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Archive for March, 2010

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Build your own Google Earth rpm

March 9th, 2010 by

The last days I’ve spent some time to investigate how to package Google Earth into an rpm. There was already a script called make-google-package available on the internet, but this one creates a debian package only. However, it was a good start to get me going to create a Google Earth (GE) rpm. Although I met quite some obstacles, which is not to uncommon in package building, I was still able to come up with a procedure a get GE packaged. The biggest problem I encountered were incorrect library dependencies, for which I opened issue 702 in the Google Earth issue tracker. Anyway to make a long story short: the rpm installs Google Earth system wide, corrects file permissions, for openSUSE_11.2 it takes care that the font is rendered correctly, the rpm takes care that Google Earth integrates nicely with the rest of the openSUSE system.

The procedure to build the rpm can be found in the openSUSE wiki. One word of caution about the procedure, you need to be an experienced linux user and you need to have access to the openSUSE Build Service (OBS) to be able to build the rpm. This is due to library dependency problem, which prevents it to build without modification to the base system.

If you like and you have the knowledge how to build an rpm with the tool ‘build’, it would be great if you can extend the howto with steps how to do this (build a GE rpm with ‘build’) to the before mentioned page. The same is valid for a procedure that uses VirtualBox to build the rpm.

Last but not last; a procedure or even a script, that uses ”’rpmbuild -ba”’ to build the rpm, would be very welcom as well.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Build Service, Desktop, Packaging | 1 Comment »

new “osc config” command

March 8th, 2010 by

Hi,

recently I implemented a “osc config” command to set or get a configuration option.

Syntax: osc config <section> <option> [<value>]
(<section> is either an apiurl (see sections in the configfile) or an apiurl alias or ‘general’)

Here are some small examples how to use it:
# get the current value
marcus@linux:~> osc config general build-root
‘general’: ‘build-root’ is set to ‘/var/tmp/build-root-%(repo)s-%(arch)s’
# set an option
marcus@linux:~> osc config https://api.opensuse.org aliases obs
‘https://api.opensuse.org’: ‘aliases’ is set to ‘obs’
# remove an option
marcus@linux:~> osc config obs aliases –delete
‘obs’: ‘aliases’ got removed
# remove/reset an option
marcus@linux:~> osc config general build-root –delete
‘general’: ‘build-root’ is set to ‘/var/tmp/build-root’

Feedback, comments etc. are always welcome 🙂

Posted in Build Service | Comments Off on new “osc config” command

Additional packages that are needed to get skype working on openSUSE_11.2 x86_64

March 5th, 2010 by

When you want to use skype on a 64bit openSUSE 11.x system, there are some additional rpms needed, to get skype going. The following packages are needed:

  • xorg-x11-libXv-32bit
  • libqt4-32bit
  • libqt4-x11-32bit

Those packages will pull in others, but those 3 will take care that all packages are available to run skype. The package can be installed using zypper:
zypper install xorg-x11-libXv-32bit libqt4-32bit libqt4-x11-32bit

Have fun!

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Posted in Miscellaneous | 5 Comments »

Time to Stand and Be Counted

March 4th, 2010 by

Lizards, it is time to head to the polls for your favorite Linux distribution! Linux Journal is running a poll to gauge the popularity of major distributions today, and needless to say it is imperative for all Geekos out there to do their patriotic clicking duty.

That’s what the prehensile tail is for, in case you had wondered — efficient multi-tasking 🙂

Be advised that the Journal is going to run a feature on the results in the coming months, and that your comments may be quoted for inclusion – just be extra-witty and doubly insightful as always.

Note: I did take notice that SUSE is spelled in the old-school way (cool!), and that they are conglomerating our Community and Enterprise distros under the same entry, and have notified the editors over at LJ for future reference, but of course the entries of a running poll are no longer editable.

Posted in Distribution, Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Time to Stand and Be Counted

http://software.opensuse.org/stage

March 3rd, 2010 by

Part of our “umbrella” milestone, Pavol and Robert ported software.opensuse.org to the Bento theme. To get more feedback for it, I now deployed it as http://software.opensuse.org/stage.

Please note two things:

  • it also includes a new feature from the Education project: a link to openSUSE derivates
  • the language box is experimental and we kind of decided already to kill it again

On top of that of course: the Bento theme is not yet finished – it’s only a stage deployment to get feedback.

Have fun!

Posted in Build Service | 7 Comments »

OpenOffice_org 3.2.1 alpha1 available for openSUSE

March 2nd, 2010 by

I’m happy to announce OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 alpha1 packages for openSUSE. They are available in the Build Service OpenOffice:org:UNSTABLE project, are based on the upstream 3.2 sources and include many Go-oo fixes and improvements. 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. See also the list of known bugs. Especially, we are interested into feedback for the following features:

  • toolbar popups refactoring
  • media embedding (i#83753)
  • support for dotted and dashed border
  • improved writer document comparing
  • “insert new sheet” tab in Calc (fate#308396)
  • distributed text alignment support (fate#308334)
  • insert current date/time via Ctrl-/Shift-Ctrl- (fate#307762)
  • English function names instead of localized ones (fate#308029)

Other information and plans:

The alpha1 packages are not available for openSUSE Factory because  I need to fix the build with the newer gcc first. I will look at it within next few days.

I expect that beta1 build will be available two weeks from now and the final release will in April. Though, it depends on the upstream release and the upstream schedule is still somehow unclear.

Posted in Desktop, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice_org 3.2.1 alpha1 available for openSUSE

FOSDEM´10

March 1st, 2010 by

Hi, folks!

I just want to post a small summarize about my experiences at FOSDEM 2010 in Brussels. For me as a trainee at the SUSE it was my first linux related europaeen meeting i ever joined, so it was quite amazing. On 5th February we started from Nuremberg at 12 am towards Begium and arrived circa 10 o’clock in the evening. After the check in we started to conquer the nightlife of Brussels which was tougher I expected because of my missing french skills. Unfortunaly, i missed the so popular “beer event” 🙁

On saturday day we attended the FOSDEM which tooks place at the ULB campus. It looked quite unspectular from outside but after we entered the building i had to grind out getting a first overview.  Many people, many stands  – from Amarok over Fedora, Debian and  SUSE to VLC – and a great atmosphere. After the opening talks I joined the Ruby on Rails lectures which were very intressting for me as becoming RoR coder. There was a lecture about Datamapper which was quite new for me as well as working with MongoDB and the “25 good practices in Ruby on Rails development”.

The next day was followed by a lecture about Aptoid, an project for deploying an own app server and the appropriated client app, and a informative talk about Mozilla´s Firefox Mobil (I’am using an Android smartphone so of course I’am curious what the stage of work it is). After some SUSE lectures about building images with KIWI and SUSE Studio the meeting was drawn to a close.  And remember, this was just an extract of +200 lectures!

For me it was a great experience and very informative – for things i already knew and i did not knew- and I’am looking forward to join FOSDEM in 2011!

fosdem2010

Opening talk

fosdem2010_2

The openSUSE booth

Posted in Events | 2 Comments »

openSUSE-LXDE development status

March 1st, 2010 by

Ok people… openSUSE 11.3 Milestone2 has been released and quite soon we will have the Milestone3.

So now, after lot’s of promises, what is the status now?

IT’S DONE!

yes… it’s done… openSUSE 11.3 allow now to install LXDE directly from installation DVD or Net install. I’m sure all of you reading this post wants to try it, but for lazy people (and i know there are a lot of them outside), just click here and watch some pictures.

Can that be all? No of course not!

Just today i announced to opensuse-lxde and opensuse-factory mailing lists that we switched finally to pcmanfm2.

Even if that one is not yet stable, and even if it’s still on alpha release stage, it’s already feature rich and stable enoguht for daily usage. Of course bugs exist and you report is welcome, so we can fix them.

But it’s not enough, thanks to sidux lxde community we have a couple of nice tools: lxdm-conf and lxcc.

lxdm-conf as name suggest, it is a simple and powerful tool that helps you to edit lxdm settings without take care to manually edit /etc/lxdm/lxdm.conf file. This tool is already into repos.

lxcc instead is a small control center, written using python-gtk. It’s based on an idea of PCLinuxOS Community that wrote lxdecc using gtkdialog. Instead to port original lxdecc to openSUSE we choose to cooperate with Sidux on lxcc simply because gtkdialog looks to be a dead project. Lxcc is not yet into repos, so here a screenshot:

Schermata

And to finish a very good news. We are working on live cds. Yes, it’s taking looong time, but now we should be able to provide you better ISOs in shorter time since we moved from suse-studio to OBS kiwi system. Preliminary images can be downloaded from here:  X11:lxde (login required).

Most probably, a preliminary image will be published soon for a testing (based on openSUSE 11.2), in the same way, a Factory based live CD should be ready soon. Of course, i can’t forget, all that work on ISOs couldn’t be possible without the Dmitry serpokryl help (The author of SOAD).

I hope you’ll enjoy openSUSE-LXDE experience. So please, test test test and test it again. We have to provide the best LXDE ever!

Posted in Accessibility, Desktop, Distribution, Factory, lizards.openSUSE.org, openSUSE 11.2, Packaging, X.org | 2 Comments »

openSUSE & Google Summer of Code 2010

March 1st, 2010 by

The wonderful Vincent has already sent the initial call for participation, so who’s up for it then?

OK I’ll take it that there are several hands raised in the audience (I reckon I’m being overly cautious, I’m sure there are loads of hands up but as I don’t have my glasses on I can only see the first two rows).  So what do we need from our lovely community to help make GSoC 2010 a success?

* We need some admins for openSUSE in GSoC 2010. This mainly involves making sure that we do everything we need to participate in GSoC; making sure students feel comfortable in the project, and push our contributors a bit to publish ideas and mentor students.  Basically the GoTo contact points.

* We need people to maintain the GSoC 2010 wiki page.  I have already started the GSoC 2010 page on the wiki, yes it is pretty much a  copy/paste of last years but it gets the ball rolling 😉

* We need people to start thinking about ideas that students could work on.  If you have a good idea, why not put it in openFATE and put it on the wiki too (with a link to the openFate entry)?  That way we can utilise the voting feature of openFate and gauge how much the community would appreciate the student’s hard work.

So there’s nothing stopping you from joining in, so get to it! Oh and if you’re looking for a way to contribute to openSUSE but aren’t a coder this is a great way to get your feet wet with the community 🙂

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Posted in Distribution, Events, Marketing | 1 Comment »

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