The IT world moves fast and along with it does social networking. It’s been only a few days since Google announced the limited availability of Google+ pages and already thousands of Google-plussers have created a Google+ page. Of course, we’re social too and thus the openSUSE project now has an official Google+ page!
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Archive for the ‘Announcements’ Category
Geekos go on G+
November 8th, 2011 by Koudaras KonstantinosAre you ready for RC2?
November 3rd, 2011 by Jos Poortvliet
Following the openSUSE 12.1 roadmap, RC2 has been released upon this innocent world. This is your final chance to test openSUSE 12.1 before we move to the final version! We need to know about all big problems NOW! Read on to find out how to help.
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Fourth openSUSE Board Election 2011
October 28th, 2011 by Izabel ValverdeThis years openSUSE Election Committee is in the pleasant position to announce the 2011 Board Elections.
So, if you want to participate in the openSUSE board and influence the future direction of the project please stand up and announce your candidacy. If you want to vote for the candidates, please make sure your openSUSE membership is approved. If you are a contributor of openSUSE but you are not a member yet, apply for membership now and be a part of the changes to come.
openSUSE 12.1 RC1 spotted in the wild
October 24th, 2011 by Jos Poortvliet
As was already blogged by Vincent Untz, a few weeks after our last milestone was released as beta 1, the first Release Candidate of openSUSE 12.1 is now floating over the web!
What’s new
The next release of openSUSE is expected to bring a large number of improvements and changes. Many of these are the ‘usual’ updates any Linux distribution offers. These include the latest Firefox, GNOME 3.2 and KDE’s Plasma Workspace 4.7. Under the hood, we have Linux kernel 3.1 and we expect to be the first to ship Google’s new programming language Go. We also overhauled our boot procedure introducing systemd and Grub2 (testing!) and of course we’ll ship the latest developer tools and libraries as well as all the sysadmin goodies openSUSE is known for!
But we also have some really unique treats. The coolest among those is Snapper, a btrfs-based tool which allows you to view the differences between current and previous versions of files on your system and lets you roll back the changes, bringing back lost files or undoing damaging overwrites.
Testing
The changes in underlying boot technology, the new tools like Snapper as well as the rest of the operating system need a good workout for the release! So now we need YOUR help! Go to the download page and grab your copy of openSUSE 12.1 RC1 and test it on your desktop, in a VM or on a laptop!
You can find information on testing on the openSUSE Testing wiki page which also includes a link to the most annoying 12.1 bugs. Help us shorten that list by re-testing the problematic areas or by fixing the bugs; or help us find new pressing issues!
Get openSUSE 12.1 RC1 from this page.
More information and other helping-out
The openSUSE 12.1 Portal page has been set up but still needs quite some work. There are screenshots to be taken, release notes to be written and Documentation to be composed. We also welcome help with translation!
openSUSE Announces First Public Release of openQA
October 11th, 2011 by Jos Poortvliet
The openSUSE Project announces the 1.0 release of the unique cross-distribution-capable, fully automated testing framework openQA. openQA is the only comprehensive testing tool which can run tests on every level of the OS, from core functionality like the bootloader and booting the kernel up to testing applications like Firefox and LibreOffice. It shows the results in a convenient web interface and allows testers to see screenshots and even videos of the issues found. openQA is used to run nightly tests of the ‘Factory’ development repository for the upcoming openSUSE 12.1 release. openQA is available under the GPL version 2 or later.
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SUSE Hackweek 7 – Next Week
September 22nd, 2011 by News TeamOne of the ways SUSE and its developers contribute to openSUSE is through Hackweek: – a week long sprint permitting developers to work on something entirely of their own design or wishes as long as it is FOSS-related. Started in 2007, it has become a regular part of SUSE’s development. This is in keeping in line with the openSUSE Project’s goal of being more than just an organization that benefits itself. We believe in a project that benefits the greater good of free and open software.
Some 150+ developers will have free reign to work on new applications or make improvements to other software projects. Hackweek also permits developers to push away from the grind of deadlines and “must fix” bug fixing (unless it’s a critical customer situation) which can be at times stressful and tedious.
So, how does this relate to the larger openSUSE community? First, some ideas come directly from openFATE, the openSUSE tracker for wish-list items and ways to help guide development of the distro: You can see the list of proposed Hackweek projects here, which will surely grow in the next few days.
Second, nothing blocks people outside the SUSE staff from participating. Most importanly, it shows that SUSE is an innovative distribution whose contributions make open source better for everyone.
And third, it follows openSUSE’s motto: Have a lot of fun ! Hackweek has it’s own motto: “No Motto, do what you want, but do it!”
We asked Jürgen Weigert and Pavol Rusnak, developers from SUSE, to explain how they participate
Q: How does someone from the openSUSE community participate Can they also have their own project?
Jürgen: Yes, they can work together with others (check openFATE for a list) or do their own project.
Pavol: But for doing their own project they don’t have to wait for Hackweek, right? :-)
Q: Can you give some examples of projects which were started from Hackweek ?
Pavol: SAT-solver used in zypper by Michael Schroeder, Fifth Leg font by Jakub Steiner, SUSE Paste by Michal Hrušecký and cnetworkmanager by Martin Vidner.
Jürgen: Polka by Cornelius Schumacher, YaSTroid by Stephen Shaw.
Q: What will you work on during this coming Hackweek ?
Jürgen: Make EyeFI sdcard work with Linux – see Fate#312811
Pavol: Rewrite spec-cleaner into Ruby – see Fate#312823
Q: What other projects are planned for this upcoming Hackweek ?
Pavol: Getting Enlightenment 17 into Factory, various openQA additions, Continuous YaST testing in Jenkins and much much more!
Jürgen: Also hackers need catering and thus we will have food provided in the common area – and the common meal is also a great chance to discuss Hackweek projects face to face. The camera team will go around and record videos and upload those to blip.tv and YouTube. Also, there’s a rumor about some nice surprise. :-)
Q: For developers what is the most satisfying part of Hackweek ?
Jürgen: Switching topics to something completely different and extend my comfort zone by looking at new areas. This year it’s wireless, an area I never touched before as developer.
Pavol: Yeah, I think working on something unknown, unexplored is always exciting and challenging
Q: How does the openSUSE and the larger open source community benefit ?
Jürgen: Quite often it’s scratching my own itches – and if something is successful, it might become a successful open source project. I’ve seen some people interested in projects like Bretzn or ARM support for openSUSE that will benefit openSUSE directly. Some people which are surprised by the late announcement of this Hackweek have said that they will just have a look into the upcoming beta of openSUSE 12.1 – getting familiar with new technologies like systemd, report bugs and improve the distribution.
Pavol: Lots of the projects that are started during Hackweek are directly integrated into the following openSUSE release. Also if they are usable by others they are adopted by other distributions as well or merged directly into upstream which is cool!
Q: Are there any awards or competitions during Hackweek ?
Pavol: Previous years we had a small group of judges that went through the finished Hackweek projects in openFATE and awarded three developers with nice gadgets. I expect it will be similar this year, but I am not sure.
Jürgen: Yes – for those that register their projects in FATE. Details will be announced later.
Q: Is there anything else the larger openSUSE community should know about ?
Jürgen: The infrastructure teams will also participate in Hackweek and thus not make major changes – and also might not review openSUSE:Factory submissions directly. Please let them know if you run into serious issues.
Pavol: If you see a project in openFATE which you like, tell us so in the comments or vote for the feature. Also if you have some nice idea, feel free to put it in openFATE, maybe some undecided developer will find it interesting and implement it.
Q: Thanks for the interview.
Both: Thank you and have a lot of fun!
So, stay tuned for the results of Hackweek where everyone has a lot of fun!
article submitted by Peter Linnell
Sponsors present at openSUSE Conference 2011
September 5th, 2011 by Jos Poortvliet
The openSUSE Conference 2011 team is happy to announce the partners for this year’s conference. Aside from sponsoring, there are contributions in terms of sessions, media coverage and network bandwidth. Let’s look at what our sponsors contribute, what sessions they’ll present and thank them for their support!
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Drone On!
September 2nd, 2011 by Jos PoortvlietAmong other things, the openSUSE project is about “having a lot of fun”. In that spirit we would like to add a bit of diversion and an extra incentive for everyone to register and attend the openSUSE conference.
And the Milestones Keep On Coming!
September 1st, 2011 by Bryen YunashkoFire up your virtual machines, get your test machines motoring, and start tweaking your fingers. It’s testing time!
openSUSE 12.1′s next milestone 5 is now ready for download. Thanks to the men and women of openSUSE Factory who kept their eye on the ball with all the wonderful flurry of activities going on in our Project these days, they never lost sight and we’ll be sure to have an awesome final release in November.
There’s a lot of interesting updates to the 12.1 release and some cool new technologies including GNOME 3 and SystemD. You’ll definitely want to take this milestone for a spin and see what you can expect in 12.1. And if you’ve never tested before, its easy if you follow these instructions. Being a tester is one of the great ways of contributing to the free software movement, and there’s plenty of room for testers in openSUSE Project.
As always with any pre-release, there are some known bugs you should read before starting up your test environment.
Here’s some other interesting things you can expect to see when you try Milestone 5:
- Further changes have been made for systemd to replace the InitV system. The default is still InitV and we encourage testing of systemd so that we can switch the default for the next release.
- We’re focusing on the GPLed OpenJDK version now, this milestone is the last one that comes with the binary Java provided by Oracle.
- GNOME 3.1.5 is another step closer to GNOME 3.2
- glibc has been updated to version 2.14
So, click here as we’d love to hear from you as you begin testing the latest Milestone. If you already have a previous Milestone installed, simply run “zypper dup” at the command line to update to the latest Milestone.
openSUSE Conference 2011
August 15th, 2011 by Henne VogelsangThe third openSUSE Conference, osc11, kicks off on Sunday September 11, 2011 in Nuremberg, Germany. Under the motto RWX³ all Free and Open Source Software enthusiasts are invited to come together for four days to learn, hack and to have a lot of fun. The program will cover a variety topics with an emphasis on interaction between participants. The conference is free of charge and open to anyone!
