Welcome to openSUSE 12.1!

Yes, it is almost time. Tomorrow openSUSE 12.1 will be released to the world, bringing a large number of new features and cool stuff. We’ll look at a few things today and show you some screen shots!

WARNING: Spoiler-alert!
WARNING: Pretty Pictures!

So what’s coming?

openSUSE 12.1 brings of course tens of thousands of changes and improvements by delivering you a fine selection of the best Free Software! Thanks to the awesome work of projects like Mozilla, GNOME, LibreOffice, Apache and many, many more you can browse the web, edit documents and have fun like never before. But besides what all these projects offer, openSUSE of course also has many unique things. Let’s go over some of the coolest stuff you can expect to be downloading tomorrow!

Desktop Awesomeness

Of course openSUSE 12.1 comes with the latest Free Desktops. GNOME, KDE’s Plasma Workspaces, XFCE and LXDE are again all there. For GNOME, this is a particularly big day: GNOME 3.2 is part of openSUSE!

GNOME 3.2

openSUSE 12.1 GNOME screenshot

As you might remember, we brought a GNOME 3 preview with openSUSE 11.4. Well, it ain’t preview anymore, we bring you the full GNOME 3.2 desktop now! This has been much improved compared to the preview, with both many performance and stability fixes as well as lots of features and usability improvements based on the feedback the developers got.

GNOME Shell brings a fresh, cool, new interface designed from scratch to satisfy the needs of today’s users. The interface focuses on getting out of the way and providing unobtrusive yet powerful notifications and deep integration of calendar, chat and other technologies. The UI elements and workflows are designed to be touch-friendly for use on tablets or desktops with a touch screen. By using the 3D acceleration capabilities provided by most of the computers these days, pleasing animations are used to give users an aesthetic look and feel and a much easier way of switching between applications.

KDE and the other desktops

openSUSE 12.1 KDE screenshot

Of course we ship KDE’s Plasma workspaces, both the Desktop and Netbook version. There is a number of improvements in there, including the Apper software management tool which replaces the earlier KPackageKit tool. Apper focuses on applications instead of packages, making installation and removal easier for less experienced users. Another big deal, relevant for both GNOME and KDE, is color management. GNOME ships the colord daemon for this while openSUSE is the first linux distribution to integrate Oyranos color management in KDE. You can read more about it in this blog by Uwe where he explains what this means, how it’s done and why you should care.

Sadly, XFCE and LXDE have not seen a huge amount of changes as there have been no major releases. But of course we ship the latest bugfix release of XFCE 4.8 and have done the usual round of artwork and other minor improvements.

ownCloud

Cloudy things

In the Cloud area, we have something very cool in store for you. It’s the latest ownCloud and openSUSE has done something really unique with it: we bring you the miral tool! And of course we have all the other latest cloudy stuff for you.

mirall rocks!

ownCloud is a way to have your files online available, syncing with your devices – without having to give your data (and privacy) to another company. Instead, you can host ownCloud either on your own server or on a rented space. Unfortunately, this makes ownCloud a bit more complicated than going to a random website. openSUSE’s mirall solves this problem!

mirall provides a system tray client which lets you deploy, configure and start an ownCloud instance on your own computer or on a rented webspace with just a few clicks. Afterwards, mirall makes sure that files are properly synchronized (and makes them available off-line, something ownCloud can’t do by itself!) and lets you add folders to be put on ownCloud.

You will be able to learn a lot more about mirall in the article which will be released the day after the openSUSE 12.1 release!

Other cloud software

openSUSE is an excellent guest OS for the cloud as can be experienced building solutions on SUSE Studio. With a new kernel, openSUSE is now ready to run directly on the Amazon EC2 cloud. On the host side, the latest virtualization technologies including Xen 4.1, KVM and VirtualBox can be managed with the latest virt-manager and open-vm-tools. Last but not least, openSUSE is the first Linux distribution to ship OwnCloud integrated into the desktop. And the openSUSE Virtualization and Cloud repository for openSUSE 12.1 offers the latest versions of Eucalyptus, OpenNebula and OpenStack for openSUSE 12.1!

New technology under the hood

openSUSE 12.1 introduces a number of improvements and innovations in the underlying technology of the distribution. This includes the unique Snapper tool offering file versioning, the systemd init system and the Google Go language.

Snapper in action

Snapper rolls back changes

openSUSE 12.1 is the first Linux distribution taking advantage of the snapshot functionality in the upcoming Linux file system btrfs. These snapshots of the file system are using copy-on-write, making them very space efficient. openSUSE 12.1 debuts Snapper which allows the user to interface with this technology.

The command line and GUI Snapper tools allow users to view older versions of files and revert changes. The unique integration in the zypper package manager of openSUSE allows users to roll back entire upgrades or software installations with the accompanying configuration changes.

systemd boots your system faster

systemd is the new init tool in openSUSE, controlling and speeding up the boot process. Developed in close cooperation with fellow Linux Distribution Fedora, systemd is especially interesting for system administrators due to its powerful socket- and bus activated service system. It also works closely with the cgroups kernel feature providing better security and control over the processes.

Write in go, compile with Clang or GCC

openSUSE is proud to be the first major distribution to ship the new Go programming language from Google as part of our release. Go is a fast, easy language good in handling multi-core, networked machines with the convenience of garbage collection and run-time reflection.

This openSUSE release is build with GCC 4.6.2 and link-time optimization, improving the overall performance of the software in openSUSE 12.1

Exciting times!

With all the cool stuff coming in openSUSE 12.1, we sure could write another 10 pages with features but surely most of you would be asleep by the time you’d have read it. Besides, in less than 24 hours you’ll probably be playing with it already!

So keep an eye on news.opensuse.org and remember to Have a lot of fun!

The default XFCE desktop

Just a few months ago, the XFCE project announced XFCE 4.8, the result of over 2 years of hard work. This desktop, one of the four official desktops of openSUSE 11.4, brings many new features. If you’re not having fun in the desktops provided by KDE or GNOME you should have a close look at XFCE (or the lightweight LXDE). To show you how it’s done, I checked out XFCE and wrote about my experience.

Testing XFCE 4.8 on openSUSE 11.4

To test XFCE I went into SUSE Studio and created an XFCE 4.8 image. After some clicking around (slimming a standard GNOME down to XFCE) I had built a hard disk image. If you do this yourself, notice that by default, SUSE Studio does not install ‘recommended’ packages from patterns. This can be enabled – and you surely should do that if you want a decent XFCE!

The ability to just write an image to an usb disk and have it resize itself to the size of the whole stick at first boot is awesome. You can just install software and in general won’t notice you work on an USB stick! That is truly a portable OS…

IO issues on USB

thunar groups progress dialogs

The downside is of course that USB sticks simply aren’t as fast as internal SSD’s or harddrives. At least, if you’ve got a cheap one (like I did) the whole experience ain’t great. Applications tend to lock up once they really start to do some IO. Firefox in particular was sometimes impossible to use.

A first step in dealing with that is to put some often-used folders on a tmpfs. Those include /tmp (which stores temporary applicaton data) and the firefox directory ~/.mozilla/firefox. Find these and some other tips on this wiki page about SSD performance optimization (written specifically for this article, input welcome). You’ll lose all data in tmpfs folders on reboot, but the new sync function in Firefox 4 can take care of that! Once this legwork is done, you can enjoy your OS on a stick…

XFCE 4.8 and system resources

Some of the applications in XFCE 4.8

XFCE 4.8 is prides itself on a more flexible and configurable yet conservative UI design approach. With the controversies surrounding the radical UI redesigns offered by KDE Plasma, Unity and GNOME Shell, XFCE might offer a comfortable home for those who just want their desktop icons and a panel on the bottom with easy configuration of applets. Another advantage is that XFCE 4.8 is *significantly* faster than either a GNOME or KDE’s Plasma workspace on this laptop. Now I must admit I run quite meager hardware – a 1.2 ghz dualcore with a GMA 950 integrated graphics is not impressive, but 2 GB ram should be enough. Well, it often isn’t – mostly due to modern web browsers eating huge amounts of ram. XFCE saves you a little bit, although it won’t really save you in the face of modern, memory hungry applications like Chromium and LibreOffice. More noticeable are start up time and responsiveness of applications. XFCE apps start up instantaneously and feel very fast while you are using them.

Applications

Thunar doesn't shorten names

Thunar is a very fast and efficient file manager. You can increase and decrease icon size and it has ‘extract here’ and ‘extract to’ sub menu items as well as most other basic functions. File operations get grouped in one window and Thunar allows you to easily mount and unmount devices from the places sidebar. The image viewer Ristretto is insanely fast! I have an SSD in my laptop but where Gwenview takes 1-2 seconds to load, Ristretto simply has no loading time.

Ristretto is a basic imageviewer

Unfortunately, you don’t just pay less in terms of memory usage and CPU power but you get less as well. It can’t upload images to Picassaweb or crop them – it is a viewer which can only rotate images. If you need more photo editing, you’ll have to resort to Gwenview, the more powerful Showfoto or for really heavy retouching the Gimp. In Thunar I miss ‘spring loading folders’ and some small conveniences like split screen and tabs.

Ristretto can show thumbnails which are even movable, although I have no idea what the function of that is.

Media player

Parole does exactly what it should do

While the image viewer is a bit too basic for me, the situation is decidedly different with media player Parole. It has exactly the features I need from a video player – and most of what I want from an audio player. Ok, no lyrics, album art, tagging and that stuff but most of the time you just want to *play music*. For video it supports subtitles (and configuring font & size), unfortunately I haven’t figured out how to delay or speed up the subtitles in case they aren’t well aligned with the movie. But I know only VLC which can do that – all other video players I’ve used recently fail in this department.

Parole does not, like the video players in the big desktops, ask if it should install codecs for you when it can’t play something. It will only suggest that you do it yourself.

To my surprise, Parole also shows up in Firefox where it plays the role of embedded video player. Which it does very well! I’m thinking about installing this player on my Plasma Desktop – if only GTK applications would be able to use the KDE file dialogs when running in Plasma…

The Panel

The panel in XFCE is very configurable

Editing the panel is a breeze. It has a slight tendency to crash when dragging and dropping items – but frankly, editing it from the configure panel dialog is much easier anyway. There is a large number of applets and they all resize nicely when you change the size of the panel. Panels can have backgrounds, transparency in a variety of conditions, they can be freely sized and placed (does not have to be on the edge on a screen) and there is a large number of applets. I was initially a bit annoyed at the VERY basic clock, especially since it does not allow you to choose a timezone. But there is a more extensive clock applet, DateTime which at least shows a nice calendar when you click on it and it can be configured to show the date.

How to add a multiple-application launcher to the panel in 6 easy steps

You can configure a timezone in the Settings Manager under Calendar (which fires up a calendar under the name ‘Orage’) supporting things like todo- and event lists but it doesn’t affect the clock.

Surprisingly powerful session management

You’ll have to go into YaST and configure the system time to change a timezone. A little inconvenient, with all the travel I do – but not a problem for my desktop at home. In general, I like the configuration tool of XFCE quite a bit. There is a lot to customize and it is easy to use. I especially like Session management – you can easily modify and save sessions, something I missed in KDE’s system settings for ages.

Text editor, terminal and window management

The basics work fairly well in XFCE. The terminal does exactly what it is supposed to do and Mousepad is a nice text editor. Its faults are minor – while I miss things like a document tree and spell check, I’m mostly annoyed that it doesn’t save my preferences for wrapped text and defaults to my home folder instead of the Documents folder when I want to save. Still, the applications otherwise pretty much do what they are supposed to do.

Enabling compositing in XFCE

Window management is really snappy in XFCE. Including the fact that it can snap to other windows and the desktop borders and drag between virtual desktops. It does offer focus stealing prevention which can be enabled in the “Window Manager Tweaks” configuration dialogs. Maximized windows don’t close if you throw the mouse to the top-right of the screen and click but that depends on the window decoration you choose – some do this, the default doesn’t. XFCE’s windowmanager does offer compositing – a very nice touch. It performs very well and while not as configurable as Compiz or Kwin it offers the basics you need.

Other applications

XFCE comes with a few other applications like Clipman which takes care of your clipboard, Screenshot and Notes. Xfburn will create your CD’s and DVD’s, and Orage, a basic calendar/todo application. Other applications included in an openSUSE XFCE desktop include Gcalculator but also larger applications like Firefox 4.0, Thunderbird, Empathy and many more. The choice is of course focusing on lightweight applications like Thunderbird. This makes sure that you’ll have a fully ready to go desktop in openSUSE 11.4 with XFCE!

Integration

Empathy fits in very well in XFCE4

A lot of work has been done to provide a polished XFCE experience in openSUSE. GDM has replaced XDM as default login manager to allow for autologin and multiple sessions and lead developer and packager for XFCE in openSUSE, Guido Berhoerster has made sure GDM didn’t bring in too many GNOME dependencies. XFCE does not have office applications or a screensaver so the default openSUSE XFCE4 pattern has been modified to include all the basics a desktop user most likely needs. The openSUSE developers have also made sure that XFCE looks very well, adding the default artwork and carefully choosing a nice default theme. There have been changes to the default set of keyboard shortcuts to make sure the volume, screen brightness and screenshot buttons work and the menu layout and file type associations have been optimized. And there have been bugfixes – Guido mentions that especially the XFCE panel plugins are a lot more stable now.

There are a few minor issues and bugs which I simply didn’t have the time to fix but all in all I consider the user experience an order of a magnitude better than in 11.3 or 11.2. — Guido Berhoerster

LXDE – another choice

showing XFCE and LXDE apps side by side (in LXDE)

There is another alternative on openSUSE – LXDE, a really fast and lightweight desktop. Interestingly enough, both XFCE and LXDE offer a selection of more lightweight applications duplicating each others functionality like basic text editors, file managers, image viewers and the like. Most of these are extremely similar, both in performance and functionality. Others seem to fill a gap in the other DE – I found Xarchiver (LXDE) on XFCE4 and XFburn (XFCE) on as CD burning application on LXDE.

The applications on both are very similar in terms of performance and features – the desktop itself is what makes the difference. XFCE seems a bit more polished and flexible – the panel has much more options and extensive plugin support, as does Thunar.

Running XFburn and Xarchiver in a Plasma Desktop

But going through both configuration tools or playing with the terminals and other small applications one can’t help but wonder if the two shouldn’t share a bit more there. Yes, similar to the KDE and GNOME projects – collaboration might not be high on the agenda as both are busy doing their own thing.

Moreover, some of these lightweight applications are very well worth using in ‘bigger’ environments like GNOME Shell or KDE’s Plasma Desktop.

Getting used to XFCD 4.8

All in all, XFCE 4.8 is very nice. My previous experiences with XFCE, while years ago, where surely not as favorable as my last one. I do have gripes with most applications – I’m just too used to the luxury offered by the more ‘bloated’ applications offered by KDE and GNOME. But I do appreciate the speed and most of my inconveniences are just that – inconvenient. In many cases, a change in work flow negates them. For example, I complain about the missing tree in the text editor – but it is so easy to just have a few windows open and manage them on virtual desktops that it is actually not so bad.

Integration features

The efficiency of the interface showing almost nothing besides your text makes this doable even on a small screen. In Thunar I found myself working with multiple windows before I even realized I didn’t use tabs or split-window. Granted, I still consider those slightly more efficient but due to Thunars’ or Mousepads’ design I barely miss them as long as I don’t have too many locations or files open. And of course, if you want there is little reason not to use full-blown applications like LibreOffice, Banshee or Digikam under XFCE – the developers even went so far to make sure the needed services for KDE and GNOME applications can be started on login.

XFCE is different, a bit minimalistic here and there. But it is very configurable and flexible and once you get a bit used to it, you can get your work done very well. And you’ll be doing that with a really snazzy desktop on your openSUSE system!

Anyone interested in helping Guido with his work on XFCE4 just go to his userpage on the wiki and contact him through there. Check out his impressive TODO for XFCE!
Many thanks to Helen South and James Mason for their review work and Guido Berhoerster for his comments.

LibreOffice features

LibreOffice comes with many improvements over its predecessor, OpenOffice.Org-3.2.1. The new Search Bar, Title Page, and Print Dialogs are impressive additions. Petr Mladek, long standing LibreOffice and openSUSE contributor (Full interview, comments:

“I think that users will appreciate the new hierarchical axis labels for charts, RTF export, easier slide layout handling, and all the other features we were able to add thanks to our more open development model.”

LibreOffice provides some unique benefits over other Office solutions beyond simply being free, like Online Help, as well as a host of usability improvements. Different Formula Syntaxes are implemented, including Calc A1, Excel A1 and Excel R1C1. Inline form editing is a lot easier to use. Another useful feature is the ability to use a split view on a sheet, while in multi-lingual documents we now have the ability to change language for a particular sentence. Presentations with LibreOffice will sparkle with the new 3D slide transitions in Impress.

LibreOffice in openSUSE

Mladek notes several advantages of LibreOffice in openSUSE; one of them being a huge group of LibreOffice Developers inside openSUSE benefiting from the suite’s faster development model and no need of any copyright assignment. Another advantage he mentions is the use of the openSUSE Build Service, which helps to keep the packages up-to-date and compatible for older distributions. And finally, openSUSE is the only distribution using the split build (separate packages for each component) which makes it easier to hack on LibreOffice, providing a quicker development path for bug fixes and incremental feature improvements.

Developers and packagers at both LibreOffice and openSUSE have taken special care that the migration and update process from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice moves on smoothly. Backward compatibility and improved import & export filters were set as top priorities.

LibreOffice receives major contributions from Novell and SUSE hackers, as a recent blog from Cedric Bosdonnat showed. Bosdonnat also notices the growth of LibreOffice:

LibreOffice now counts 133 new hackers and 55 localizers (since the fork).

Michael Meeks, another prominent LibreOffice contributor and openSUSE developer, adds:

“I’m really excited to have LibreOffice in openSUSE 11.4, and the converse, to have so many great openSUSE developers involved with LibreOffice both in testing and developing. It is great to work together with the wider community to get the best Free Software Office experience possible into users’ hands.”

“openSUSE 11.4 will be the first stable distribution to ship with LibreOffice, a happy accident of timing. If you happen to be an enterprise user of SLED, don’t worry – there will also be updates to LibreOffice across our portfolio of supported products.”

Foundations

Meeks, who was closely involved with the decision to fork LibreOffice away from the control of Oracle and create the Document Foundation, sees similarities between the Document Foundation and the work going on to set up an openSUSE Foundation:

“in some ways, openSUSE’s trajectory is close to that of LibreOffice’s with the creation of a truly independent foundation. Surely openSUSE is under the stewardship of a company which is very much open to contributions, unlike OpenOffice.org was, but for sustained growth and a secure future a Foundation is really important.”

Coming soon!

Watch out for LibreOffice in the upcoming scheduled release of openSUSE 11.4 on 10th March, 2011 which besides being the first major distribution to ship LibreOffice in a stable release promises many other new and updated applications, features and extensions, as well as numerous improvements to and stability and performance.

A recent  interview with openSUSE LibreOffice developer Petr Mladek gives additional information.

Article contributed by Manu Gupta

Features and improvements in 2.32

There have been several small updates to Mousetweaks, which makes it easier to use a mouse for those users who may have limited mobility. It now has updated documentation including an updated manual and man pages so users can now see all the options they have and look up how things are supposed to work.

The Evince document viewer has improved accessibility support. Through the use of the AtkText interface  Orca, the GNOME screen reader, is now able to read documents in Evince. The maximum zoom level has also been increased when viewing a document. Annotation support has been improved and you can now add annotations from the side panel, change the default properties including author, color, transparency and more. Evince now supports “SyncTeX” which enables synchronization between a TeX source file and the resulting PDF (or DVI) output.

Empathy, the universal instant messaging client, now allows you to group a contact’s information together using “metacontacts.” For example, if one of your contacts uses multiple instant messaging accounts you can now link the different services together under one name for your contact. Empathy has also added live contact search, which allows you to type into the contact list to quickly find somebody. The new and improved Empathy in GNOME 2.32 also adds chat logging support and the ability to import security certificates.

Eye of GNOME, Totem and GNOME System Tools all come up with minor tweaks like enhancing image contrast, automatically deinterlacing interlaced videos and setting up permissions for home directories. For openSUSE’s vast international audience, this latest release of GNOME 2 will support over 50 languages.

Outside of the official GNOME release, openSUSE 11.4 will bundle a number of great third-party GNOME applications including Banshee, GIMP, AbiWord and more! Some of the major highlights include:

F-Spot 0.8.2 is the default photo management application for the openSUSE’s 11.4 GNOME desktop, but Shotwell 0.8.1 is included as well bringing a number of major new features with it such as video support for all major fileformats, video uploading to YouTube, Facebook and Flickr, monitoring the library directory and writing metadata behind the scenes to give users a more responsive interface.

Media player Rhythmbox 0.13.3 “Country Rain” is available in openSUSE 11.4. This will most likely be the last stable release before the move to GNOME 3 and introduces several new features and bugfixes. Most prominent are the reimplementation of source lists, updated notifications, MPRIS and MediaServer2 support and a new context pane tab showing links to various websites.

The popular media player Banshee is updated to 1.9.3, a development release close to the final 2.0. Some highlights of this release are: a “Now Playing” simplified mode, play queue shuffle action, improved cover art downloading, MusicBrainz ID support and improved Last.fm integration. Banshee 1.9.3 also includes several developer features like an improved WebBrowser API for WebKit browsers and DBus API additions. Finally, device support has been greatly improved! Among others, Banshee now works better with the Droid X, Galaxy Portal, Xperia X10, Maemo and MTP capable devices in general.

For developers

openSUSE 11.4 has a lot to offer GNOME developers. Starting GNOME development is a matter of a few simple clicks in YaST, while GLib 2.26 now includes support for GSettings, the replacement for GConf as well as GDBus. Anjuta users can now enjoy full support for Vala and Python projects while MonoDevelop users get a myriad of new features and improvements from MonoDevelop 2.4. And good news for those anxious to adapt their applications to GTK3 or write new applications with this latest GNOME framework: openSUSE 11.4 is the first major linux distribution to ship GTK 3.0 so developers, Start Your IDE’s!

Getting GNOME 3

For those of us anxious to try out GNOME 3 and GNOME Shell, Vincent Untz, openSUSE GNOME packager and until recently GNOME release manager has the following to say:

“You can test a beta version of GNOME Shell, which will be a core part of GNOME 3. Note that GNOME Shell has already moved a lot since the version we include in 11.4.”

There is also a GNOME 3 live USB test image available from another openSUSE GNOME contributor, get it from fcrozat’s home repo. Once openSUSE 11.4 is out, openSUSE users can easily be up to date with GNOME development using the GNOME OBS repositories.

Conclusion

In short, openSUSE 11.4 will offer a stellar experience for desktop users and developers alike. If the GNOME desktop isn’t quite your cup of tea, you’re in luck! openSUSE 11.4 will ship with updates to KDE, LXDE and XFCE which we’ll cover in another article. Stay tuned!

Article contributed by Manu Gupta

On the Desktop or on your Netbook

The Plasma Desktop Workspace, which is openSUSE’s default graphical desktop, introduces several new features. First up is a more intuitive and smarter power management UI and a new Bluetooth stack which makes it easier to share files or use features of other Bluetooth devices such as headsets and mice . Plasma also introduces many improvements to the innovative ‘Activities’ management. Activities allow users to associate applications with tasks which can be saved, stopped and resumed at any time.

For those with less screen estate to spend, the Plasma Netbook Workspace offers an experience more optimized for small screens. Plasma Netbook shows all your applications full-screen with a automatically hiding panel on the top of the screen offering a way to see all your windows as well as closing the current one, starting new applications and seeing the status of your battery or wifi connection. Plasma Netbook 4.6 has become more touch-friendly and much faster than the previous versions. Read more about these and other new Plasma Workspace features in the KDE Plasma 4.6 announcement.

KDE Applications

The KDE Applications 4.6 release introduces improvements like a new faceted search as well as non-indexed files search and support for git repositories in Dolphin, the file manager; social sharing of photos to sites like Flickr, Facebook and Picasaweb are now easy to reach from Gwenview, Digikam and KSnapshot.  Developers will appreciate Kate’s new plugins for working with SQL and with GDB.

KDE Games 4.6 marks the return of Klickety, also replacing KSame. Thanks to the KGameRenderer framework, KDE games take on a more consistent look and feel and perform better. Palapeli makes creating jigsaw puzzles out of your own images easier and Kajongg became easier and smarter.

KDE PIM 4.6 is available in openSUSE as experimental feature. While openSUSE 11.4 ships with the more stable and more dependable KDE Kontact Suite 4.4.10, the latest and still experimental Akonadi based Kontact 4.6 is available for installation using this repository.

openSUSE 11.4 also ships with many KDE applications not part of the regular KDE Software Compilation releases. This includes the latest KOffice, Amarok and many more. Some highlights include:

• Painting application Krita 2.3 has been designated by its developers as the first end-user ready version since 1.6. Their standards are high and they have been working with a variety of artist to make sure 2.3 is indeed fulfilling the needs of graphics ninjas. Krita 2.3 provides many new features, ranging from brush settings presets to canvas rotation, from warp transform to a new color selector — and of course many new brush engines. But the many improvements to stability, usability and especially performance probably make the biggest difference in everyday usage.
• Amarok 2.4.0 has a much faster collection scanner and can write statistics and covers directly to your audio files. Speaking of tags, there’s a new feature to work along with the rewritten collection scanner: Integration with the MusicBrainz music library to update your songs with accurate information. Having a well organized collection is easier than ever, now that you can select what you want tagged and do it with two clicks. Other notable features are improved iPod support (the Touch 3G should work great now), better transcoding support, Guitar and Bass tab information fetching, OPML export for Podcast subscriptions, an upcoming event applet and finally this release introduces support for UPnP.
• KOffice 2.3.1 brings improved performance, stability and usability in all applications. In the feature department, there is a new slide sorter view and a shape animations tool for KPresenter. OpenDocument support (especially text rendering) has been improved in all KOffice applications, as well as support for reading Microsoft file formats (doc, xls, ppt, docx, xlsx, pptx). KPlato and Kexi introduce a new report engine.

For developers

openSUSE prides itself on being a prominent development platform for KDE applications and again offers the latest KDE Platform libraries and tools in openSUSE 11.4. Improvements brought by KDE Platform 4.6 include QML support in the Plasma framework, improvements to Nepomuk and a “Mobile Build Target” for those who want to build a thinner version of the KDE libraries.
The toolkit KDE develops its applications and framework upon is Qt, a Nokia product. openSUSE ships the latest Qt 4.7.1 which introduces Qt Quick, the Qt UI Creation Kit. that enables the creation of dynamic user interfaces, easier and more effective than possible with existing UI technologies. With the help of IDE’s like Qt Creator and the powerful build tools like OBS openSUSE offers the best possible Linux software development environment in the Free Software world.

Conclusion

With the latest KDE Plasma Netbook and Desktop Workspaces and the many updated KDE applications as well as the latest development tools and libraries, openSUSE 11.4 will offer a stellar experience for desktop users. openSUSE is the home of many KDE developers and contributors, which shows in the polished KDE products and the latest KDE updates which we make available for all supported openSUSE releases. Of course openSUSE ships the latest GNOME, XFCE and LXDE for those who prefer other desktops and we ship many different applications, all of which work perfectly well with the Plasma Workspaces as well as other desktops. Stay tuned for an article about one of those applications, LibreOffice, coming soon!

Article contributed by Manu Gupta.

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!