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!

This release should be almost ready for the gold master stamp, but there’s still time to shake out remaining bugs. This release should not be deployed on production systems, but should be ready for early adopters and contributors who want to help with testing and development of 11.2.

Changes Since openSUSE 11.2 RC 1

Release Candidate 2 includes a few new packages, and several of the “most annoying bugs” in RC 1 have been fixed for this release. New packages include:

• Linux kernel 2.6.31.5
• SeaMonkey 2.0
• Firefox 3.5.4
• Samba 3.4.2
• xorg-x11-server 1.6.5

A more complete list can be found on the wiki and an updated list of Factory packages can be found on DistroWatch.

11.2 is looking fantastic. Want screenshots? We’ve got ‘em! Check out the shots here, and/or add your own.

Most Annoying Bugs

As this is a release candidate, we’re still shaking the release out for major bugs. However, at this point in the cycle, we’re almost ready to call 11.2 RC 2 production ready. We do know of one bug worth noting, however: The Net ISO images will call the factory repository. The URL for repositories needs to be changed from /factory/repo/oss to /factory-snapshot/repo/oss manually.

You can find more on adding repositories on the openSUSE wiki.

If any major new bugs do crop up, they will be listed on the openSUSE wiki.

Testing! Testing! Testing!

As you can see, 11.2 RC2 does have a few bugs that we know about — but there may be more lurking somewhere in the release that haven’t been found yet. If you want to make sure 11.2 final is free of Most Annoying Bugs, we’ll need your help finding, reporting, and fixing those hidden bugs.

To learn more about testing openSUSE, visit the Testing pages on the openSUSE wiki. To follow the testing and development process, we suggest that you subscribe to the openSUSE-Factory mailing list, and join the #openSUSE-Factory channel on Freenode to discuss openSUSE development.

Get Release Candidate 2 Today!

What are you waiting for? Grab the milestone release today! Downloads are available at software.opensuse.org/developer/ now.

Note, if you need to try the live CD on a machine with no CD-ROM drive, you can copy it to a USB key with the following command:

dd if=image.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M

Replace “image.iso” with the name of the ISO image that you have downloaded, and replace “sdX” with the actual device name of your USB drive. Be careful! This will erase the target device, so make sure you have the correct device name and have any vital data backed up!

The final release for 11.2 is scheduled to be released on November 12, 2009. See the detailed roadmap on the on the wiki.

We’re at the home stretch. A big thanks to all the contributors who have participated in the 11.2 cycle. Without you, we’d have no openSUSE.

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.

These installable Live-CDs are useful for people who want to test out KDE 4.3 and users who are doing new installs and want the most recent openSUSE updates straight out of the box, saving a lot of installation time. New in this version is that the images can be also dumped to a USB stick and booted from there.

See the KDE 4.3 announcement for more information on the improvements and new features in KDE 4.3.

Compared to openSUSE 11.1 KDE4 desktop, the images include the latest KDE4 version of applications like Amarok, Digikam, KNetworkManager and the new Qt4-based YaST Control Center. Some additional applications like Choqok, Kompare, Marble and Okteta could be added thanks to a more efficient compression algorithm.

A Note of Caution

Please note that this is not an “official” openSUSE release, and has not undergone the same kind of testing that stable releases receive.

In this week’s issue:

• openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 5 released
• People of openSUSE: Marcus Schaefer
• Linux.com/Rob Day: The Kernel Newbie Corner: Kernel and Module Debugging with gdb
• Guillaume DE BURE: More skrooge features
• LDN: Kernel Log – Coming in 2.6.31 – Part2: Graphics, Audio and Videor

For a list of available translations see this page:
http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/84/Translations

This is a Milestone Release, one of several that lead up to the 11.2 final release in November. It may not be suitable for production systems, but is ready for contributors who want to help with testing and development for 11.2.

Changes Since openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 4

Lots of changes since the M4 release! This release is built with GCC 4.4.1, and debug packages are generated for each sub-package. It also includes many updated packages and a few new packages, including:

• Linux kernel 2.6.31-rc4
• Xen 3.4.1 RC10
• GNOME 2.27.5
• PackageKit 0.5
• Apache 2.2.12
• Choqok 0.6.1
• VirtualBox 3.0.2

A more complete list can be found on the wiki and an updated list of Factory packages can be found on DistroWatch.

11.2 is looking fantastic. Want screenshots? We’ve got ‘em! Check out the shots here, and/or add your own.

Most Annoying Bugs

As this is a milestone release, 11.2 M5 does contain a few bugs that we know about, but should not stand between courageous contributors and release testing. The big bugs in 11.2 M5 are:

• Live CD ISOs will not boot from USB on some hardware
• The GNOME Live-CD image is missing Tomboy, Beagle, and GNOME-Do.
• Bug #529098: x86_64 DVD ISO doesn’t fit on DVD
• Bug #522025: X doesn’t display properly in VirtualBox machines with big video memory. Workaround: reduce video memory size or switch to first console and back (default: right Ctrl-F1, right Ctrl-F7)
• Bug #529113: and Bug #482749: kdesu does not work (for example, starting YaST), work-around: ’su -c “unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS;yast2″‘
• Bug #528397: X server might hang with some video drivers (vesa, intel) in runlevel 5 before the KDM logon occurs. A workaround can be found in this comment.

You can track the Most Annoying Bugs on the wiki along with 11.2 development.

Testing! Testing! Testing!

As you can see, 11.2 M5 does have a few annoying bugs that we know about — but there may be more lurking somewhere in the release that haven’t been found yet. If you want to make sure 11.2 final is free of Most Annoying Bugs, we’ll need your help finding, reporting, and fixing those hidden bugs.

Holger Sickenberg has put out a call for testing team members. If you’re interested in doing some heavy testing on openSUSE, check out Holger’s announcement.

To learn more about testing openSUSE, visit the Testing pages on the openSUSE wiki. To follow the testing and development process, we suggest that you subscribe to the openSUSE-Factory mailing list, and join the #openSUSE-Factory channel on Freenode to discuss openSUSE development.

Get Milestone 5 Today!

What are you waiting for? Grab the milestone release today! Downloads are available at software.opensuse.org/developer/ now.

Note, if you need to try the live DVD on a machine with no CD-ROM drive, you can copy it to a USB key with the following command:

dd if=image.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M

Replace “image.iso” with the name of the ISO image that you have downloaded, and replace “sdX” with the actual device name of your USB drive. Be careful! This will erase the target device, so make sure you have the correct device name and have any vital data backed up!

The next milestone will be released on August 20th.

The KDE 4.3 release is available via One-Click Install for openSUSE Factory, 11.1, 11.0, and 10.3. Stephan Binner has provided a KDE 4.3 live CD using the openSUSE Build Service and KIWI. The live CD is a pure KDE showcase based on current openSUSE 11.1 packages. Note that the live CD and packages are not an official openSUSE release and have not been as fully tested as final openSUSE releases.

The latest KDE includes a number of new features, application updates, performance and usability improvements, and much more. See the KDE 4.3.0 release announcement for a list of improvements and updates.

iFolder is a simple, secure storage solution that helps enhance collaboration and improve productivity. The iFolder client is cross-platform and runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. The iFolder server that is used to sync and store files runs on Linux. A release for openSUSE 11.1 is due this month, and will be part of the discussion for the iFolder meeting tomorrow.

The agenda for tomorrow’s meeting, so far:

• Project engineering status
• Website update
• openSUSE Build Service update
• Documentation (help needed)
• Close bugs (help needed)

If you’re interested in iFolder, please be sure to attend. If you have questions about iFolder, contact iFolder Community Manager Brent McConnell or ask in the #ifolder channel on Freenode.

This is an installable live CD that features the KDE 4.2.2 packages from the openSUSE Build Service repo. The live CD was created by Stephan ‘Beineri’ Binner, and is useful for people who want to test out KDE 4.2 and users who are doing new installs and want the most recent openSUSE updates straight out of the box.

See the KDE 4.2.2 announcement for more information on the improvements and new features in KDE 4.2.2.

Some features in openSUSE’s distribution of KDE differ slightly from a stock install of KDE. The “cashew” (Toolbox) is not enabled by default. It ships with the “Aya” theme and includes some bugfixes and enhancements over the stock 4.2.2 release. The Reloaded live CD also defaults to the KDE4 versions of Amarok (2.0.2) and Digikam (0.10).

A Note of Caution

Please note that this is not an “official” openSUSE release, and has not undergone the same kind of testing that stable releases receive.

Additional openSUSE KDE News

As Will Stephenson points out, if you’re following the KDE:KDE4:Factory:Desktop repository, you’ll soon start getting KDE 4.3 packages. If you want to keep on with the KDE 4.2 packages, use the new KDE:42 repo. The live CD is pre-configured to use this repository, so no need to worry about getting moved to 4.3 unless you change it.

See Important news for openSUSE KDE4 users for more information about KDE repos in the openSUSE Build Service and package naming changes.

I’m happy to announce that we’re having a bug squashing and packaging workshop  day this Sunday, the 5th of April.  This is being run in tandem with an upstream KDE bug squashing event running all weekend, so we can effectively sort bugs that are specific to openSUSE out from those that upstream KDE should know about.

For bug squashing, join #kde-bugs and #opensuse-kde on Freenode IRC.

For packaging, the KDE Team will be around #opensuse-kde from 1200CEST (that’s  10:00UTC) and I will present a couple of packaging tutorials and answer questions.   If you have an interest in learning to package and have not already mailed me, please send me a personal mail so I can call for
reinforcements if necessary.

See you on Sunday!