Home Home > 2008 > 09
Sign up | Login

Deprecation notice: openSUSE Lizards user blog platform is deprecated, and will remain read only for the time being. Learn more...

Archive for September, 2008

« Older Entries

openSUSE spokesperson/lizard/evangelist/coordinator

September 30th, 2008 by

I probably could make here the longest title just naming everything we have so far as designation for the job 🙂

So what is it about?

We want to have an official program to support local communities better. We already have some strong supporters which are doing an awesome job, now we need more of them. You might think of fedora ambassador or Ubuntu LoCo, but for a unique project like openSUSE we also should have a unique name. But of course it’s not all about the name, i posted yesterday a draft with more details and some open questions. We think that this program will help the project, and the people who are doing the job (without a name right now 🙂 ), a lot.

Join the discussion at openSUSE-marketing!

Posted in Marketing | 3 Comments »

Enlightenment LiveCD

September 29th, 2008 by

Ladies and Gents!

Glad to announce the update of unofficial Enlightenment LiveCD based on OpenSUSE-11.0.

Download page
‘Welcome’ notes (PDF)

Please visit the download page to see the details and try the mirror provided by Yandex.ru – a leading Russian internet and technology company. We’ve got this mirror in September’08 because our server was loaded ‘over the top’. Please, read the Welcome.pdf before you pop the disk into the PC/Qemu/etc.

Here’s some download statistics data excluding the mirror and excluding the torrents:

Month Monthly Totals KBytes Average shipped Qty of images
Jul 2008 2226994785 3625
Aug 2008 1067698466 1655
Sep 2008 33425784636 47884
Total 36720477887 53164

The data is slightly rounded/diminished, but tiny 50k from a single server is the result no one expected. Thank you very much!

All components of this LiveCD are available for the ordinary openSUSE Users. Some of our improvements/modifications are outlined in the ‘Welcome.pdf’. We’re cooking now the simple package to make the Enlightenment LiveCD with a ‘single click’. Anyone could install that package, read instructions, add the drivers/packages/components we had missed and “pull the trigger”. It means that you can add there the beloved NVIDIA drivers, remove OpenOffice, add more themes, wallpapers, games etc.

The brief changelog comparing to the old ‘release’:

  • create_xconf service is modified and used instead of ‘traditional’ xdm to launch the GUI. If you decide to install the system to the disk – create_xconf will also help you there. A simple check of your video card/cards is added and ‘Sax2’ will be started on boot if your saved hardware configuration is altered (should we check the Monitor+Video Card configuration? should we modify the xdm service for better compatibility/integration?).
  • fonts are displayed with 96.0 ‘standard’ DPI despite on selected/chosen screen resolutions. It’s easy to change this value if 66.0 DPI or 130.0 DPI is your favorite Xft setup but… 96.0 is the value which is used mostly .
  • Enlightenment OBS repositories for openSUSE 10.2-11.0/Factory are updated to the current state. E-svn snapshot date is 20080924.
  • custom kernel from Jan Engelhardt repository replaced the default one. Thanks!
  • OpenOffice suite now uses the default/selected gtk-2.0 theme to display interface elements.
  • Tk package is removed and aria2c lost the tk gui. BitTorrent client is added. Anyway aria2c is best when used in CLI.
  • English thesaurus is removed from OpenOffice suite along with OpenOffice-Base. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.
  • 23Oz theme for E17 and ETK is updated. Glowing scrollbars and sliders – useless feature but looks nice.
  • sources of ATI fglrx drivers (without precompiled kernel module) are added, instruction for those who is not happy with radeon/ati opensource drivers are on the page 4 of Welcome.pdf
  • several .desktop files are improved (thanks to the Ariszló)
  • option to select the default login manager on first boot (‘Entrance‘ or ‘gdm‘) is added (though only ‘entrance’ works here).
  • a lot of components are added to provide better support of various equipment ‘out-from-the-box’ (like webcams, eeepc and so on)
  • other miscellaneous fixes and updates…

We will be glad to receive your feedback.

Acknowledgments:

Enlightenment Development Team and Enlightenment Community
OpenSUSE Build Service Team
OpenSUSE KIWI Team (schaefi, cyberorg, pzb, cgoncalves – THANKS!)
Stalwart, thanks for the hosting!
Packman Team
Novell
Jan Engelhardt
and all the others, who helped to make it (Engineers, Developers, Users, Maintainers…)

Thanks!

Regards,
SOAD team

Posted in Build Service, Desktop, Distribution | 5 Comments »

How many Lizards does it takes…

September 26th, 2008 by

… to change a flat tire?

The answer: 3

(more…)

Tags: , ,
Posted in Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »

openSUSE Membership Applications…

September 25th, 2008 by

The openSUSE board met yesterday to go through all the open membership applications.  Since many applied in the last days, we had to go over 67 applications.  Additionally there were some members that applied after the deadline for voting, we did not look at their applications for now and will handle them later.  Out of the 67 applications, we postponed 6 since we first needed to answer some more questions, approved around 30 and rejected the rest. So, we have right now 211 approved openSUSE members.

Details about membership are in the wiki but let me explain a bit more what membership means using some practical examples.

(more…)

Posted in Board, Elections | 1 Comment »

Wiki Meeting Summary

September 24th, 2008 by

Well, for just a whirlwind summary, we met for the wiki cleanup and have come up with a few tasks to take care of.  I kept a bulleted list of the discussion here:

http://en.opensuse.org/User:Hobbsc/GNOME_Wiki_Cleanup_Notes

I’ll start work on a mockup of a landing page in the next few days.  I will also open up discussion on the list once I’ve got something solid in place.  The mockup (currently blank) will be available here:

http://en.opensuse.org/User:Hobbsc/GNOME_Wiki_Mockup

Thanks to everyone who attended, I appreciate all the input.  I think this will work out well for us.

Lastly, I have a bit of a support request.  We’ll be periodically checking the /GNOME section of the wiki for lost or un-necessary pages.  Does anyone know of a simple way to search for lost pages under /GNOME?  What about a way to track page changes under that namespace?

Posted in GNOME | Comments Off on Wiki Meeting Summary

OpenSuSE Nicaragua in SFD 2008

September 24th, 2008 by

On Sept. 20th, the Free Software Community in Nicaragua celebrated the “Software Freedom Day” at the “Universidad Centroamerica, UCA” Campus. The Nicaraguan OpenSuSE Community was there, supporting the event and promoting our favorite Linux Distribution.

As a Member of the Nicaraguan OpenSuSE community and the Nicaraguan Amateur Astronomy Group, I’ve set up a small stand running Stellarium in my oS.11 Laptop.

After that, I conducted a small workshop for people interested in learning Stellarium.

That was a big day!

Posted in Events | 1 Comment »

Late openSUSE-GNOME wiki reminder.

September 24th, 2008 by

Just wanted to post a (late) reminder that we will be having a quick meeting regarding cleanup of the GNOME section of the openSUSE wiki today in #opensuse-gnome on Freenode.  We will meet at 1230 CDT (1730 UTC) and will be having an informal discussion about ideas for the GNOME page of the wiki.

See the openSUSE-GNOME mailing list archives for previous discussion.

Posted in Documentation, Events, GNOME | Comments Off on Late openSUSE-GNOME wiki reminder.

OpenOffice_org 3.0rc2 available

September 24th, 2008 by

I’m happy to announce that OpenOffice.org 3.0.0.3.2 rc2 packages are available in the Build Service OpenOffice:org:UNSTABLE project.

The package still not final and might include even serious bugs. Therefore it is not intended for data-critical usage. A good practice is to archive any important data before an use, …

We kindly ask any interested beta testers to try the package and report bugs.

Note: openSUSE-11.1-beta1 and FACTORY include totaly reworked packages where the build is split into many source packages. It is very broken right now. I would like to put it into the Build Service after I solve the most annoying problems. It might take one or two months. The new packages will also provide some extra OOo extensions.

(more…)

Posted in Desktop, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice_org 3.0rc2 available

Software Management as a Service

September 24th, 2008 by

A couple of days ago I finished my thesis with the topic mentioned above.

It describes the currently used package formats and software management systems within the Linux as also the proprietary world of Microsoft respectively Apple plus the possibilities to reduce those systems and tools to a common denominator.

The prototype of this service, which emerged within the scope of the thesis, consists of the following three parts:

  • PackageKit, which acts as broker between CIM and the local software management system
  • CIM, which provides the standardized data model and communication and a
  • Web-UI, which is more or less only a proof of concept

As the Common Information Model (CIM) is a widespread and well used standard (even Microsoft occupies it with its WMI stuff), its models are used for a common data structure as also for the operating system independent communication.

For implementing a usable service, classes (data structures) for Package, Update and Repository was needed.
These classes are based, out of compatibility reasons, on the already existing WMI implementation of Microsoft. Hence, it is possible with one and the same client to list packages (products in Microsoft speech) and Updates of Linux as also Windows computers.

To connect this CIM-classes to the local software management system it was necessary to develop so called CIM-providers.

The implemented providers communicate with PackageKit and not with the available software management systems (like ZYpp in case of openSUSE) itself. This is beneficial as there is no need anymore to develop a provider for every single software management system. As soon as there is a backend for PackageKit of the specific software management system this service is automatically usable.

Simplified structure of the service

The prototype of the service is fully usable to list, install and remove packages and patches as also to list, disable and enable repositories for all Linux distributions provided by PackageKit.

So, if you are interested and the thesis is accepted and marked (hopefully good) by my examiners, let me know and you’ll get a copy of it (90 pages, english).

Posted in Packaging, Software Management, Systems Management | Comments Off on Software Management as a Service

What should happen happen if I transplant a brain?

September 23rd, 2008 by

I’m currently involved in a discussion on factory about what should happen if I replace the graphics card, or when I move the hard disk from one machine to another one, with different hardware.

I wished SUSE did handle such transplants gracefully, maybe for the same reason I do not wish my 2CV back:

My first car was a Citroën 2CV.

On some summer day I did a very long autobahn trip with it and the engine got real hot as it was air cooled.  When I finally had arrived in my home town late at night, I rolled down a long hill using the engine brake and at the end of hill at a red light I stopped the car — and oops: so did the engine…

(more…)

Posted in Base System, Usability, X.org | 5 Comments »

« Older Entries