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Archive for 2009

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Some KDE 4 tips you should know

August 13th, 2009 by

KDE 4 is definitively my daily desktop environment, although it’s not yet mature like the 3.5.x branch i consider it enough stable and usable, but sometime the default settings and the few time available, don’t help us to appreciate it, so let’s resume some little tip for beginners that feel lost with everything new and don’t want waste their time.

(This article is also available for italian users)

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Tags: ,
Posted in Accessibility, Desktop, KDE | 4 Comments »

openSUSE@ARM: GSoC status and final spurt

August 12th, 2009 by

I was buried with work in the last couple of days, so whats new on my GSoC-project:

  • a lot of patches went into factory and some more are queued
  • fixed issues with qemu
  • most yast packages already building
  • zypper builds, but requires some more bugfixing
  • X11 builds
  • cross-compilation stable, speed is good

Todo:

  • create image (bootable to console)
  • create image (bootable to x11 on beagleboard)
  • evaluate switch in webfrontend for cross-feature
  • project documentation/GSoC

Posted in Architectures, Base System, Build Service, Factory, Packaging, YaST | Comments Off on openSUSE@ARM: GSoC status and final spurt

GSoC – summary of this week’s meeting

August 12th, 2009 by

Since the rails oauth-plugin got support for oauth 1.0a I started to migrate the frontend so that it also supports 1.0a. This was a nice exercise to learn how certain things are done with rails. Additionally I did some code cleanups, bugfixing etc.

The goal for this week is more testing, bugfixing and writing a user documentation.

Tags:
Posted in Build Service | Comments Off on GSoC – summary of this week’s meeting

Enlightenment is coming…

August 10th, 2009 by

It’s scheduled to release Enlightenment-DR17 Desktop Shell as a Christmas gift and we glad to announce the update of SOAD to the version 3.2.0. It’s a current openSUSE-11.1 with all updates and Enlightenment set as a prime GUI.

We tried to cook a nice documentation. Please examine it before you consider to download the images:
General Documentation
USB-stick readme

The EFL is compiled from official 3-rd pre-release sources and pretty stable here.
Software is updated and several nice utilities added as well. We created some modest GUI customizations/presets and hope that you like them.

Our TODO list is to fix all errors with “Ecomorph” and provide it for LiveCD and USB systems.

We wish to say “HUGE THANKS!” to “cyberorg” (Jigish Gohil) and “schaefi” (Marcus Schaefer) for their help with this release.

Have fun!
Regards,
SOAD Team

P.S. active mirrors:
GWDG.DE
Yandex.ru

Posted in Desktop, Distribution | 4 Comments »

Comparing openSUSE 11.2 and Kubuntu Karmic LiveUSB setups

August 8th, 2009 by

Some days ago, KDE 4.3.0 has been released by the KDE community and I myself as a loyal GNOME user was just curious about this new release of the KDE4 desktop environment. Thus I took a test-drive of both openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 5 and the Kubuntu Karmic Daily Build as of the 8th of August 2009 – both are shipping with KDE 4.3.0. Utilizing my Eee PC 901 I setup LiveUSB sticks of both distributions and I’d herewith like to share my findings with the openSUSE community. As you might have noticed, openSUSE Milestone releases provide the ability to deploy the LiveCD ISO image directly to USB flash media as of 11.2 Milestone 4, which is a great step ahead from my perspective. So, let’s get started:

1. openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 5 – (so far) non-persistent

Only one single step is needed here 🙂 Couldn’t be easier!
# dd if=openSUSE-KDE4-LiveCD-Build0201-i686.iso of=/dev/"usbdrive" bs=4M
2. Kubuntu Karmic Daily Build as of the 8th of August 2009 – persistent

While this setup is a bit “harder” to complete it delivers (at least from my perspective) the smoother solution – so far!
Mount the ISO to /mnt/ and rsync the whole content to a FAT32 partition on the USB flash media (here labelled “ubuntu”)
# mount -o loop karmic-desktop-i386.iso /mnt/
# rsync -avh /mnt/ /media/ubuntu/
Now install GRUB (Syslinux should work as well, but I myself prefer GRUB here)
# grub-install --no-floppy --root-directory=/media/ubuntu/ /dev/"usbdrive"
Create a GRUB configuration file /media/ubuntu/boot/grub/menu.lst with the following content
default 0
timeout 3
hiddenmenu
###
title Kubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Daily Build 08-Aug-2009
kernel /casper/vmlinuz file=/preseed/kubuntu.seed boot=casper persistent quiet splash
initrd /casper/initrd.lz
Last but not least, resize the FAT32 partition labelled “ubuntu” to its minimal extent and create an ext2/3 partition labelled “casper-rw” within the remaining free space.

Conclusion:

What I’m currently curious about and the major reason for posting this comparison actually: Could some fellow openSUSE community member extend my current solution to beat the Kubuntu setup not only in ease of creation but also in regard of usability? The major difference here is that the openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 4/5 LiveUSB setup isn’t persistent while the Kubuntu one is due to the casper-rw aufs overlay partition.

Posted in KDE, openSUSE 11.2 | 7 Comments »

OpenOffice_org 3.1.1 beta2 available for openSUSE

August 7th, 2009 by

I’m happy to announce OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 beta2 packages for openSUSE. They are available in the Build Service OpenOffice:org:UNSTABLE project and include many upstream and Go-oo fixes. Please, look for more details about the openSUSE OOo build on the wiki page.

The packages are beta versions and might include even serious bugs. Therefore they are not intended for data-critical usage. A good practice is to archive any important data before an use, …

As usual, we kindly ask any interested beta testers to try the package and report bugs.

Other information and plans:

The next build will be available about August 21, two weeks from now, and it should be 3.1.1-rc1.The final OOo-3.1.1 packages should be available at the beginning of September.

I have vacation the following week and will not have access to the internet. I hope that the beta2 build is fine, but if you have any serious troubles with it, please report bug and downgrade to the stable build.

Posted in Desktop, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice_org 3.1.1 beta2 available for openSUSE

With GSOC almost over….

August 6th, 2009 by

The openSIS team is proud to announce that the conversion from Postgres to MySQL is nearly complete. Check it out at http://opensis.sourceforge.net  We have a few small bugs in the SQL left in some of the less used features. For the most part the project is on track and we have started to divide the team in two with one half working on bugs, the other working on Moodle integration. By mid fall we hope to have a “push” mode of integration with Moodle version 1.9.5 and hope to have work begun using Moodles new 2.0 version with SIS API.

We have IMHO created what will be the next “killer” , “must have” application  in the education administration venue.  Paired with the offerings produced by my good friends and teammates of the opensuse-education team. I think we will be producing a wonderful tool for all humanity.  A free education software suite.  Much has been done with the ideals founded here, Linkat, and the Edubuntu add-on are just a few. I hope it keeps going , for the children’s sake “let’s make a difference”!

Posted in Education | Comments Off on With GSOC almost over….

28 Partitions on a Single Disk? No Problem!

August 5th, 2009 by

So far it was only possible to have upto 16 device nodes for a single disks. This restricted the number of usable partitions. As a workaround kpartx could be used to create device mapper mappings for further partitions but that was never fully integrated in openSUSE.

With version 2.6.28 the kernel supports upto 256 device nodes per disk, much more than the partition table allows. But since the implementation is not straightforward, the additional device nodes are assigned dynamically, user-space programs may need to be adapted.

For openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 5 YaST was extended to support this new kernel feature.

Some quick tests showed only problems with LVM. If you are interested in this feature and have the possibility please give it a try so that we find remaining bugs.

Posted in Base System, Kernel, openSUSE 11.2, YaST | 1 Comment »

Hybrid Live Systems

August 5th, 2009 by

When talking about live systems on USB sticks people reported many problems with bootloaders like grub to boot the stick. Even though this is most often a problem with the stick hardware or the PC BIOS it’s an annoying situation which should have a better solution. There are also many people who wants to use the stick as a data container in combination with a live system to work with

With the ISO hybrid technology and the integration into kiwi there is a way to create such a stick very easily. A hybrid ISO is an iso filesystem which contains a MBR and thus it’s seen as a disk to the PC BIOS. As it’s an ISO the isolinux bootloader is used instead of grub which works better on many systems. Additionally the hybrid ISO can be used as a live system on CD/DVD as well as on a USB stick

What’s required to use this

  • kiwi v3.68 or later
  • syslinux-3.82-2.1 or later

How do I setup a hybrid ISO in kiwi

In order to activate the creation of a hybrid iso in kiwi you only have to add the hybrid=”true” attribute as part of your iso image type in config.xml:


<type boot="isoboot/suse-11.2" flags="clic" hybrid="true">iso

You can use the suse-11.2-JeOS from the kiwi-templates package as example image description for your hybrid testing. The generated .iso file can be dumped via a simple dd call onto the USB stick. The same file also can be used to be burned on a CD/DVD


dd if=LimeJeOS-openSUSE-11.2.i686-1.11.2.iso of=/dev/... bs=32k

After that the stick can be tested. By default all attempts to write data will go into the RAM of the system. As a stick allows storing data persistently you can create a write partition on the stick using fdisk:


fdisk /dev/...

kiwi will prevent using a vfat partition for the operating system. So make sure you create a 0x83 (linux) type partition and not a vfat partition for the write support. If you additionally create a vfat partition you can use it as a container for any kind of data independently from the live system. We choose vfat here to stay compatible with Windows systems.

Known bugs

  • when using the clicfs filesystem (flags=”clic”) the persistently write feature into a single partition will fail because clicfs currently can’t deal with raw block specials as cow device. Will be fixed as soon as possible

Have fun 🙂

Posted in Hackweek, Virtualization | 6 Comments »

The Desktop DingDong

August 5th, 2009 by

Just incase you’ve been living under a rock on Mars there is a certain feature request in openFate. Both Michael and Zonker have posted on the matter but as they are both Internal (as in they get paid by the Big N) I thought I’d throw my external views (these views are not solicited by anyone other than me, yadayadayada) into the pot.  Now I know I was asked to put my thoughts down and send them into the mailing list, but to be honest the whole discussion has turned into a childish “My dad’s got bigger knuckles than your dad” style flamewar and there are multiple threads on the one topic.  Personally I have now switched off of the discussion on the lists as it’s hard to follow and frankly going nowhere.

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.

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Posted in Desktop, Distribution, GNOME, KDE | 10 Comments »

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