After having read an answer containing a rude “RTFM” on one of the openSUSE mailing lists I think I have to make a point. A very important one, since it seems to become a habit to be brief and put information into single spots only, which might be found with Google.

Helping users, and I don’t mean only new users, cannot be done with pointing them to Google all the time unless it’s a very well-known issue. A Unix system like Linux comes from a very good tradition of man pages, howtos and other local information e.g. files in /usr/share/doc/packages/. Unfortunately this tradition seems to be dying. This wouldn’t be dramatic if there would be more openSUSE specific documentation, but this is not the case. It’s either brief, old or fragmented over the net in blogs or mailing list archives. Especially the latter may be a good source for solving problems, but some threads are filled with long discussions and the satisfied solution cannot be found with a few glimpses or even clicks.

Therefore all of us need to write more documentation that can be found easily and at best on *.opensuse.org servers. Otherwise the search function there is pointless. The best place for documenting solutions to common and not-so-common problems is the support database in the openSUSE wiki:

http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Support_database

Writing things in your personal blog is good and welcome, but at the same time there should be an SDB article about the provided solution.

I have to add that there are a lot of people who already put a lot of effort into documenting things. This post is not to criticize, but to support them, so that there are not only a few who contribute valuable help to users.

This is an openSUSE 12.1 KDE3 LiveDVD from the KDE:KDE3 repository maintainer.

It continues the KDE3 series published by me for previous openSUSE releases, 11.3 and 11.4

Unlike other similar LiveCDs, this build includes extended set of software, not only from official openSUSE 12.1 repository, but also from KDE:KDE3 repo.

The image includes openSUSE-specific presets and an auto-updater applet which allows to keep your installation up-to-date.

Since the final KDE3 release KDE3 in openSUSE repository undergone several changes.

The most visible fixes include the appearance of the “classic” style of the taskbar (the button of the active window now appears pushed, something that was broke in the last KDE3 release); the selection of the icons on the desktop now resembles the style used in the file manager with rounded corners. The LiveDVD ships with openSUSE artwork and exclusive openSUSE-style window decorations.

Direct download link:

http://susestudio.com/download/2dd3fc0c6ad40f78c4a53b0e4fdd7a8b/OpenSUSE_12.1_KDE3.x86_64-1.0.7.iso

Appliance link in Suse Studio:

http://susestudio.com/a/vv1af0/opensuse-121-kde3

The appliance is capable of being cloned so to create derivatives.

I used Suse Studio to create this openSUSE 12.1 Gnome 2 Live CD.

The direct ISO download link:
http://susestudio.com/download/54fa2861498cb365921d7bbaf1ca7009/OpenSUSE_12.1_Gnome2.x86_64-1.0.9.iso

Appliance:
http://susestudio.com/a/vv1af0/opensuse-121-gnome2

As KDE3 is again part of the official openSUSE 12.1 repositories (thanks to all who made this happen), I took the chance to create an installable livecd. Besides a preconfigured KDE3 desktop, it contains additional software like Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and LibreOffice. YaST2 is available for administrative tasks like system configuration or software management. The media does not contain all language packs due to size limitations, but they could be easily installed. The KDE3 language packages are named kde3-i18n-$LANG, e.g. kde3-i18n-eo.

In order to to emphasize the feeling of good old times, the artwork is based on SUSE 10.1. The kde3-gtk-qt-engine is included to give a unique experience over GTK and QT applications and KDE4 applications make use of the Plastique widget style and Plastik colors.

The x86_64 and the i686 iso images have been created using the kiwi tools. You can download the kiwi description and build your customized version. Just make sure you have kiwi and kiwi-config-openSUSE-12.1 installed and run create_livecd.sh from the archive. (You can adjust the image_arch variable within the script according to your build architecture)

If you got any further questions concerning KDE3 on openSUSE, please take a look at the openSUSE KDE3 wiki page and join the mailinglist.

PS: And please don’t forget to vote for me 😉