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Archive for 2010

openSUSE Launch Party at MSU, BCA, Vadodara

July 18th, 2010 by

We had a great time yesterday showing off the latest openSUSE Edu Li-f-e based on openSUSE 11.3. Over 120 people packed in the persentation hall, many of them had to stand throughout. I am sure everyone present were impressed with what they saw, they all took home Li-f-e DVD to get the first hand experience.

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openSUSE Edu Li-f-e 11.3 available now!

July 17th, 2010 by

openSUSE Education team is very thrilled to announce the availability of openSUSE Edu: Linux for Education(Li-f-e). Li-f-e is built on openSUSE 11.3. The aim of this DVD is to provide complete education and development resources for parents, students, teachers as well as IT admins running labs at educational institutes

It comes bundled with a wealth of softwares carefully selected to meet every need. Educational softwares covering wide range of subjects such as IT, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, electronics etc catering to students right from preschool to research.

Softwares for graphic designers include GIMP, Inkscape, Blender and more. Office applications to work on pdfs and any office formats including those of the latest MicroSoft Office is included.

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openSUSE 11.3 Launch Party in Nürnberg

July 16th, 2010 by

At the SUSE/Novell offices in Germany, we had a great launch party. With free beer, BBQ, sunshine, a clown and openSUSE 11.3 released, it was a great atmosphere!

More than 100 people showed up: some Novell employees, some former colleagues,  and also many folks whose faces I haven’t seen before. We were overwhelmed and excited by this and after an hour Michael Löffler had to buy some more meat for the BBQ.

I gave a short demo about some of the highlights of openSUSE 11.3. I demonstrated GNOME 3 preview with GNOME Shell, the new tracker indexer, KDE Plasma Netbook interface, ksuseinstall, the LXDE desktop,  SpiderOak and zypper.

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ATI HD57xxx fglrx drivers under 11.3 & 11.4

July 15th, 2010 by

Unofficial-but-working repository

Adding the repository

For openSUSE 11.4

zypper ar -c -f -n "ATI/AMD fglrx non-official" http://linux.ioda.net/mirror/ati/openSUSE_11.4/ "ATI/AMD FGLRX"

For openSUSE 11.3

zypper ar -c -f -n "ATI/AMD fglrx non-official" http://linux.ioda.net/mirror/ati/openSUSE_11.3/ "ATI/AMD FGLRX"

For openSUSE 11.2

zypper ar -c -f -n "ATI/AMD fglrx non-official" http://linux.ioda.net/mirror/ati/openSUSE_11.2/ "ATI/AMD FGLRX"

Searching the version you need

zypper se -s fglrx
+-----------------------+--------+---------+--------------+---------------------------
| fglrx64_7_5_0_SUSE113 | pakiet | 8.812-1 | x86_64       | ATI/AMD fglrx non-official
| fglrx64_7_5_0_SUSE113 | pakiet | 8.801-1 | x86_64       | ATI/AMD fglrx non-official
| fglrx64_7_5_0_SUSE113 | pakiet | 8.783-1 | x86_64       | ATI/AMD fglrx non-official
| fglrx64_7_5_0_SUSE113 | pakiet | 8.771-1 | x86_64       | ATI/AMD fglrx non-official
| fglrx64_7_5_0_SUSE113 | pakiet | 8.762-1 | x86_64       | ATI/AMD fglrx non-official
| fglrx_7_5_0_SUSE113   | pakiet | 8.812-1 | i586         | ATI/AMD fglrx non-official
| fglrx_7_5_0_SUSE113   | pakiet | 8.801-1 | i386         | ATI/AMD fglrx non-official
| fglrx_7_5_0_SUSE113   | pakiet | 8.783-1 | i386         | ATI/AMD fglrx non-official
| fglrx_7_5_0_SUSE113   | pakiet | 8.771-1 | i386         | ATI/AMD fglrx non-official
| fglrx_7_5_0_SUSE113   | pakiet | 8.762-1 | i386         | ATI/AMD fglrx non-official

There’s several version, as I would offer a way to use an older if new break everything 🙂

Launch the installation (always as root under a console, and better to be in init 3 mode)
For 11.3 64bits

zypper in fglrx64_7_5_0_SUSE113

For 11.3 32bits

zypper in fglrx7_5_0_SUSE113

etc .. I believe you pick the trick !
At the end of the installation, you can just reboot, or init 3 && init 5 .

Actual version Catalyst 11.1 / 8.812 Published January 26 by ATI/AMD

Previous version Catalyst 10.12 / 8.801 Published December 13 by ATI/AMD (Not available for factory/11.4)

If you already have a fglrx rpm installed, remove the previous version, otherwise catalyst center will give you wrong version information in info panel.

Update news January 26th

Catalyst Release 11.11

Sebastian Siebert blog about his script work nicely well
Script and
German Article

Work in progress : fglrx under factory ( 11.4 ) done for 11.1 catalyst version

At least but not at last, my unofficial-but-working repository packages has been updated yesterday. Another tricks for those who are tired of activating their desktop effects at each kde startup : (picked from the opensuse-kde)

Check out the kwin settings in: /home/user/.kde4/share/config/kwinrc
I have solved that problem changing the DisableChecks parameter from 'false' to 'true'. Although seems that this would be a cover instead of a real solution.
-- Hernán Thiers García

Update news October 2th

How to build the 10.9 driver ? Patch needed

I’ve posted here a version how to patch the drivers to get fglrx.ko builded with latest kernel on openSUSE 11.3 http://www.susepaste.org/80021629

Don’t forget to have a look at Siebert blog his script work nicely well here

Non Official repo and build

For those of us who feel adventurous, and trust me you could install my package (no flgrx.ko inside)

Update news August 7

Seems there’s now an ati repo
you can grab it at http://www2.ati.com/suse/11.3

check the wiki page about that SDB:ATI

zypper ar -fc http://www2.ati.com/suse/11.3 ATI

Check and choose the appropriate package according to your kernel.

but you know what : they just segfault !. My rpm 10.7 (8.753) doesn’t.

Update news July 27

ATI/AMD just release their 10.7 version with native support for openSUSE 11.3

So I rewrite this article with the use of them, and remove any ref to the 10.6 version

Hardware & check

After installing my opensuse 11.3 on a computer with ATI radeon HD57xxx, there’s no desktop effects available, no 3D, no acceleration that can be provided with the free opensource radeon. Too bad, but it’s only a question of months to see support for this graphic card.
My advise would be if radeon works (even with some glitches in it) keep it. And help dev’s with bugs reporting.
To check if 3D is there (would return a YES)

glxinfo | grep -i render

Second point : ATI doesn’t provide anymore repository for their binary drivers, so we have to build them on each needed system. When the 11.3 hits the street, the procedure was complex and not so easy, now with their 10.7 ( 8.753 ) version, it’s doable.

Note All of those manipulation are done under console. So try to leave X, do a ctrl+alt+F1. Go to console, and as root run and init 3 to stop running X

Get ready to build

Downloads

Firstly : read the release note, check if your card is supported or not (HD 3870 X2 is not !)
Secondly : read the release note again, you missed something important before. 🙂

Building env

Prepare your openSUSE with a minimal building environment :
zypper in kernel-source kernel-syms module-init-tools make gcc libstdc++ libgcc glibc-32bit glibc-devel-32bit fontconfig freetype zlib*

Now we have to add the correct headers (Thx to those who reveal that )
So most of you running the -desktop flavour

zypper in kernel-desktop-devel

or

zypper in kernel-default-devel

or on 32 bits

zypper in kernel-pae-devel

Install / Build rpm

Quick Install

sh ati-driver-installer-10-7-x86.x86_64.run

Or build your own package to manage them with YaST/zypper/rpm
For 32 bits (can also be build if you have a 64 bits install)

sh ati-driver-installer-10-7-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg SuSE/SUSE113-IA32

For 64 bits

sh ati-driver-installer-10-7-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg SuSE/SUSE113-AMD64

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OBS Development Team Member Job Position

July 14th, 2010 by

SUSE GmbH has currently a job position open for an OBS Developer. Find details on the job position page at Novell.

OBS is used in the openSUSE project, but also internally at Novell and at plenty other places and companies.

The downside will be of course that you will have to work together with people like me 😉

Workshop at Party Quijote

July 13th, 2010 by

Last weekend I went to Party Quijote, which is probably the biggest LAN party of Castile (Spain). It was organized by the regional government (Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha), local universities (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares) and other institutions (Centro de excelencia de software libre de Castilla-La Mancha, Fundación Insula Barataria, Ayuntamiento de Azuqueca de Henares). Some of its sponsors were Cisco, Telefónica, Iberdrola and Caja Castilla-La Mancha. This year Party Quijote took place in the city of Azuqueca de Henares, which is very close to Guadalajara and Madrid. For more information, take a look at Party Quijote’s website

Anyways, I thought it was a great opportunity to promote openSUSE and KDE  in my region, so I organized a workshop: Crea tu propio Live CD (build your own Live CD). Yes, it was a LAN party but there were also Linux-related talks and workshops.

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openSUSE Conference 2010

July 12th, 2010 by

This is a friendly reminder for all who haven’t send their talk proposals for the openSUSE Conference 2010 yet. The Call for Papers closes end of july and there are still slots available.

The second openSUSE conference takes place in Nuremberg, Germany from october, 20th to 23rd. After its great start last year, we will continue the concept of a user and developer conference around the openSUSE Project including talks, workshops and BOFs. Expect everything between technical workshops about bleeding edge linux distro technology over user presentations about software to inspiring discussions with other projects, especially since the motto for the conference is Collaboration across Borders.

The first conference has also shown how important the openSUSE Conference is for the steering of the openSUSE project. Lots of ideas could be discussed and implemented quickly but also difficult or controversal community internal topics came up in a very contructive way and are worked on since then, some until today.

That brings me to the core message of this post: You should be on the conference if you are interested in the openSUSE project in any way. If you want to help moving the project forward and influence where the journey is going, there is no better place to go.

Now is the time to shape the conference – be it with a talk proposal, a proposal for a workshop, some hack session or interact with other projects to make you project a half day track or so. Everything is possible, please approach the programm committee with your ideas!

Shortcut for the package download

July 9th, 2010 by

If you look at the list of binaries for a package (e.g. icecream), you may think that you can download the RPM right away – but if you follow the link in a browser you get to see details about the rpm.

Now if you only want to download it, you may already know the details and don’t care. So I added a little shortcut: if you request the binary url with a client not accepting html explicitly (e.g. curl, wget…), you get the file directly. Just copy & paste the link to your console and be done.

And due to the joy of rails, it’s just a couple of lines and now I get:


--2010-07-09 13:51:31-- https://build.opensuse.org/stage/package/binary?arch=i586&filename=icecream-0.9.5-11.1.i586.rpm&package=icecream&project=home%3Acoolo&repository=openSUSE_11.3
Resolving build.opensuse.org... 195.135.221.34
Connecting to build.opensuse.org|195.135.221.34|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/coolo/openSUSE_11.3/i586/icecream-0.9.5-11.1.i586.rpm [following]
--2010-07-09 13:51:32-- http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/coolo/openSUSE_11.3/i586/icecream-0.9.5-11.1.i586.rpm
Resolving download.opensuse.org... 195.135.221.130
Connecting to download.opensuse.org|195.135.221.130|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: http://widehat.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/coolo/openSUSE_11.3/i586/icecream-0.9.5-11.1.i586.rpm [following]
--2010-07-09 13:51:32-- http://widehat.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/coolo/openSUSE_11.3/i586/icecream-0.9.5-11.1.i586.rpm
Resolving widehat.opensuse.org... 62.146.92.202, 2a01:138:a004:0:21a:a0ff:fe26:efa9
Connecting to widehat.opensuse.org|62.146.92.202|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 184745 (180K) [application/x-rpm]
Saving to: `icecream-0.9.5-11.1.i586.rpm'

openSUSE Edu Li-f-e 11.3 RC1

July 7th, 2010 by

Hello Community

openSUSE 11.3 is almost Gold, with that openSUSE Education team is also ready with the “Release Candidate” of Li-f-e based on 11.3.

Some of the highlights of this upcoming release:

  • Tons of Education softwares
  • KDE, GNOME, Sugar desktops
  • Full multimedia support
  • Latest LTSP including iTALC support out of the box
  • Much much more for you to discover…

The DVD iso image doubles as live USB image too, just “dd” the iso to 4GB+ USB stick to get fully functional desktop/server on a stick. Check out this development release to report any bugs or missing feature before we go gold.

We are looking for volunteers to do a detailed preview for the launch, drop us a line if you are interested.

Have a lot of fun!

openSUSE 11.2 and OBS at Universidad Latina

July 5th, 2010 by

Universidad Latina, Facultad de Ingeniería. “LibreSoft”. July 1st., 2010 from 6:00 p.m. To 10:30 p.m. (- 5 EST) several FOSS individual representatives held a meeting on 3rd floor of the main building, gave some talks about FOSS, software developments, open source, licensing, sharing code, community contributions, and applications to the general public, Telecommunications and Industrial Engineering students, professors, dean and lawyers. OpenSUSE Ambassador, Ricardo Chung, shared the space with Diego Tejera (Ubuntu LoCo Team), Alejandro Perez ( Fedora Ambassador ), Abdel Martinez ( Fedora Campus Ambassador), Adrien Scott ( www.fosdev.com) and others. Ricardo gave a talk about openSUSE 11.2 features and some sneak preview features on openSUSE 11.3 ( http://en.opensuse.org/Product_highlights_11.3), the openSUSE Build Service 2.0 ( http://en.opensuse.org/Build_Service) as software development and colaboration platform useful for any Linux distribution, SUSE Studio to customize our distribution on different enviroments, and KIWI to make an operating system image available on physical media ( http://en.opensuse.org/Kiwi ). Ricardo also, answer some questions about openSUSE community and local users group, installation, as well as some questions about Novell and Microsoft alliances were clarified. After the talk an openSUSE and Novell trivia was given and the winners got some openSUSE 11.2 CDs with Gnome Desktop by default.

Make a click on http://picasaweb.google.com/RICARDO.A.CHUNG/OpenSUSEAtLibreSoft# to watch some photos