Good things come to those who wait: I think we’ve waited long enough to release the first openSUSE-Education version for openSUSE 10.3.

Just use the YaST2 “Add-On Product” module to add our Online-Repository. A more detailed description can be found at the openSUSE wiki.

For those without permanent Internet connection, we’ve created a DVD ISO which can be downloaded here:

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/education/openSUSE-Education-1.0-for-10.3.iso (3,7GB)

To give new users a hint how to install the DVD, we’ve created PDFs in english, german and italian language containing all needed information and in addition some descriptions for LTSP, GCompris, iTalc and Tuxpaint. We want to reuse existing wiki articles for this in 11.0 and add these descriptions also to the Helpcenter. The PDFs are also available in the documentation directory of the DVD.

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The openSUSE Project is proud to announce the launch of forums.opensuse.org, a merger of the openSUSE Novell support forums, suseforums.net, and suselinuxsupport.de - the three largest English-language dedicated support forums for openSUSE. The merged forums at forums.opensuse.org will provide a single forum for the openSUSE community to find support and discuss openSUSE.

The forums went live on June 9th, a result of the combined effort between the staffs of the suseforums.net, suselinuxsupport.de, and the Novell forums. The project team has been working since early 2008 to merge the forums and provide a unified forum for all English-speaking openSUSE users. The openSUSE Project will be looking at adding other languages to the forums in the very near future.

The new infrastructure is hosted by Novell to provide the highest possible quality of service, as part of Novell’s support of the openSUSE Project.

The forums hosted at forums.opensuse.org are available immediately. Users with an openSUSE account for the wiki, bugzilla, and other services wil be able to use their existing username for the forums. Users of suseforums.net and suselinuxsupport.de will be able to create new accounts on forums.opensuse.org.

With the launch, the forum team won’t stop working to add new features to support the openSUSE community. The merged forum is just the first step in bringing all openSUSE users and contributors better ways to communicate and support one another.

If you have questions or comments about the forums, the forums staff can be found in IRC on Freenode in the #opensuse-forums channel.

(Please digg this link to help get the word out. Thanks!)

As SUSE Linux 10.0 has reached its end of life in November last year, the Packman team will be removing all SUSE Linux 10.0 packages from its repository end of this week. If you want to keep them aside, make sure to download a copy before.

And as for good news, the Packman team has started to build its packages for openSUSE 11.0 (against Beta 1) since a few days. You can enable it by going to YaST -> Software Management. From there select Repositories -> Manage Repositories in the menu. Then select Add -> Community Repositories, and from here select the “Packman Repository”.

The codecs one-click-install for 11.0 should be updated and available next week.

Google have announced the openSUSE projects and students taking part in this year’s Google Summer of Code. The projects include:

• LTSP GUI Management for openSUSE
  by Jan Weber, mentored by Jigish Gohil

• Interactive Crash Analysis
  by Nikolay Derkach, mentored by Jan Blunck

• Face Based Authentication
  by Rohan Anil, mentored by Alex Lau Chun Yin

• Grub4ext4: enable ext4 file system as boot partition
  by PengTao, mentored by Coly Li

• New approach for (RPM) packages creation
  By Andrei Oprisan, mentored by Stanislav Brabec

• Libzypp Download Failover
  by Gerard Farràs i Ballabriga, mentored by Peter Poeml

• GNOME Build service client for OpenSUSE
  by Mario Đanić, mentored by Rodrigo Moya

• Integration of OpenID Consumer to Build Service
  by Hameedullah Khan, mentored by Cornelius Schumacher

• Migration asistent reloaded
  by Peter Libič, mentored by Pavol Rusnak

• Build Service <-> Eclipse Integration
  by longhong, mentored by Michal Marek

Only 10 applications from the 67 could be chosen. Special thanks to everybody that has been involved so far: the volunteering mentors, those driving the application process, and of course — all of the students. Congratulations to all the selected students!

The openSUSE Project is going Bug Smashing on April 25, and we want you to join us! We’re looking for openSUSE users and contributors who have some time to help triage YaST bugs and clean up Bugzilla.

Join us on #openSUSE-Factory from 09:00 to 18:00 CEST. We’ll be going through the Bugzilla and reviewing YaST bugs to see which bugs are still valid, gathering information about existing bugs, and generally paring down the bug count to help developers focus on the most crucial problems.

Anyone can participate — you don’t have to be a developer or power user to join in, just point your browser at the openSUSE Bugzilla, log in (be sure to create an account if you don’t have one already) and start searching for bugs against YaST. Help verify bugs that are in Bugzilla, and help close bugs that have already been fixed.

Our goal for Friday is to get the YaST bug count in Bugzilla down and clear the field for YaST developers to concentrate on real bugs that need to be smashed for the openSUSE 11.0 release. You can see the current open bugs here.

Why do we do Bug Smashing days? We want to do a couple of things. First, we want to help to train new contributors who haven’t done bug reporting and triage before. By holding a Bug Smashing Day we can be ready to answer questions and provide support for new bug smashers in real time.

Second, we want to focus our attention on a specific application or feature. In this case, we want to focus on YaST and help clean up the bug database so the YaST team can concentrate on the real problems.

What do you need to participate? Just a Bugzilla account, a system with a relevant release of openSUSE, and be signed in to #openSUSE-Factory.

Can’t participate in the Bug Smashing days? No problem. We encourage Bugzilla cleanup all year round! See the page on submitting bug reports, and join us on #opensuse-factory on Freenode.

Have questions about Bug Smashing? See the Bug Reporting FAQ. If your question still isn’t answered, send a note to Christoph Thiel or Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier.

With RC2 for openSUSE 10.3 the openSUSE-Education project starts the last testing phase before we release the final version of openSUSE-Education 1.0 for openSUSE 10.3. At this point, the only things left for the release is fixing possible bugs in the current packages and working on the documentation.

Recent Changes

In contrast to the normal release work-flow, we updated many packages and even added new ones to the media. Below is an incomplete list of changes with this release:

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The openSUSE Project is looking for students who are interested in contributing to the project via the Google Summer of Code. The application deadline for students is Monday, March 31st at 5 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. (00:00 UTC, April 1, 2008)

If you’re not sure whether you’re qualified to join as a student, check the SoC FAQ — it spells out the eligibility very well.

After all students have submitted applications, the mentoring organization (in this case, the openSUSE project) will review and rank the proposals.

Mentors must be signed up by April 11, and students must be matched with mentors.

The entire timeline is available on the Google Summer of Code site.

The openSUSE Project’s ideas page is available on the openSUSE wiki. As you can see, we have a ton of good ideas. We’re open to more, though, so feel free to add one if it’s something you’re particularly interested in working on.

If you have any questions about the Summer of Code program, please contact Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier or Christoph Thiel.

Zonker wrote the following:

I’m happy to announce that the openSUSE Project has been accepted to Google’s Summer of Code 2008! Now the real fun begins!

We’re now in the “interim period” for students to discuss application ideas with mentoring organizations. (That’d be us.) Students will then have from March 24th through March 31st to apply to Google. See our ideas page, and Google’s SoC 2008 FAQ for more info and timeline.

Kudos to Google for acting quickly on this — applications for organizations were due last Wednesday, and I was notified this afternoon that we had been accepted. That’s pretty speedy, given the number of applications I’m sure they had to read through.

Discussion about openSUSE’s participation in Google’s SoC 2008 is most appropriate on the opensuse-project mailing list.

In order to provide a better service to the existing openSUSE Community and to our new users, we’re pleased to announce that suseforums.net, suselinuxsupport.de and the openSUSE support forums at forums.novell.com (the three largest English speaking dedicated SUSE forums) are joining forces to merge into the new official openSUSE Forums at forums.opensuse.org.

Behind the scenes, a project team consisting of Novell employees, openSUSE Community members, and existing forums’ staff have been working on this project since the beginning of 2008. The new infrastructure will be hosted by Novell to ensure the highest possible quality of service.
Current plans are to migrate the existing active members of suseforums.net and suselinuxsupport.de into the official openSUSE Forums, simultaneously implementing Single Sign On for the whole openSUSE Community. We hope to make the transition as seamless as possible, and will go live Spring 2008. More information will be posted as available.

All in all, a big gain for the whole openSUSE Community!

I’d like to give a warm welcome to Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier who joins the openSUSE project as “openSUSE community manager”. You can reach him directly at zonker@opensuse.org. He has his own openSUSE blog at http://zonker.opensuse.org, I advise to go over and see what he has to say himself!

He is a long time Linux user and does a lot of writing about Linux and open source for several publications and conributed to books as well. Prior to his new role as community manager for openSUSE he served Linux Magazine as Editor-in-Chief. His personal webpage is http://www.dissociatedpress.net.

The openSUSE community manager will act as community advocate and ombudsman thus relaying openSUSE community and users needs back to Novell. Therefore you will find Zonker on many community events. He will also drive marketing programs around openSUSE to make the project more successful and attract more developers and users.

Zonker will be travelling the next weeks and you can meet him and other openSUSE members at these two venues:

• at SCALE from 8th to 10th February
• at FOSDEM from 23th to 24th February

For those that wonder what happened with the “openSUSE Chief evangelist” position that was opened in October: this is exactly the position, we just found it more suitable to change the title of Joe.

I have talked a lot with Zonker through the last weeks and look forward to working with him - and look forward meeting him soon in person here in Nürnberg!

Andreas