-agrees-to-be-acquired-by-attachmate-corporation/) declaring (among other things) that “it’s business as usual and we are continuing to work on, rather than predicting, the future of this project and have a lot of fun!“ > > * Last Saturday was [Zombie Bug Squashing Day](//news.opensuse.org/2010/11/22/opensuse-bug-day-on-saturday-november-27th/), where 10-15 volunteers combed through bugs for v10.2, 10.3 and 11.0 still marked Open in the Bugzilla database, and[ disposed of something close to half of them](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2010-11/msg00205.html), as reported to the [opensuse-project](//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSUSE_Project) mailing list. This project may continue soon. > > * Both the[ openFATE feature request](//news.opensuse.org/2010/11/30/feature-handling-for-opensuse-reworked/) process and the [openSUSE News](//news.opensuse.org/) page are becoming a bit more professional, with the help of still more volunteers. > > * And maybe I’m a little too excited about this, but [Greg Kroah-Hartman](//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Kroah-Hartman) announced on Tuesday the beginning of a new “Tumbleweeds” project. Greg describes it like this: a repo that is a rolling updated version of openSUSE containing the latest “stable” versions of packages for people to use. I’d describe it like this: An “in-between” version of openSUSE that offers packages that are a little bit more current than the most recent release, but not as buggy as the cutting-edge Factory repository. For those of us who like stability, but don’t want to miss out on the latest. > > > So what does this have to do with the Attachmate-Novell hookup? It tells me that regardless of what happens at the corporate level, there is energy in our community. There’s reason to believe that energy can sustain this distribution for a long time. Got any thoughts about the future of openSUSE, and other community distributions with a major corporate sponsor? Add a comment here.
> > **[Klaas Freitag: Hermes Work](//lizards.opensuse.org/2010/12/01/hermes-work/)** > > Not every day is a sunshine day, also not in software development. This is my credo about the last few days which I spent debugging [Hermes](//en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Hermes) a bit, motivated by a [kind bug](https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=630725) report saying basically that the digest mails suck. Well, I had to kind of agree on that, so I revisited that topic. Do you remember what Hermes is? We use Hermes in the openSUSE infrastructure to handle notifications. Since we do not want to send people emails they do not explicitly agree that they want it (otherwise it would be spamming, right?), we invented a system that recognizes all kinds of events that happen in the openSUSE world, than check if a certain user wants to know about it and finally send it to these users. The benefit the user of the system is that he can pick from a huge variety of events and control if and how he gets informed about. Hermes does not only serve users with email but also maintains RSS feeds, it Twitters and does even more. And as another bonus, it can collect similar events for you and later send a digest with a collection. That way, you for example can get a mail with a list of failed package builds in OBS each hour instead a mail every fife seconds for each and every failing package. But back to my debugging fun: I was mainly fixing the appearance of the digest messages: They now in the subject tell you how many events are digested and how frequently the digest comes, such as hourly, minutely etc. In the mail body, you now find a numbered “table of contents” of the mail and the individual events nicely listed. So much more useful. Unfortunately it wasn’t the most time efficient debugging session I ever had, I stumbled over some things that weren’t optimal now in an environment where Hermes processes between 40,000 and 70,000 events a day for more than 25,000 users. Some of the problems are ugly to identify. I got lost a bit which is not good for the overall mood, so I decided to cry at Susanne, one of our colleagues. She asked me quite a few questions and than she left home for dinner. Ten minutes later I could nail the bug. So this is my strong suggestion: If in debugging trouble, talk to your friends. Tell about the problem, share your misfortune. A few question can guide you to the right path which you did not see before. Not new? Well, yes, of course we knew that already from other topics in live, talking helps ;-) The other suggestion I wanted to make: Check Hermes digests! Go to the [Hermes Subscription Page](//hermes.opensuse.org) and change one of your subscriptions to digest mode, will be fun. Let me know what you think.
> > **[Sirko Kemter: openSUSE pic paste](//karl-tux-stadt.de/ktuxs/?p=2925)** > > As some of you know, we have our own paste service – susepaste.org. Miska is responsible for that service and some time ago we had a little conversation, that for me and the other artists is more useful to pasting pictures. But not only for us, some times is a screenshot helpful for others too. So Miska take care of my feature wish and implemented pasting of pictures. He wrote already a [blogpost](//michal.hrusecky.net/index.php/blog/show/Pasting-images.html) for it. You can use the picture pasting if you select “Image File” at susepast or go directly to //img.susepaste.org. So nothing new until yet, why then a blogpost again. Its simple today, I tried to use the service and failed. I simple did a screenshot and tried to paste it, and the service told me, its only allowed to past images not bigger then 300k. A simple screenshot, depending from the resolution is bigger as that. So I spoke with Miska again, the problem for the file size is that he have not so lot of space for the service. But he had immediatly a great solution for this and implemented it. You can paste greater pictures now, it depends from the time, the pic should be kept. So for me that works excellent, because mostly I need it for seconds or better until the opposite told me thats what I want or something like that. So now it works really fine for me, thx to Miska.

Header PictureopenSUSE Forums

> > **[KDE4 4.6 beta 1 Released](//forums.opensuse.org/english/news/tech-news/450348-re-kde4-6-beta-1-released-new-post.html)** > > On the 25th of december [the KDE Team](//kde.org) released beta 1 for KDE4 4.6. Read how users discuss the news, their first experiences with this beta release.
> > **[Can't login, file-system is full ](//forums.opensuse.org/english/get-help-here/install-boot-login/450335-cant-log-file-system-full.html)** > > Here's a user having trouble to logon to his system, because his root file system is full. Going through this thread will present you with a lot of info on how this could happen, and lots and lots of methods to solve the problems related to it.
> > **[Best driver for Intel Core i3 integrated graphics](//forums.opensuse.org/english/get-help-here/hardware/450339-best-driver-intel-core-i3-integrated-graphics.html)** > > Some video cards can be real troublemakers for linux users. Lots of times there's no problem at all, sometimes one has to go through quite a lot to get things working as they should. This user has an Intel i3 CPU with integrated graphics chip.
> > **This week's subforum: [Programming and Scripting](//forums.opensuse.org/english/development/programming-scripting/)** > > Many users of the [openSUSE Forums](//forums.opensuse.org) are also involved in programming and scripting, in various kinds of projects. This subforum provides a place where they can discuss, help eachother. If one reads or searches the threads, tons of shared knowledge become available. Help is provided, approaches and techniques discussed. A very useful subforum for starters in the world of programming and scripting too.

Header PictureOn the Web

Announcements

> > **[KDE News: Search this site: December Updates Further Stabilize KDE's 4.5 Series](//dot.kde.org/2010/12/02/december-updates-stabilize-kde-45-further)** > > As of today, the latest release in KDE's 4.5 series is [4.5.4](//kde.org/announcements/announce-4.5.4.php), which adds a bunch of stabilization and translation updates on top of 4.5. Users in general are encouraged to upgrade to 4.5.4. The [changelog](//www.kde.org/announcements/changelogs/changelog4_5_3to4_5_4.php) has more details about some of the changes that went into this release. Enjoy upgrading!

Reports

> > ** [ Linux Planet/Sean Michael Kerner: Yes, Novell Owns Unix-Unix Ownership Settled](//www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/7233/1/)** > > When Novell first announced that it was being acquired by Attachmate for $2.2 billion, the question of who would retain ownership over Unix copyrights was an open issue. As part of the Novell sale, the company also revealed that it is selling 882 patents to a Microsoft-led technology consortium for $450 million. Potential ownership of Unix by the Microsoft-led group could have led to a new round of patent battles between Microsoft and the open source community. In a terse statement, Novell has now publicly stated that it will not be selling Unix as part of the patent sale.
> > **[Datamation/Bruce Byfield Seven Improvements Needed in KDE](//itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3914701/Seven-Improvements-Needed-in-KDE.htm)** > > For the past eighteen months, KDE has been my primary desktop. I use it about two-thirds of the time, with the rest of my desktop usage divided between GNOME, Xfce, and occasionally other desktops like LXDE. You could call me a generally happy user -- but, as with any desktop not designed for me personally, KDE has one or two quirks or deficiencies that make my computing less than ideal. To be sure, KDE has made many improvements since the last time I complained about its shortcomings, in 2008.
> > **[Neowin/Brandon Boyce: A history of viruses on Linux](//www.neowin.net/news/a-history-of-viruses-on-linux)** > > We recently gave you a brief history of viruses on the Mac and as requested by a user we wanted to give you a history of viruses on Linux. Given the tight security integrated into Linux, it is difficult to take advantage of a vulnerability on the computer, but some programmers have found ways around the security measures. There are several free options for anti-virus on Linux that you really should use, even if it isn't always running - a weekly or monthly scan doesn't hurt. Free anti-virus solutions include: ClamAV, AVG, Avast and F-Prot.
> > **[ostatic/Susan Linton: openSUSE to Offer a Rolling Release Repo](//ostatic.com/blog/opensuse-to-offer-a-rolling-release-repo)** > > Although news of [Ubuntu's switch](//ostatic.com/blog/ubuntu-to-become-a-rolling-release) to rolling release was denied, it seems another distribution thinks it just may be a good idea. Greg Kroah-Hartman, openSUSE kernel developer, today announced "openSUSE Tumbleweed." Greg K-H, as he is commonly known, described openSUSE Tumbleweed as, "a repo that is a rolling updated version of openSUSE containing the latest "stable" versions of packages for people to use." In a [post](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2010-11/msg00206.html) to the opensuse-project mailing list Kroah-Hartman offered further information in the form of a Q & A (EDITMARK).
> > **[h-online/Free Linux client released for Ryzom MMORPG game](//rss.feedsportal.com/c/32569/f/491734/s/102d97fd/l/0L0Sh0Eonline0N0Copen0Cnews0Citem0CFree0ELinux0Eclient0Ereleased0Efor0ERyzom0EMMORPG0Egame0E11453560Bhtml0Cfrom0Crss/story01.htm)** > > A free Linux client for the[ Ryzom](//www.ryzom.com/) [massively multi-player online role-laying game](//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_multiplayer_online_role-playing_game) (MMORPG) is now available for [downloading](//dev.ryzom.com/wiki/ryzom/OfficialRyzomClientLinux). The program's development was supported by the [Free Software Foundation](//www.fsf.org/) after games vendor Winch Gate released the source code of the server and Windows client under the [Affero General Public Licence](//www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html) back in May. Winch Gate says it hopes that as many gamers as possible will try out the Linux client, which is available to download in binary and in source code form, and has launched an in-game contest as an incentive. The contest will close on the 10th of January. Participants who manage to find all seven Linux Steles that are scattered around the start island of Silan will be entered in a draw for a [ZaReason Linux Terra-HD Netbook](//zareason.com/shop/Terra-HD.html) worth $450 (£289) or its equivalent in cash.
> > **[h-online/Mozilla: Firefox 4 Beta 8 coming next Tuesday](//www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Mozilla-Firefox-4-Beta-8-coming-next-Tuesday-1145550.html)** > > Originally [scheduled](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases) to arrive on the 30th of November, the [Mozilla](//www.mozilla.org/) Project has confirmed that it plans to ship the eighth beta for version 4 of its open source Firefox web browser on Tuesday, the 7th of December. According to Mozilla's [Platform Meeting Minutes](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/2010-11-23), the developers criteria for release for [Firefox 4 Beta 8](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases/Firefox_4.0b8) is "no stability regressions from previous beta". Mozilla says that Firefox 4 Beta 8 will ship at the same time as Firefox 4 Beta 3 for Mobile devices "in order to align on some sync changes" and that beta 8 will include stability fixes for graphics, JavaScript optimisations and various UI fixes related to the Add-ons manager. Based on the [meeting notes](https://wiki.mozilla.org/WeeklyUpdates/2010-11-29#Firefox_4) from the 29th of November, the eight beta was being held by 29 blocker bugs. At the time of this writing, that number is [now 18](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=blocking2.0%3Abeta8), two of them rated as critical. (...)
> > **[h-online/Flock 3.5 social web browser arrives](//www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Flock-3-5-social-web-browser-arrives-1145337.html)** > > The [Flock](//www.flock.com/) developers have [announced](//twitter.com/Flock/status/9650158010638336) the release of version 3.5 of their social web browser based on Google's open source Chromium platform – versions previous to the 3.x branch were based on Firefox. Flock is a popular cross-platform browser that automatically manages updates and media from several popular social services, including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Digg, YouTube and Twitter. Flock 3.5 is based on the 7.x branch of Chromium and features updates to new account creation, as well as support for the business-oriented [LinkedIn](//www.linkedin.com/) social networking site. Also new in this version is support for Mac OS X – the previous version (3.0) was only available for Windows systems. Version 2.6.1 still seems to be available for Linux users, but Flock does not promote or support it. (...)

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