For users coming from 11.1, openSUSE 11.2 actually features two GNOME releases worth of updates. Because of the lengthy release cycle, openSUSE skipped the 2.26 release and jumped to GNOME 2.28, which was made available in September.

Nautilus now has a plugin to allow quick and easy file sharing. Just right-click on the folder you’d like to share and select “Sharing Options.” This makes use of Samba, so you need to enable directory sharing under the Samba Server module in YaST.

New and Improved Cheese

The Webcam application for GNOME, Cheese, includes some enhancements for 2.28, including a redesigned interface that’s better suited for netbooks.

Not only does openSUSE feature the goodness from upstream GNOME, but also some home-grown improvements as well. For instance, the Sonar theme that is the default in 11.2. It’s a slightly darker, but still green, theme that’s pleasant to look at and show off to users new to Linux!

Vincent Untz, a member of the openSUSE Booster team and member of the GNOME Foundation Board, says that part of the main focus for 11.2 was “to be a better upstream citizen” with GNOME. So, for the most part, openSUSE does not diverge greatly from upstream GNOME — but there are some differences.

For example, GNOME 2.28 ships Empathy as the default instant messaging client. Untz says that it’s likely openSUSE will switch to Empathy in 11.3, but due to issues with some protocols and proxies, it was decided to keep Pidgin as the default client for one more release. Empathy is, of course, available via the repositories, so users who want to start with Empathy now can do so.

Want to get a preview of GNOME 3.0? The final GNOME 3.0 release isn’t due until September 2010, but openSUSE 11.2 has an early build of GNOME Shell in the repositories and users can see what all the fuss is about (or will be about), early on.

And, of course, you’ll find Firefox as the default Web browser for openSUSE instead of Epiphany. openSUSE users will find the most recent stable version of Firefox (3.5) on their GNOME desktop, though Epiphany and its new Webkit backend are available in the openSUSE 11.2 repositories.

All in all, there’s a lot to look forward to in GNOME in openSUSE 11.2. Be ready to grab it on November 12th!

The highlights include: the openSUSE DVD preselected to KDE 4.3; new Firefox KDE integration; OpenOffice.org KDE 4 integration; consistent KDE artwork; all other standard applications fully ported to KDE 4, including KNetworkManager, Amarok, DigiKam, K3b, Konversation and more.

We will also be talking to openSUSE and KDE core developer Luboš Luňák, to find out more about the developments in KDE 4.3, where the project is concentrating its efforts, and what the openSUSE boosters team is really all about. Read on for the full story…

KDE 4.3 Preselection on DVD

After a feature request shot to #1 on the openSUSE feature tracker, openFATE, a lively discussion began on the openSUSE mailing lists about whether to preselect KDE on the DVD installation. openSUSE, and SUSE Linux before that, had always had a strong KDE following in the community, and the discussion picked up a lot of momentum and popularity. As an overview, the openSUSE-project mailing list received 751 mails in August, in comparison to July’s 89.

It was finally decided to default the radio button to KDE in the DVD installer. Therefore, with the openSUSE 11.2 release, the KDE desktop will be installed if the user accepts the default setting. Users can also choose the GNOME desktop at this stage.

Firefox KDE Integration

Recognising the popularity of Firefox, the KDE team decided to have Firefox as the default browser for openSUSE 11.2. As a consequence, there has been a significant effort pioneered by Luboš Luňák to make Firefox more friendly to KDE users.

The Firefox integration by openSUSE means that wherever Firefox contacts the rest of the desktop, KDE components are used, including: file dialogs, application selection dialog, mimetype handling, notifications system, and more. A screencast of these changes has been recorded by Javier Llorente:

KDE Artwork

As of openSUSE 11.2, our KDE participates in the KDE drive to create a shared, consistent brand, using recognisably openSUSE artwork developed by Nuno Pinheiro of the KDE community:

KDE 3

openSUSE has been the only mainstream distribution to allow the parallel installation of KDE 3 and KDE 4, but as KDE 4.3 has become a widely accepted replacement for KDE 3, 11.2 no longer offers a KDE 3 desktop installation in the default installer.

KDE 3 applications however remain available where no KDE 4 port exists, and users can still install a KDE 3 desktop using the openSUSE Build Service.

Applications now Ported to KDE 4.3 and Improved

As KDE 4.3 reaches a stage of complete maturity, the last remaining applications were ported fully to KDE 4. openSUSE and KDE developer Will Stephenson and others performed a complete overhaul of KDE’s Network Manager for KDE 4.3. The result is a more powerful application with an emphasis on usability.

Popular applications such as Amarok, K3b and Konversation are now also included in their KDE4 versions for openSUSE 11.2:

YaST Control Center

The YaST control center has now been fully ported to Qt 4, and the graphical user interface has been given a complete makeover. The new interface is now consistent with KDE’s Configure Desktop (systemsettings):

Other modules such as software management have also been redesigned:

More Applications on the Live CD

Since openSUSE started switching to LZMA compression in its RPMs and Live CDs, we have been left with a significant amount of additional space on the live CDs. This now means that several new KDE applications can be included, such as: Choqok, a twitter and identi.ca client for KDE; Yakuake; and Marble:

Many thanks to Martin Schlander and Will Stephenson for their contributions and suggestions for this article.

Talk with Luboš Luňák

Konqueror is a mascot of the KDE project. Why did you decide to invest time in integrating Firefox in 11.2?

But we have done nothing to the dragon. And actually it is very easy to switch the default back to Konqueror (I myself still use it). Also the truth is that Konqueror was not 100% the default browser in openSUSE 11.1 either. For example, clicking links in KDE applications launched Konqueror, the panel had the Konqueror icon, but on the desktop there was the Firefox icon. So we fixed this inconsistency by making Firefox the default everywhere, which should improve the situation for less experienced users who usually use the desktop icon and could get confused by sometimes getting a different browser, and more experienced users who want Konqueror can handle going to KDE settings and switching the radio button in the Default Applications module back from Firefox.

However, the main reason was that many users simply have a problem with using Konqueror. As I said, I myself still use Konqueror, but e.g. if somebody else wants to browse the Internet on my home machine, I give them Firefox. I think we simply should not try to ignore the reality, as much as we might not like it. We will again evaluate the possibilities for the default browser (and the HTML rendering component in Konqueror’s case) again for the next openSUSE release.

As for the integration, when we decided to default fully to Firefox for 11.2, it became quite clear that Firefox is not that suitable as the default KDE browser. People who did the X11/Unix integration of Firefox were quite random in seeing a difference between X11/Unix and GNOME, even in the source code and sometimes not at all, so using Firefox with KDE was not a pleasant user experience. File dialogs were Gtk ones, and were used even for selecting an application to open a file with; default applications were usually from GNOME and the button order in dialogs was wrong (not just the other way around, but Gtk dialogs need an explicit call to adjust the button order depending on the desktop, so Firefox’s own dialogs and “broken” Gtk dialogs were swapped while proper Gtk dialogs had the KDE order).

There were attempts at making Qt ports of Firefox in the past, but as far as I know there has never been one that would be really usable (and with the advances of WebKit and the fact that it’s shipping with Qt I don’t see that happening in the future). The reason for why we could achieve something in a few days that has been missing for years is down to the fact that I aimed pretty low – this is not a port of Firefox, but it’s the same Gtk-based version of Firefox, with ‘if running in KDE, call this small helper app’ code inserted in desktop-specific places doing most of the job. Even with this approach I think Firefox now integrates into KDE reasonably well.

KWin has now got reliable, speedy 3D desktop effects. How do you see the window manager’s role developing with the trend towards semantic activity-based interfaces and netbooks, and how do you see KDE on openSUSE participating in this trend?

Actually I’ve been so busy with openSUSE for the last year that I’ve had only little time to do something directly upstream. For this reason I’m really happy that there are people like Lucas Murray, Martin Gräßlin and others who keep moving KWin forward. So, although I still try to at least keep on eye on KWin, I think it would be better to ask people who actually do the work.

From the things worked on or mostly done for KDE 4.4 that I remember there are branches for adding window tabbing and window tiling to KWin and for decorations, besides merging of Oxygen forks Ozone and Nitrogen back into one decoration, there is also an SVG-based decoration called Aurorae that allows easy theming even for non-developers.

Looking forward to KDE 4.4 and 4.5, what kind of areas will the KDE project be concentrating on?

There is a feature plan for 4.4 at in the KDE techbase (with some of those things possibly not happening for 4.4 and other things happing even though not being on the list), but besides that the answer is something along the lines of the answer for the previous question. I think KDE in openSUSE and the openSUSE Boosters team will keep me busy for the time coming.

Some of the interesting things in 4.4 or 4.5 could be improved netbook support, porting of KMail and other KDEPIM applications to Akonadi and basically small improvements everywhere , now that most of the base things are pretty in their place. It could mean there will be also some time for having look at some optimizations, something I’d like to have a look at myself if possible, we will see about that.

Can you tell us a little about the new openSUSE Boosters team?

You can read about them in the new.openSUSE.org announcement article.
In a nutshell, the plan is that the team will work on helping the community making openSUSE better full-time, whatever that will require.

How can people start contributing to KDE in openSUSE? Where is there a need for new contributors?

Are you kidding ? Of course whoever wants to contribute is welcome. And this is not just about developers or packages, pretty much anybody can help – the KDE team could use help also with bug triaging, writing documentation and HOWTOs, helping other users, and even just running the regular IRC meeting or taking minutes for it would help.

I’m quite sure we can find ways to contribute for whoever joins our IRC meeting, our mailing list opensuse-kde@opensuse.org or the #opensuse-kde IRC channel on Freenode. I hope after openSUSE 11.2 is out we will find some time for writing simple HOWTOs like ‘adding a patch to KDE packages’ or ‘upgrading a version of a KDE application’, so that people will easily be able to do things in the openSUSE Build Service that they need and that help openSUSE and KDE as well.

What’s new in KDE 4.1.3?

The KDE Project has included a lot of great improvements in the KDE 4.1 series. This release brings back the much-loved KDE-PIM suite, with KMail, KOrganizer, Akregator, and much more.

The Dolphin file manager has also been revamped for the 4.1 series, and includes support for tabs, and new context actions make using Dolphin even easier! Just right-click on a file and you can select copy and Move actions without having to drag files around.

Old habits die hard, long-time KDE users don’t have to stop using Konqueror for file management if they prefer the Konqueror interface! And, if Konqueror is your choice of Web browser, you’ll be pleased to find one of the improvements is that you can now Undo closed tabs. Didn’t mean to close that Konqueror tab? Just go to Edit -> Undo and you can get back to that Web page with no hassle.

And both Dolphin and Konqueror have “Super User Mode” menu entries, so you can handle file management as root without any hassles.

For browsing the world, you’ve got Marble. Marble is a “desktop globe” application for viewing the world. In 4.1, Marble includes support for OpenStreetMap, so you can browse free (as in speech) maps.

Don’t like a cluttered desktop? Then you’ll love the Folder View plasmoid that confines all those messy files to one organized view. No more disorganized desktop! (On the computer. Your physical desktop is still your problem.)

openSUSE Enhancements

In addition to all the features found in KDE 4.1.3, openSUSE 11.1 includes openSUSE-specific artwork, and a number of features that have been backported from the 4.2 series.

Of particular interest are the KWin improvements in this release. openSUSE users now have a number of backported KWin effects to enjoy, and show off to their friends. If KWin effects aren’t your cup of tea, you can use the new Compiz KDE configuration module to enable and handle Compiz on KDE 4.

The desktop toolbox has been disabled by default due to concerns about its usability. Want to re-enable it? No problem. Just right click on the desktop, select the drop-down box next to Desktop Activity, and enable “Default desktop containment.”

The Plasma desktop shell has several improvements, including the ability to auto-hide the panel, and you can enable overlap between windows and the panel, if you enjoy that sort of thing.

This release also includes Powerdevil, for easier and better power management on your KDE 4 desktop. Just click the battery icon in the system tray.

This release also marks a move to PackageKit for updates. In openSUSE 11.0, GNOME switched to using PackageKit for updates. With 11.1, the KDE Updater Applet has switched from the zypp backed to use PackageKit as well.

(In the spirit of late being better than “never,” this peek is being published after the 11.1 announcement, but we still think it will be useful to users who haven’t tried KDE 4 in 11.1.)

New in GNOME 2.24

As always, a new version of GNOME means new features and enhancements that make using your computer easier. Many times, they’re small features that once you start using them, you can’t live without. One example is the new tabbed browsing in Nautilus, the file browser.

Communication

openSUSE 11.1’s GNOME Desktop includes some of the latest and greatest in communication and organization tools in Evolution, Pidgin, and Ekiga. The newest version of Evolution contains new functionality to make anyone who sends out many similar emails a day, or those who are fans of Google’s online communication tools very happy.

Evolution can now save mail as templates. Need to have a simple, standard message to send out to contacts who all ask the same question? Or do you want a standard message to send to new clients? Either way, you’ll find a use for this handy feature.

Living in the Gmail universe, but don’t want to lose the safety and speed of having a desktop client? Now with Evolution, your Evolution Address Book can be synchronized with Google Contacts, meaning you now have the full range of Google support: Gmail through IMAP mail support, Google Calendar which synchronizes with your Evolution Calendar, and now contacts synchronization support.

Frequent instant messengers will be happy to see that the new version of Pidgin, our multi-network instant messaging and chat client, is included.

Pidgin can connect to all of your different instant messaging clients and social networks, including AIM, MSN/Windows Live, Yahoo! IM, and MySpace Chat. Pidgin also serves as an IRC chat client, through which community support for openSUSE can be received.

What to talk with your friends or family by voice or face-to-face? Meet Ekiga, the openSUSE Internet telephony client.

With Ekiga, a compatible microphone or webcam, and an SIP account (all of which can be set up upon first running Ekiga), talking to your friends, family, or colleagues is easy and free if they’re also using a SIP client. With an appropriate SIP call out plan, you can make affordable voice calls over the normal phone system, right from your computer!

Entertainment and Multimedia

When the work is done, it’s time to play! openSUSE 11.1’s GNOME contains some of the best multimedia playing and building applications available, from Banshee, our state-of-the-art music player; to Brasero, an innovative DVD and CD burning application which enables you to make videos from your computer burn on a DVD to share with friends and family; to F-Spot, an amazing yet amazingly simple photo organizer.

openSUSE’s Banshee Media Player is incredibly powerful, yet dead-simple to use. Bring over music from another operating system, a CD collection, or an MP3 player, and Banshee will catalog and apply cover art to them all. Organize and enjoy your movies with the video playback features. Stay up to date and entertained with your favorite audio and video podcasts, or listen to one of many streaming radio stations available. You can even discover new music with Last.fm, a music social network that’s built right in to Banshee.

Several new features are available in Banshee in openSUSE 11.1. Banshee now supports compilation albums. So whether it’s the greatest hits of the ’90s or the soundtrack to your favorite movie, Banshee now recognizes and correctly organizes compilation albums.

The developers of Banshee have taken special attention to the look and feel of Banshee. One of the areas this is most noticeable is the new Now Playing window. Although this pane is meant for showing videos, new in Banshee is that when playing audio, this window displays the album cover and song/show information, making it perfect for parties so your friends can see what’s playing.

Banshee also now supports Internet Radio. The application comes pre-installed with dozens of stations already, ranging from all spectrums of music to talk. Want to add more? As long as the Internet radio stream you wish to add has a compatible stream, it’s as simple as a click of the mouse in Banshee.

Managing photos on openSUSE is easy and fun with F-Spot, the photo manager. With F-Spot, you can browse your photo collection by date or tags, and making basic photo corrections is a snap. You can even export your photos to Internet photo websites, such as Flickr, Picasa, or SmugMug. F-Spot is also extend-able, with extensions written to make F-Spot even more powerful or more useful, such as an extension to export photos to Facebook. These are easily installed with just a few clicks of the mouse.

F-Spot in openSUSE 11.1 features a redesigned user interface, giving easy access and better descriptions to the photo editing tools, as well as easier access to photo metadata information in the sidebar.

Every now and then, you may have had duplicate photos show up in your library. What’s more annoying than that? Having to delete each one, one by one. Now, not only does F-Spot prevent duplicate photos by detecting duplicates upon importing new photos, but with a click of a mouse, F-Spot will analyze your entire photo library for duplicates and eliminate them.

You’ve got music, video, and photos on your computer. But what if you want to take them off your computer once in a while? With Brasero, the CD/DVD burning utility, it’s as easy as can be, and is included in openSUSE!

With Brasero you can save movies on DVDs to watch on your TV, save songs and other audio shows on CDs to play in the car, or burn ISO images onto discs.

Finally, when it’s just time to have fun, there’s Cheese. Cheese is a webcam studio app that, with a compatible webcam, allows you to take pictures or videos of yourself and your friends.

With Cheese, you can apply special effects to the pictures or video, and make a funny video to upload to YouTube or other video sharing website. You can even apply multiple effects, to create a unique image!

Configuration Improvements

openSUSE 11.1 features several new improvements for the GNOME desktop’s administration and configuration, including further YaST integration with GNOME, setting up 3G cellular data connections, and more.

YaST Integration Improvements

Even with the improving integration of YaST into GNOME, YaST has still remained with the same button and UI structure of it’s KDE counterpart, which doesn’t exactly match GNOME. With openSUSE 11.1, YaST has been given a visual refresh. Now, at the top of every YaST screen is a short description of what the YaST module does, with a link to getting further help. The buttons have also been relabeled so they match the GNOME standard, meaning YaST now truly looks at home on the GNOME desktop!

Cellular Broadband Connectivity

Since openSUSE 11.0, openSUSE has been able to easily connect to cellular broadband networks (with the correct card installed in the computer). This continues for openSUSE 11.1, with NetworkManager handling the connectivity. So connecting to cell networks is nearly as simple as connecting to a WiFi hotspot.

Multi-monitor Support

Another feature that has been in openSUSE for a while is the great multi-monitor support. With a simple applet and automatic configuration of extra monitors, using more than one monitor in openSUSE 11.1 is as simple as can be.

New Login

openSUSE 11.1 includes a revamped login screen for GNOME. Simply click on your name, and enter your pasword. No more having to remember and type both usernames and passwords, it’s a simple process. Plus, access accessibility and multi-monitor settings right from the login screen, making the experience more open to everyone. In addition, the background in the login screen is time sensitive: if it’s midnight where you are, your screen is a pleasant dark color. If it’s high noon, you’re in for a bright login!

Counting Down the Days

With only days to go until openSUSE 11.1 is released and you can try these features for yourself, so get ready! Plus, there are more Sneak Peeks coming in the next few days, so stay tuned to openSUSE News for all things openSUSE!

The Installation: Building on a great base

openSUSE’s installation has long been regarded as one of the best in the Linux world. Never before has that compliment been more accurate than in openSUSE 11.1. We started by building on the great base built in openSUSE 11.0 this past summer: a sleek new look, and a simpler installation process.

New Partitioner

The updated new installer features an updated look, as seen above, but there is one very big improvement, and most users won’t even see it. It’s the new hard drive partitioner. Luckily, in most cases, the installer can recognize what needs to be done to a user’s hard disk to enable them to use openSUSE, often while keeping their previous operating system and files intact. However, many times advanced users wish to make their own custom partition table, and the improved partitioner helps them do just that.

This partitioner was the subject of usability testing, and was designed to accommodate the needs of our users.

You can also get a quick guide to the installation of openSUSE 11.1 in our Installation Walkthrough.

Help driver development with Smolt

Upon logging into your openSUSE desktop, you’ll be asked to send some hardware information to the Smolt Project. Smolt is a combined effort of Linux distributions and projects including the Fedora Project and openSUSE. Together, collecting the types of hardware in computers running Linux helps put pressure on hardware manufacturers to support Linux better, which is better for everyone.

Getting a rough estimate of the number of users for different types of hardware is also helpful to the developers of device drivers for Linux, which gives them a better idea of what drivers they should help work on to help the most amount of users. It’s one click, it helps you, it helps openSUSE, and it helps the entire Linux community!

Continual improvements to managing software

Recommended Software

openSUSE 11.1 features even more improvements to installing, removing, and maintaining software. In addition to openSUSE’s famous 1-Click Install feature, openSUSE now features a new way to discover new software.

The software manager now recommends or suggests software for your computer depending on what is already installed. These packages aren’t required by another applications, but instead extends their functionality or compliments them. It’s a fun way to discover new things you can do with your computer! Simply select the software, click Install, and the rest is taken care of.

The new KDE updater

KDE users now have a new method of keeping their computer up-to-date. Introducing the new openSUSE Updater for KDE, based on PackageKit. This new updater brings openSUSE into a cross-distro standard with PackageKit, plus enables new functionality within the updater.

The new updater still uses the openSUSE software management system, libzypp, so users still get the speed and other advantages of using our modern, state-of-the-art software management system. Advanced, modern tools wrapped up in one easy to use updating application for KDE.

GNOME users will continue to use their PackageKit-based updating application.

Ready for openSUSE 11.1?

This is just the start of what’s available in openSUSE 11.1! openSUSE 11.1 ships December 18th, 2008 for both download and boxed editions, so stay tuned for more Sneak Peeks and all other news about openSUSE 11.1!

Firefox 3.0

openSUSE features the new and latest Firefox 3.0, with the final version distributed through online update. This new version features several improvements to the interface, from user name and password management to changes in the download window.

OpenOffice.org 2.4

The OpenOffice.org team has been working hard over the last few months to produce the latest 2.4 release. It features a broad range of changes, most famously the new OpenGL Impress effects, giving you a lot of visual eye-candy with animations during each slide change:

Xfce 4.4

openSUSE 11.0 features the latest Xfce 4.4.2, with a string of new changes including composite effects.

Aaron Bockover and the Banshee team recently announced the availability of the very substantial 1.0 release. It features a broad range of exciting new changes, including video support, speed improvements, a redesigned interface and better integration with Last.fm.

Wine 1.0

With Wine approaching its monumental 1.0 release, openSUSE 11.0 features 1.0 RC3. Wine has been in development for over 12 years!

KIWI LTSP

The LTSP5 implementation on openSUSE continues to dramatically improve, with the initial setup taking less than a minute on openSUSE 11.0, even for non-administrators. The final images will be available in the openSUSE Edu build service repository and the upcoming add-on Edu DVD.

Kepas – Easy File Sharing

With the previous release we saw the addition of Giver – an easy GTK+ file-sharing tool, enabling you to quickly send files to others on the same network as you. With openSUSE 11.0 there is now also a KDE application, Kepas, to perform the same task, with several additional features.

Command-Not-Found

Another nice thing to make its way into the openSUSE Build Service is Command-not-found (for 11.0: 1-click-install), which is very handy for general usage in the shell.

Demonstration of what it does:
20:52 geeko:~> dragon
 
The program 'dragon' can be found in the following package(s):
* dragonplayer (/usr/bin/dragon)
 
Try: sudo zypper install dragonplayer
 
bash: dragon: command not found
20:52 geeko:~> amarokk
 
Did you mean: 'amarok' ?
 
bash: amarokk: command not found
20:52 geeko:~> ifconfig
 
Program 'ifconfig' is present in package 'net-tools', which is installed on your system.
 
Full path leading to 'ifconfig' is '/sbin/ifconfig'.
 
Please check your $PATH or maybe program 'ifconfig' is intended to be run only by root.
 
bash: ifconfig: command not found

After you’ve installed it, see the /usr/share/doc/packages/command-not-found/README file for how to enable it by default.

Complete Product Highlights

For a more complete product highlights and package list, see the Product Highlights/11.0 wiki page.

openSUSE News: What kind of changes have happened “behind the scenes” in GNOME that users might not see right away, but are important? (Like performance increases, backend changes, etc.)

Vincent Untz: Several things have changed:

• PulseAudio: Instead of using esound as the sound server, we now use PulseAudio. It’s basically much better A cool thing, for example, is that you can set the volume of the stream of each application, instead of just having a global volume. Another cool thing is that you can use Bonjour/Zeroconf/mdns&dns-sd to find out about PulseAudio servers on the network and dynamically move a stream to this server.
• PolicyKit: This is a new technology to make it easier to change some system setting. An example is how you change the system timezone in the clock applet, for example.
• PackageKit: For now, we only use this for the notification icon that tells you about update. But it’s a framework to make it easier to handle packages from applications. It’s full of Libzypp love in openSUSE.
• 3-D effects: Not strictly GNOME, but I think it has improved quite a bit now. XGL is not required anymore (with AIGLX) and so more people can use this.
• Less divergence from upstream. We started some serious work to send more patches upstream and remove changes that will never be accepted by upstream and that are not that interesting to us.

openSUSE News: How does openSUSE GNOME differ from “stock” GNOME? What kind of added features or improvements would openSUSE users see that may not be in other distros?

Vincent Untz: It’s kind of hard to reply to this for one reason: we’re trying to be as close as upstream as possible. However, things that are important and that we change:

• Artwork, obviously. This helps having a unified look & feel with the rest of the distro (splash screen, e.g.).
• Default configuration — like panel layout, including gnome-main-menu, and some settings in some applications.
• Bug fixes: We backport many bug fixes from SVN to get something more stable.

We also have some brand new stuff when it comes to things where we have developers. For example, we use NetworkManager 0.7 (which is still unreleased), but Ubuntu still ships the old 0.6 (Fedora uses 0.7, I believe).

I think the main point here is that we’re trying to do development upstream, and then polish things where they can be polished for the integration with the rest of the OS.

openSUSE News: Can you talk a bit about the relationship between GNOME and openSUSE?

Vincent Untz: Well, some of the developers in the openSUSE GNOME team are GNOME contributors (some are really deeply involved in GNOME). For example, Federico is a GTK+ maintainer, Rodrigo co-maintains the control center, I maintain a few modules, etc. It’s not just about code (Federico has been on the GNOME Foundation board for a few years, I’m on it right now, etc.)

We’re trying to do our development upstream, to also upstream bugs (bugs opened in bugzilla.novell.com but that really should be in bugzilla.gnome.org), etc. Basically, we’re trying to be a good GNOME citizen

openSUSE News: What kind of plans are on the table for openSUSE 11.1 and GNOME?

Vincent Untz: We’re starting to discuss this, and we have a list of ideas at http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME/Ideas/11.1.

There will be the new rewritten GDM, better integration of the PulseAudio features, better printing administration, integration of the Telepathy framework, etc. All of this is “maybe”, of course

openSUSE News: Anything else you’d like to mention or add?

Vincent Untz: Also quite important to mention the whole community that is doing an awesome job — people are helping with many things, from bug triage, to organizing meetings, giving ideas, testing, etc.

openSUSE News: Thanks for taking the time!

Looking at KDE in openSUSE 11.0

KDE 4.0.4 is the version of KDE shipping with openSUSE 11.0. It’s radically different from KDE 3.5 on the surface, as well as the technology behind the scenes. Dolphin is the default file manager, a new and simpler utility for users to manage their files. (Don’t worry, Konqueror is still available for your Web browsing and advanced file management needs!)

KDE 4.0.4 on openSUSE 11.0

Systemsettings is a more usable replacement for KControl, to make system configuration much easier. KWin, the KDE window manager now supports desktop effects with KDE, easy to enable and use without loss of window manager integration or functionality.

The desktop shell and panels have been completely rewritten. The first thing KDE users will notice in KDE 4 is Oxygen, a new approach to artwork on KDE that brings a unified and attractive look to all KDE 4 interfaces, applications, icons, and themes.

After taking in the artwork, users will be able to take advantage of Plasma, the new desktop shell. Plasma provides the full desktop interface experience, from the KDE panel and menu, to desktop widgets (called Plasmoids) that offer a completely new level of functionality for KDE.

KDE 4.0 is still immature, with a few rough edges, and some of the configurability and features of KDE 3.5 are not yet implemented. KDE 4.0 was meant for early adopters, and developers porting applications to KDE 4. While the openSUSE KDE team has worked hard to polish KDE 4 and add some missing features, some users might prefer to stick with KDE 3.5. You can install both KDE 4 and KDE 3.5, so you can try the next-generation KDE out today, but fall back to 3.5 if you prefer.

KDE 4 is available on the openSUSE KDE live CD and via the DVD.

KDE Applications

KDE 4.0 doesn’t include KDEPIM (KMail, KOrganizer, Akregrator, KNode etc.), therefore openSUSE 11.0 includes beta versions of KDEPIM applications from KDE 4.1. These applications work fairly well, and will be updated to final versions via official online updates as soon as possible.

Not all KDE applications are ported to KDE4 yet, therefore KDE3 versions of applications such as Amarok, K3b, KOffice or KNetworkManager are used. They integrate pretty seamlessly. A native KDE4 NetworkManager applet is in development and will become available via openSUSE Build Service repositories.

Enhancements

The openSUSE KDE team have improved KDE 4.0 in various ways. For example it’s possible to move applets in the panel, Kickoff is polished, handling of desktop icons is improved, possibility to remove the debated toolbox/cashew via a non-gui option.

The Aya Plasma theme is used by default. If you’d prefer the official default black KDE theme it’s only a few clicks away. When using KDE 4.0 YaST2 will use an Oxygen icon theme for better integration with KDE 4.0. Furthermore YaST2 is ported to Qt4.

The new look of YaST

KDE 3.5.9

With all the talk about KDE 4, what about KDE 3.5? KDE 3.5 is the familiar, and stable, version of KDE that’s well-known and used by the majority of openSUSE users for years. Because KDE 3.5 is so popular, we’ve made sure that it’s available on the DVD media, via online network installation, and of course in the retail box set.

KDE 3.5 on openSUSE 11.0

New features in KDE3.5

Very little has changed in KDE 3.5 since openSUSE 10.3, but there are a few interesting new features. For example the KNetworkManager applet has been updated to use NetworkManager 0.7, which adds support for various advanced networking features. For example using static IP setup, or using more than one network interface card at the same time.

Improvements in KControl make it easier to select Compiz or even the KDE4 version of KWin, to provide 3-D desktop effects in KDE 3.5.

Of course KDE 3.5 in openSUSE 11.0 still boasts the host of enhancements that the openSUSE KDE team have created over the past years. For example the Kickoff menu, the Sysinfo:/ kioslave, Kerry Beagle frontend, to name just a few.

KDE 4.1

As we’ve already discussed, KDE 4.0 is still maturing and may lack features that experienced KDE users expect. However, KDE 4.1 will be much better in these respects and is expected to be released in late July. Shortly after the 4.1 release announcement, it will be available from the openSUSE Build Service repositories, enabling users to update via 1-click-install — albeit not officially supported. However, if you want to run the latest and greatest from KDE, you’ll be able to do so (and help testing as well!)

The next openSUSE release, openSUSE 11.1, should be out in December of this year and include a thoroughly tested and well-integrated KDE 4.1.x right out of the box.

Talk with Stephan Binner

openSUSE News: KDE 4.0.4 is the default KDE desktop in openSUSE. What made you decide to make it the default, instead of the more stable KDE 3.5.9?

Stephan Binner: There is no default desktop on openSUSE: during installation from DVD you are asked to make a choice — without default. If you use one of the installable live CDs you make the choice before the download of course.

Admitted, there exists no official live CD with KDE 3.5 (maybe someone from the community will create it?) because of resource constraints, and because we want to push people to try our KDE 4.0 based desktop. Also we want and need user feedback for the actively developed KDE series.

openSUSE News: What have been the main challenges working on KDE for openSUSE 11.0?

Much work went into making both KDE versions installable in parallel, and the applications of KDE3 work nicely under KDE4 and vice versa. That’s all the more important as not all KDE3 applications, including some maintained by openSUSE teams, have been ported to KDE4 yet. Many thoughts went also into a more granular packaging, for single application packages and to fit as many applications as possible on the live CDs.

openSUSE News: If you would highlight one detail of KDE4, what would it be?

Stephan Binner: Plasma. Because every KDE user will use it daily and the changes compared to KDE 3.5 are very visible. That’s both because it introduces new ways to interact with your desktop, panels and widgets and also because it’s the youngest of the central new KDE4 highlights (Dolphin, Kickoff and Systemsettings existed already as KDE3 versions before).

We put quite some effort into adding or back-porting features and polishing Plasma to make its feature set comparable to other non-KDE desktop shells. Plasma is also the part where the efforts which the team put into the KDE4 desktop are best distinguishable to other distributions which already shipped KDE4.

openSUSE News: Could you describe in how KDE will evolve in KDE 4.1?

Stephan Binner: Regarding the desktop KWin gains new effects and Plasma matures with introducing amongst other things a graphical way to configure panel layouts, a new approach to handle files on the desktop and a more powerful “Run Command” dialog. To learn about new features of each application best have a look at the KDE 4.1 Feature Plan and try our KDE 4.1 Beta packages in the Build Service or my KDE Four Live CDs.

Several new applications will become part of the KDE 4.1 release: kdepim 4.1 (Kontact & Co), a multimedia player (dragonplayer), a hex editor (okteta), a system log viewer (ksystemlog) and several games. You may notice that several of those are already included in openSUSE 11.0.

And not openSUSE related, the most popular KDE applications will become available on Windows and Mac platforms.

openSUSE News: And finally, any last reasons why people should install openSUSE 11.0 with KDE?

Stephan Binner: Because those two are the distribution and the desktop with the biggest momentum currently.

Changes in Setup

AIGLX

For openSUSE 11.0, Stefan Dirsch and the rest of the openSUSE Xorg team has worked hard to ensure that AIGLX is enabled by default for all supported hardware. This means that you can run Compiz or other desktop effects such as those in KDE 4 without having to directly enable Xgl or edit xorg.conf manually.

Compiz Fusion by Default

In openSUSE 10.3, Compiz Fusion was available in the official online repository, and the latest version with all the extra Fusion plugins has been available in the openSUSE Build Service. However, the Compiz Fusion project has matured significantly, complementing Compiz with extra plugins, a new settings configuration tool, and it is now installed by default on all openSUSE 11.0 installations.

What’s New

Simple CCSM

Compiz Fusion comes with a simple settings manager which also allows you to enable and disable Compiz in both KDE and GNOME. It can be found as the Desktop Effects application in the main menu. From here you can change general settings and not have to worry about the details. You can choose from a selection of pre-configured profiles: from anything such as minimal effects, to the full-blown “Hollywood’s got Nothing” profile, giving you countless of extra effects and plugins.

CompizConfig Settings Manager (ccsm)

Compiz Fusion now also comes with an in-depth and highly configurable settings manager: CompizConfig Settings Manager (ccsm), which is also available by default in openSUSE 11.0. From here you can change a whole horde of settings so that Compiz behaves precisely as you want, or you can even choose to enable a large selection of extra plugins providing new eye-candy or helpful other additions. Be mindful about the performance impact that this might have on less powerful computers.

New Plugins

As well as all of the previously available features in openSUSE 10.3, openSUSE 11.0 has several additions, many of which dramatically improve the accessibility of the Linux desktop. We will cover just a few of these below:

Show Mouse

With this plugin you can find out easily where your mouse is. Just hit a key-combo, and stars will start swirling around the mouse’s location:

Magnifier: Magnifying Glass

This plugin allows you to zoom a particular area of the screen without having to zoom in on the entire desktop. It is perfect when one particular area is hard to read or view:

Shelf: Scale Window Up/Down

This plugin allows you to directly scale up or down an entire window (instead of resizing it):

Brightness and Saturation

With this plugin you can adjust the brightness and saturation of any window or the entire screen.

To find out how to use this and all other plugins, simply head over the Compiz Fusion Wiki at wiki.compiz-fusion.org. For trouble-shooting and general information about Compiz Fusion on openSUSE, see the Compiz Fusion wiki page.

Latest Version in the openSUSE Build Service

Thanks to Jigish Gohil, you can always get the latest version of Compiz and Compiz Fusion in the X11:XGL openSUSE Build Service repository. In his home:cyberorg repository you can also find recent snapshots of the development tree, where you can also have direct access to a plethora of extra plugins developed by the Compiz Fusion developers. Here’s a quick preview of some of the things available in the latest version.

You can use 1-Click-Install to get the latest Compiz Fusion from the openSUSE Build Service.

Cube Deformation

In openSUSE 10.3 the cube relfection plugin was available, but now you can also distort the cube in a spherical or cylindrical shape:

You can also make the cube transparent, and even create a 3D representation of the windows:

Talk with Dennis Kasprzyk

What have been the main tasks with getting Compiz and Compiz Fusion 0.7.4 out?

After the Compiz and Compiz Fusion 0.6.0 release that included lot of changes, we decided to add only small changes and concentrate more on bugfixing and improving the window manager functionality. This is also the reason why all the 0.7.x releases are very stable even though they are only “development” releases.

On the Compiz core side, we’ve improved the window and session management, the focus stealing prevention and the handling of multiple output devices. I think that Compiz is now the window manager with the best handling of all the various Xrandr multiple output configurations. On the Compiz Fusion side, we’ve added some new plugins, features and fixed a lot of bugs. There’s too much to mention all the changes in detail here, but users can use the advanced CompizConfig Settings Manager ccsm to discover the new plugins and the new features of the existing plugins.

With simple-ccsm we now also provide a configuration tool that is more focused on end-users. It allows users to change the most needed options very easily.

What is openSUSE 11.0 like as a development platform?

There a two things in openSUSE that I really like. The first one is the Build Service. It allows me to get updated versions of a lot of packages without the need to compile them myself. The second one is the ability to directly install openSUSE with all the development packages I need. The package management provides here a very nice and easy functionality to install everything I need. But it’s also much easier to add a new system wide prefix (like /opt/compiz), than in other (debian based) distributions.

The Compiz KDE Window Decoration has really improved the integration with KDE. What other things are in store to improve the feel within KDE?

With the Compiz 0.7.6 release the KDE 4 window decorator should be ready to provide the same functionality in KDE 4.1 that we have seen with the KDE 3 window decorator in the KDE 3.x series. I’m also working on a KDE 4 kconfig backend for the libcompizconfig system. It will provide the same settings integration that we’ve seen in the KDE 3 backend. So that changing of KWin’s settings will also apply to Compiz. The biggest problem here is that the current KDE 4 global hotkey management seams to be a little buggy.

How do you see the relationship of Compiz Fusion and KWin Composite, the KDE4 Desktop effects? Do the developers in these two projects
interact?

It could be better, but it’s better than the relationship to the GNOME developers Compiz gets accepted, instead of simply being ignored with the sentence: “We have our own window manager, and we don’t care about Compiz.” For example, there was a problem with the KDE decoration API, which allows us to provide the KDE 4 window decorator, was removed in KDE 4.0. After some emails with the KWin developer we found a solution so that we have a working decorator for KDE 4.1 again.

What plans does the Compiz Fusion team have for the future?

This is hard to say. We mostly implement and release new ideas directly. Users can read our blog planet to see what is going on and will be included in the next release. I would like to see Compiz also running as pure window manager without compositing. This would also allow to run Compiz on hardware that doesn’t support compositing, or allow users to turn off compositing without the need to switch to a different window manager. We will also have a lot of work after the “object framework” merge, which will change a lot of the Compiz internal structures and the configuration system.

Behind the Scenes

New Metadata

One of the major changes resulting in the lightning-fast package management of openSUSE 11.0 are the new SOLV files used now for metadata. While the classic RPM-MD (YUM) metadata in XML format is nicely readable, it results in significantly larger files and takes much longer to parse than is needed. The new dictionary-based SOLV format for repositories are up to 1/3 of the size and can be parsed in virtually an instant.

New Solver

The old solver had several problems. It was extremely slow in some cases, had a few bad design decisions, and provided bad diagnostics and suggestions if a particular case was unsolvable.

Faster

The new SAT solver by Michael Schroeder is based on expressing package dependencies as a boolean satisfiability problem. This in itself brings huge advantages as it is a well-researched problem (many example solvers available), it’s incredibly fast, and there is no need for complex algorithms. Indeed, package solving complexity is extremely low in comparison to other areas where SAT solvers are used.

To see a demonstration of just how much faster it is, see Duncan’s video comparison of the old and new Zypper.

Performs Better

Furthermore, these changes with SOLV files and the new solver have resulted in significantly better performance, with particularly reduced memory usage when compared to both Smart and YUM:

Smarter

One of the prized features of the Smart Package Manager was its ability to make smarter decisions with package management where APT and YUM fail. In particular, a few cases were proposed in Smart’s README where Smart behaves very well. So how does the new ZYpp stack do with these cases? It passes them all.

One of the other surprising yet handy features of the new package management stack is that it can be involved in hardware recommendation of packages. Want to get your webcam working? Plug it in and run zypper up for example (or with YaST) and it will try to grab all of the drivers from the online repository!

Interoperability

Patches and Patterns

One of the main advantages of openSUSE package management has been the availability of patches and patterns. Patches are small updates to fix a problem (used in the official update repository), and patterns are intelligent groups of packages which can recommend, require and suggest packages in order to make certain functionality available, without being too strict in the specific packages to install (so the more troublesome metapackage solution is not needed).

Fedora’s update metadata uses a yum plugin and a updateinfo.xml description; metadata for deltarpm availability is handled via the yum-presto plugin. In openSUSE 11.0, the package management stack reads patches from this file too! This means that you can use the yum stack out of the box, and you can generate patches using existing Fedora tools as well. Furthermore, there are continued efforts to build ZYpp and YaST on Fedora.

PackageKit

PackageKit is a D-Bus abstraction layer that allows the session user to manage packages in a secure way using a cross-distro, cross-architecture API. openSUSE 11.0 is fully PackageKit-enabled, meaning that all upstream tools across distributions using PackageKit will work perfectly on openSUSE.

See Duncan’s blog post on this for more information.

New Features

YaST

Both the Qt (KDE) and GTK (GNOME) versions of YaST have seen several changes, and in particular there are improvements to both package manager front-ends. Integration with PackageKit now means that there is a clearer view of all the package groups, with icons to distinguish them quickly:

The patterns view has also been improved:

The GTK front-end is now based on an entirely new, clean design:

Repository management can now also take place from directly inside the package manager. Just head over to Repositories -> Repository Manager. The Community Repositories module has also been integrated into here, so you can still easily select from a list of popular community repositories to add.

Updater Applets

Integration with PackageKit is tightened, with GNOME in openSUSE now using the PackageKit updater applet for all official update handling:

The KDE updater applet has now also been ported to KDE 4, and has an optional PackageKit backend.

Zypper

While Zypper is significantly faster as the result of all the previous package management changes, there have been a lot of new features added to Zypper, including:

Install remote and local RPMs seamlessly:
root:~ # zypper install http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Community/openSUSE_11.0/i586/filelight-1.0-7.3.i586.rpm
Reading installed packages...
 
The following NEW package is going to be installed:
filelight
 
Overall download size: 582.0 K. After the operation, additional 1.2 M will be used.
Continue? [YES/no]: y
Downloading package filelight-1.0-7.3.i586 (1/1), 582.0 K (1.2 M unpacked)
Installing: filelight-1.0-7.3 [done]
 
root:~ # zypper install ./banshee-0.13.2-79.i586.rpm
Reading installed packages...
The following NEW packages are going to be installed:
 
tango-icon-theme taglib-sharp gnome-themes gnome-audio yast2-control-center-gnome podsleuth nautilus-cd-burner nautilus metacity libssui0 libssui libgweather1
libgweather libgtop-2_0-7 libgtop libgnomesu0 libgnomesu libgnomeprintui libgnomeprint libgnomekbd libgnomecups libgnome-menu2 libgnome-desktop-2-2
libexempi3 libeel-2-2 gnome-vfs-sharp2 gnome-sharp2 gnome-settings-daemon gnome-panel gnome-mount gnome-main-menu gnome-desktop gnome-control-center
glade-sharp2 gconf-sharp2 evolution-data-server eel banshee-plugins-extra banshee-plugins-default banshee-engine-gst banshee art-sharp2 PolicyKit-gnome-libs
  
Overall download size: 17.0 M. After the operation, additional 70.4 M will be used.
Continue? [YES/no]:

Support for wildcards:
root:~ # zypper install *ktouch
Reading installed packages...
 
The following NEW package is going to be installed:
kde4-ktouch
  
Overall download size: 1.4 M. After the operation, additional 3.2 M will be used.
Continue? [YES/no]:
Stay tuned to opensuse.org/Zypper/Changes/11.0 for a more complete list.

Talk with Duncan Mac-Vicar

What have been the main challenges with changing major components of the package management again?

During openSUSE 10.3 we invested a lot of effort into restructuring the libzypp API so that we could actually change things. For 11.0 this paid off. We did not change any API! (just add some, like locks, and other to allow access to low level stuff, like the SAT namespace). So the challenge was to modify the classes so they act like a thin wrapper over the sat solver library. Michael Andres and Stefan Schubert did a grat job in this part. Once this was done, almost everything worked out of the box.

I would say the biggest obstacles where changing things where the basic concept also changed, like not installing product, patterns and patches anymore but use the satisfied concept. Ths pays off as a pure-rpm system, but we have to still mature the details.

There was also a lot of work for the sat solver team, who got this fast and awesome C library. The ZYpp team did a great job integrating it without many changes, but they had to add lot of features to provide all of the functionality that we had before.

What other shining features have been implemented behind the scenes?

The changes in PackageKit, which mean you can use any PackageKit application and it will use our package management engine and you won’t see the difference. Also, Delta RPMs are no longer tied to patches, they are just extra metadata in a repository, and libzypp calculates which ones it can use. This means that we could start offering delta RPMs for factory updates, for example, at any time. Also the format is compatible with yum-presto.

Our patches metadata is the same as the one used by yum, updateinfo.xml, which supports the build service strategy of building for multiple distributions. If deltarpms or update metadata is ever provided by the build service, there should be no difference if you use fedora or suse, yum or zypper. Also, if you have internal company infrastructure for generating your own updates you do not need to have two variations of this tools.

What are the plans for the future?

For the first time I think we are on the track to where we would like to be. Plans for the future include polishing, like more PackageKit work, enable user features like hardware recommends in the user interface (these features are there for years, but are not very visible), build service integration, adding semantic data, etc