Firstly I’d like to think that Frank had no malice in filing the feature and only had the best intentions for KDE and openSUSE at heart.  The problem is there doesn’t seem to have been enough background checks and verification of facts prior to unleashing this handgrenade of annoying pointlessness.  If you default on a loan/mortgage/credit card you are in jeopardy of loosing assets.  The same can be carried over to this discussion.

openSUSE did indeed start out as a very KDE centric distro, I don’t actually recall seeing GNOME available in 6.2 but it was that long ago (I can just about remember yesterday).  Prior to Novell buying SUSE they bought Ximian who were big players in the GNOME sphere and had a lot of expertise, so sure enough GNOME starts to make an appearance.  Then we had the first iteration of this silly and pointless dingdong GNOME gets made the default DE much to many people’s anger.  Novell did actually listen and came up with a reasonable solution – no default and list the environments alphabetically.  Now some folk think the alphabet is rigged but then again they probably reckon electrons are unfairly viewed as negative – deal with it! Ubuntu was created solely as a GNOME distibution and is the only real commercially supported varient by Canonical, that’s why they have derivatives like Kubuntu and Xubuntu – Canonical are slowly employing more and more people for other DEs to ensure they can keep abreast of what;s going on in the wider world.  Fedora/RedHat were always a GNOME focused distro but offered KDE as an option, if my memory serves me right it was very much a stock upstream version with almost no enhancements (I believe that is changing in the right direction).  Now I’m not trying to give a histroy lesson or educate people on what the competition is doing, just trying to provide more information.

So the aim of the feature is to make KDE the default DE for openSUSE, why? Frank lists the following and I put my response to them underneath:

- It is confusing for new Linux users if they have to decide between KDE and GNOME during the installation. New users don´t know either of them. So it is easier for beginners if there is a default. openSUSE has more KDE users than GNOME users so it is logical to make KDE the default.

Nope.  It’s easier for beginners if they are educated and informed.  Having a default will only give them a first impression, nothing more.  Yes you are quite correct openSUSE does have more KDE users than GNOME users which is a vestige from the good old S.u.S.E. days and before, but how does that make it logical?  I challenge this point’s validity.

- Unique Selling Point. It is important for openSUSE to provide something that Ubuntu and Fedora don´t provide. It would be beneficial for openSUSE to be the only big KDE distribution.

openSUSE has several USPs.  The major one is that openSUSE has one the largest pools of upstream developers for both GNOME and KDE.  It is a distribution that gives equal weight to both DEs with a large amount of cross DE work.  We already provide something that no other distro does – open, supported and enhanced choice.  Another USP is that openSUSE is already renowned for it’s KDE implementation regardless of which event I go to and the whole distro discussion comes up people acknowledge and that openSUSE has one of the best KDE builds going.  I challenge this point’s validity.

- This could attract more developers because KDE developers need a nice distribution to develop on.

Now this I think is just ill advised.  Having KDE as the default DE will only mean that the KDE zealots will be more likely to use openSUSE and to be honest we don’t want or need any zealots.  What we want and need is responsible contributions.  Having a good implementation of what ever DE and the correct tools is the way to get more developers NOT a default.  I challenge this points validity.

- This would increase the popularity of openSUSE in the KDE user community. The negative impact on the GNOME community is not that bad because Ubuntu is the most popular GNOME distribution.

Again it would only really be popular amongst the KDE fanboys/girls, if you don’t agree just look at some of the comments in the feature and on the threads .  Sensible developers/users would actually take the time to see what KDE related artifacts are on offer – Beineri’s roll outs of the latest KDE releases is a good example, as is Cornelius’ KDE SDK appliance.  It is innovations like this that will make openSUSE popular not having a default desktop.  Now for the second part of this comment.  Really, do you really honestly think that the impact on the openSUSE GNOME community would be “not that bad”? As Marco once advised us – ZONK!  This is probably the worst thoughtout aspect to your idea.  Any negative impact to any of our community would be bad.  If Ubuntu is “the most popular GNOME distibution” don’t you think it would be better if we tried to address that and make openSUSE the best all round distribution?  I challenge this point’s validity.

Frank, you asked for people’s thoughts here’s mine.  I would have thought the best way to approach this idea would be to first put forward the question at one of the Project meetings on IRC and then follow it up on the -project mailinglist.  Filing the feature and then advertising it solely on your KDE syndicated blog wasn’t the most intelligent course.  It affects openSUSE and KDE so giving a bit of notice to the openSUSE project would have been at the very least curtious.  Oh and to put the record straight – I class myslef as desktop agnostic and use GNOME, KDE, XFCE and Moblin if anything I use Moblin more than the others at the moment

openSUSE Week Counter

UPDATE: New Dates. You now have more time to plan!

As you can see the week of the 11th to the 17th of May is openSUSE Week.  What’s so special about this week?  Well in a nutshell, the aim is to get all corners of the community together to focus on specific topics.  These topics range from wiki cleanup to packaging; testing certain features/functions to translation work; discussion with the openSUSE Board and almost anything inbetween.

I’d like to suggest a couple of other items to the list (yes I know I need to add them to the wiki).  Both items are marketing related:

1. Create good screencasts, ideally of each major component but I’m open to ideas.
2. As requested by certain a11y users & proponents, close caption the video that we have (and the interviews I still need to upload).
3. I know I said a couple but maths was never my strong point Try and do some video interviews that we can group under the “People Of openSUSE” banner.  I’ve already started this but mainly with Novell employees.  If community members are willing to help out, please let me know (it could even be you filming yourself without any need for video conferencing).

So please make sure you come and join the fun, remember the openSUSE community wont succeed unless you join in.  We may even have the opportunity to have a soap box where you can voice your complaints and issues.  The important thing is the openSUSE Week is about you the community for you the community, to get something out of it you need to put something into it.  Lastly it’s all about having good old fashioned geeko fun!  So come along and join the fun

So what are the projects in question? Well they are: Helping Hands, openSUSE-Tutiorials and openSUSE TV. Funny I can hear some people moaning and groaning that these are GNOME Team projects, WRONG!! These projects have indeed been started by members of the GNOME Team, but they are for the whole distribution and project. I know suseROCKs has tried in the past to try and get some contributions from other teams, so don’t blame the GNOME Team for the content blame yourselves.

Actually on second thought, drop the whole blame game thing. A better solution is to start a fresh and keep up the momentum. I am basically asking members of the openSUSE Community (that means ALL of you!) to step up and take the wild Geeko by the reigns and help teach all those non-believers that it really is easy to use, has some brilliant features (easily found and hidden), and generally a great distro and project to use and be involved in.

So if we take each item in turn:

1) Helping Hands: HH (as we affectionately call it) is aimed at giving an insight into certain aspects of the distro that a user may come across or wish to use. In the past we have had sessions on Inkscape, Evolution, Banshee, general GNOME usage and other applications. We are hoping to have one on packaging RPMs and using the Build Service in the not so distant future. We would love to see members of the KDE community enlighten us (yes some of the GNOME users are scared of things that begin with K) about things that are going on in there, I know there are loads of great things I’m just really knowledgeable in them or even know 25% of them. We would also like members of XFCE and any other desktop environment that’s out there to do the same. You can focus on a specific application, a suite of applications or anything that will be helpful to users. If possible get someone from upstream join in, it makes things much more interesting and actually opens eyes on both sides of the fence as to what is going on. If you are interested (why wouldn’t you be?) and are willing to help out (you know you want to) then please let wither myself (FunkyPenguin) or suseROCKs know on IRC, we hang out in most of the openSUSE channels.

2) openSUSE-Tutiorials: oS-T is aimed at being a repository of insights, tips & tricks etc on applications and other things with the distro. Why not just use the Wiki? Well in a nutshell there are times when the Wiki just isn’t suited, and this way topics can be easily grouped so are ultimately easily searchable. Not only by the big search engines, but also by any user who visits the site. Content is moderated prior to being published, and before you start screaming of a conspiracy to silence the truth it is actually to try and ensure that those items published are actually of good quality and will genuinely be of use. For more info on publishing something for oS-T then please ask either decriptor or suseROCKs on IRC (again they loiter in most channels).

3) openSUSE TV: oS TV is aimed at providing a medium to show all the wonderous videos that we have on and about openSUSE. These don’t have to be any of the official videos that are done at conferences but can also include screencasts, interviews and almost any other form of video that we have about openSUSE (both distro and project). The channel is part of the blip.tv service and as such is aimed at all platforms, not just Linux. We want to try and grow our user base and community which means looking at the competing Operating Systems. I am hoping to do a series of interviews at the upcoming FOSDEM show similar to those that I did in Nurenberg for Hack Week III; I have pencilled in the title of “Face to Face @ FOSDEM’09″. So if you’re going to be at the event (try and make it if you can because it is really a great event), and you have a specific topic you’d like to speak about then let me know. I would love to get more content on there, screencast would be great as would videos from LUG meetings where openSUSE is used/showcased etc. Remember oS TV is about the community, for the community, by the community. So your input is needed!

There is no reason why you can’t do an item on all three of the above and have them linked. For an example you could do a HH item on the KDE desktop (general first look etc), you could also do a screencast of that item and have the screencast posted to oS TV and to finish it up you could have an oS-T article on tuning your desktop to get the best out of it. If you feel that any of these are wrong/bad/need improving/$COMMENT then please keep those comments to yourself!! In all seriousness, they can only improve with your help so please let us know all and any feedback that you may have. Most importantly, please join in

Unfortunately there are too many dependencies for the backport, and will involve a heck of a lot of maintenece – more so than normal.  After several attempts to coax things to work we must bow our heads in admission to being beaten This doesn’t mean that we won’t be doing any backports in the future, the championship isn’t over just this match.  It does mean that there wont be a GNOME 2.24 for openSUSE 11.0 however, sorry to disappoint.

We have learnt our lesson and with the aim of not disapointing you again we have already instigated measures to ensure that your backporting needs are met.  We are already starting to build GNOME 2.25 against the current Factory and will continue to ensure that each release has the latest and greatest from the Enchanted Wood.  There may well be occaisons where things just won’t work, but we will do our utmost to minimise them and give you plenty of notice.

One thing we do need is your help.  Funny I always seem to be asking for help, but this time there is a really good reason (actually more than one ).  We need more people to run Factory to test things and ensure that bugs and issues/comments are reported back.  This doesn’t just apply to GNOME but openSUSE in general, please please test our latest releases and give us your feedback.  There are several ways you can do this – Bugzilla, IRC and Mailing Lists, oh and at events like the upcoming FOSDEM.

So what packages am I looking at putting on there? Below are a couple of tables of applications and what I have selected for each DE including ASUS eeePC related drivers (ACPI/Events) and also bluetooth; I have tried to stick to those that come with the DE e.g. all KDE apps are KDE4 variants, and if a DE provides an app for a function I try to use that.  So the first iteration of the table is:

As you can see KDE4 takes up the least amount of space followed by XFCE with GNOME dropping into third place.  This surprised me as I actually expected XFCE to be way ahead in the lead.  I then tried to minimise the number of applications and tried to use apps that could multi task, still prefering those that are included as part of the openSUSE distro:

As you can see KDE is still the leader, but GNOME has managed to close the gap significantly.

You will notice that there are some notable applications missing from both tables, both from the Mozilla family – FireFox and Thunderbird.  I chose not to use FireFox as the browser as I have been experiencing some icky lockups with it, and this is irrespective of platform.  I decided against Thunderbird because it just did not like to display correctly on the 7″ screen, even the version supplied by Xandros refused to display nicely.  As KDE4 doesn’t have a native IRC client yet I have chosen irssi, i will update the list when a native KDE4 client is available – most likely Quassel.  Also as it stands Kaffeine is not available for KDE4 yet, when that happens I would imagine I would replace MPlayer with it.

Both the GNOME and KDE4 builds were based on a minimal X install – for GNOME add gnome-panel and gnome-session; for for KDE add kdebase4-session, kdebase4-workspace and kde4-win; XFCE was based on the supplied pattern.  One thing I did notice is that 11.1 (Beta4) seems to have put on a bit of weight in comparison to 11.0, a base install appears to be ~400MB more O_o.  I am going to to do a verification shortly and file a bug so hopefully I can thin them out even further.

If people have any recommendations or suggestions as to what applications to use, then please let me know.  My next step is to create both ISO and USB images, any and all help would be much appreciated – SUSEStudio access would be even better   This list is not meant to be the be all and end all, but more a matter of itch scratching.  Yes I know I could reduce the space taken up if I didnt bother with any of that non-free codec crud, and drop flash from the equation, but I’m pragmatic and ultimately want to see people use openSUSE.  Get them using our distro first, once thatis established then we can educate them on the ugly side of things.  Once I manage to create the images with the above package list i will look at creating a completely free version with no colsed codecs/apps.

Once again I’d like to thank all those on IRC for there help and advice – JP Rosevear, James Wilcox, Stephan Binner, Will Stephenson, Martin Schandler and Hubert Figuiere.

So let me try once more to explain what the Franchise voting is all about.  In a nutshell an openSUSE Member has the ability to grant a registered user, but not member, the priveledge to vote in the upcoming Board Election.  Why? Simplisticly it’s to get more voters/users/contributors involved in influencing how the openSUSE project progresses.  There are 2831 registered users now, but only 212 Members – so according to my bad maths that makes about 7.5% eligable to vote. That to me isn’t entirely representative of the community, so in comes the Franchise vote, we members have the ability to increase that voting percentage to 15%.  The catch is that the users have to have registered prior to 01 September 2008.

So how do users get the franchise? Simplist way is ask a member   Members will not be able to grant users a franchise if they have not registered prior to 01Sept08 so dont try and bluff, the system knows   How do you find out who is a member? Simple, go to users.opensuse.org and “Browse Members“.  From there you can get contact details for IRC nicks, etc and try and convince them that you are worthy.

So please if you haven’t done so, go and get your franchise and help influence openSUSE.  For members that haven’t given out their franchise you can “Browse Users” and find someone you recognise and ask them if they would like a franchise vote.  People this is YOUR Board that is being voted in, if you don’t speak up now then you’ll loose your voice until the next election!

You have less than 23hrs till applications for membership for voting purposes is closed; you also have the same small amount of time to notify us of your intention to run for a position for the first community elected Board. I know there are some of you who have been thinking about running – it’s now or never to be part of the 1st. Sure you can go for it next election, but you should really go for it now

Remember you need to be a member before you can run for the Board!

For more info please see my earlier call.

Thanks! OK, just a reminder that you have less than 160 hours to register for the openSUSE board election if you haven’t done so already.

For the mathematically challenged, 160 hours is just under seven full days! Yes, that is how long you have left to get your membership application in to be able to vote on the upcoming board election. It is also the amount of time you have left to get your notification of intention to run for the first community elected Board.

You can only run for the board if you hold openSUSE Membership, you can only vote for your favourite candidates if you have openSUSE Membership. Do you see a pattern here? Good!

Also it would be good if all of the current candidates could ensure that they have filled in their platforms on the openSUSE wiki as requested before then. Some have already, I appreciate that people are busy, but if you want to be on the Board (or vote for the board) you have to be prompt. Slackers will not be tolerated!

Obligatory Political Image

I managed to grab Will Stephenson for a brief chat on camera about KDE and how it fits in with openSUSE, many thanks Will.  I also had some discussions with several people just to make sure I squeezed the last out of “ChatWeek”.  I spoke with Marko Jung about the upcoming Board Elections for a fair while, and we can’t stress enough how important this event is for the whole openSUSE Project.  For those that are keen to stand for election, please follow the Notification instructions here.  Also, those that do wish to stand, you will have to fund your own election campaign as neither Novell nor SUSE have the budget to fund a campaign like Obama or McCain.  The one advantage that we do have over the US elections is we won’t be anywhere near as long and drawn out, also we’ll be a lot friendlier (I hope).

I would like to thank everyone at SUSE and Novell for inviting so many external community members to Nurenberg for HackWeek III, this was the largest by far and was an absolute winner!  I would like to especially thank Andreas Jaeger and Michael Loeffler for co-ordinating the event for us; Martin Lasarsch who even though he was feeling decidedly crappy thanks to a persistent cold was able to perform his host duties impecably; Sonja Krause-Harder for allowing me to occupy part of her office, Marco Michna for being that great shadow that appears when you need him; and also to the un-related to openSUSE but just as important to me AirBerlin, a mighty fine example of how flying can still be enjoyable, in this day and age of tight fisted, service void, unpleasent airlines.

I am currently working on editing the video that I have, and will try and get something out ASAP, honest.  If there are any animation supremos out there that would like to do a bit of animation wizardry, please let me know!

Why am I especially thankful to Cornelius? Well Cornelius was kind enough to spend the longest time in front of the camera and gave a brilliant interview explaining quite a bit about the Incubation Team and their work on SUSE Studio.  A lot of misconceptions are dispelled and some light and clarification is shed on the whole product.  He also managed to enlighten us as to what being Vice-President of KDE.e.V and his HackWeek Project on the Social Desktop.

The others managed to enlighten us as to what it is that they actually do during normal day to day operations, and also what they are doing during the week.  Hopefully I can get some more interviews tomorrow, and actually manage to get some editing done.

In the evening most of the remaining external community members that were left went out for dinner and had a great meal and a few drinks, and chatted about a lot of stuff – both openSUSE related and general.

I’m feeling a bit sad that I have to leave tomorrow as everyone here has been great and it has really been invaluable to me (and hopefully to those in SUSE) to meet in person and talk about many things that interest and annoy us.