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Archive for January, 2015

Linux audio library smackdown part2: Pulseaudio

January 27th, 2015 by

Oh yes.. those were great times! Open Sound System was rocking my Linux based sound system and I was having a time of my life. Like we all know good doesn’t last long. Soon after happiness I find out that OSS couldn’t do recording and playing (full duplex) same time. Fiery same time this was working on Windows 98 very well. I was shocked how the heck my Linux box is so borked? Luckily times were changing and this time they formed only better. ALSA was about to take over OSS in Kernel version 2.6. Why I’m talking about ALSA and OSS when I should talk about Pulseaudio? Read further to find out why or go examples for Pulseaudio here: https://github.com/illuusio/linux-audio-example/tree/master/pulseaudio (more…)

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Posted in lizards.openSUSE.org, Miscellaneous, Programming | 3 Comments »

Final Election Thoughts

January 22nd, 2015 by

As the openSUSE Board election quickly draws to a close, I take a moment to remind openSUSE Members to vote.

Elections and voting are a rather remarkable thing.  We take up or values, our beliefs, our interests, and briefly toss them in the air, letting the air flow somewhat disrupt them as they gently fall like leaves.  We think for a moment: What’s important to me?  Why is this important to me?  And does it really matter who I vote for?  Can a small Board of Directors really make a difference in the larger scheme of things?  Can the elected person really represent my interests?

In American politics, there is much apathy for and little trust in elections.  There are many reasons for this (and it’s a topic for discussion and reflection saved for a very different forum).  But as much analysis is done by professionals who analyze these things, they often conclude that each individual doesn’t think that one vote will matter.  “I’m just one person in an ocean of people; how will my vote matter?”  But for us, well, no one knows better about Freedom and Openness than an opensource community.  Voting — expressing one’s confidence in another person to serve as a representative of an ideal, a promise — is a hallmark of Freedom and Openness.  If only one vote is cast among many, then the ideal of only the one is expressed.  If your vote is not cast and the others of your community are, then your voice is diminished.  When a whole community votes, the full range voices is heard and discerned.

Vote.  Our community is strengthened when your vote is cast.  Whether or not you vote for me, please vote.

I believe it matters.

The election ends on Monday, 26 Jan 2015.

Posted in Board, Elections, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

oSC15 – 200, Why not packaging workshop like mini hack sprint

January 17th, 2015 by

welcomeHello Geekos.

I’m contacting you personally, as an openSUSE Board member.

You certainly already know that we want to have a kicking openSUSE conference next 1st-4th May 2015 at the Haag (NL).

Thus I’ve found that creating special workshop organized by development project could foster our beloved distribution.

oSC is the unique case in the year, where Geekos from all around the world meet together.
Let’s imagine you, meeting perhaps for the first time your fellows, having nice discussions, and hacking around the software you maintain.
There’s high level of chance to meet also your end users, and have constructive exchanges.

That’s why I invite you to propose a workshop directly to our event tools:
https://events.opensuse.org/conference/osc15/proposal

Having a workshop run like a mini-hack sprint, would help any of us in the distribution and the project.
Be it like learn people how to submit nice package, how to do maintenance, or how to do bug triage.
li1
I feel confident that you will have the creative approach to resolve your own problematic.
The event place has small rooms for unattended sessions and they could be used to extend your workshop to get some more work done.

Some practical aspects:
oSC website : https://events.opensuse.org/conference/oSC15

And soon the travel support program for oSC 15 will be opened to handle your request about getting financial support for going to oSC.
https://connect.opensuse.org/travel-support/

If you have any questions, thoughts or ideas, don’t hesitate to ask on -project mailing list
or ping me by reply.

A final note about the why you should do it? Well beside being one of our “heroes” even if nobody need them 🙂
You and your co-maintainers will be able to explain your “job” on the project.
Don’t you want to inspire new comers, lead them directly to the right direction, and share the load.
Meeting you there, will also help our “marketing” force to light up a bit the work done in the shadow.

I really will appreciate your presence, afterwards, it’s you that create our distribution.
The time has come for you to be warmly thank.

I’m looking forward to see you there.

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Posted in Build Service, Distribution, Events, Hackweek | Comments Off on oSC15 – 200, Why not packaging workshop like mini hack sprint

Linux audio library smackdown part1: Portaudio

January 16th, 2015 by

Common disinformation people tends to believe in is that Linux Audio is in bad shape. Actually it’s not. They are right ALSA is getting bit rusty and it’s not top of the notch but list of supported sound cards is long. There have been speak about next generation audio API for Linux but nothing is really happening (I’m happy if you prove me wrong!). Last year I had task to evaluate different Linux audio libraries for playing audio and recording. So these articles try to make some light to my journey and what did I found. inpatient can go to Github  https://github.com/illuusio/linux-audio-example/tree/master/portaudio. There is other library examples also but only Portaudio is currently updated to my last version. I wrote same very simple application to test every audio library. I’ll upgrade rest of the examples and add also Xiph libao and GStreamer. (more…)

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Posted in lizards.openSUSE.org, Programming | 3 Comments »

Standing for Re-Election to the openSUSE Board

January 12th, 2015 by

Hi Fellow Geekos,

This post is a summary of my wish to continue to serve on your behalf on the openSUSE board.

My term has been a short one, as I was appointed to serve out the remainder of Vincent Untz’ term.

While I now work for SUSE (and it has been a fabulous experience), that does not change my view or efforts to contribute to openSUSE.  Prior to joining SUSE, as a part of the Sales Engineering team, I was elected to the board for a two year term. To avoid having too many SUSE employees, I had to step down.  A rule I completely support.

Having been an openSUSE member long before joining SUSE, I think I have a keen awareness of what the community is about and where we can improve together.

My take is we have an awesome group of contributors who want to see the community grow and prosper.  With things like Tumbleweed and OBS, among others, we have shown real innovation and technical leadership in the Linux world. We have arguably one the top distros available.  It is solid, polished and usable for a wide variety of use cases. We need to keep the openness and solid collaboration which enables everyone to participate and succeed.

My efforts within openSUSE have been mostly focused on the Open Build Server, maintaining several projects, as well as, being part of the Factory review team.

Going forward, I want to concentrate on reaching out beyond our community to build more awareness of what an awesome distro we have, along with a pretty friendly community. I see other, less compelling, distros getting more visibility than perhaps is deserved.

Along the same lines, my take is we as a community can take a more active role in bringing in new members, who might not be technical folks, but can help in the marketing and outreach. I’ve started a local SUSE group through meetup.com which is a different way to find new users and contributors.

One other reason I wish to remain on the board, is we have a solid working relationship and there is a lot of mutual respect and good collaboration.

No matter who is elected to the board, I am very pleased with the caliber of the folks running and know the community will be in good hands moving forward.

Thank you in advance for your vote!

Peter Linnell

Posted in Board, Build Service, Distribution, Elections, Factory, Marketing, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Standing for Re-Election to the openSUSE Board

Craig Gardner’s openSUSE Board campaign

January 8th, 2015 by

Hi openSUSE Team,

It’s campaign season, and time for me to make sure all voters know what I stand for regarding openSUSE, “The Finest Distro, Period.”  As I mentioned in my announcement, if elected to The Board, my intended involvement would focus on these three principle goals:

A) Improving the visibility of openSUSE among the huge variety of distro offerings that exist. Specifically, improving the amount of press and exposure of openSUSE to offset the over-represented exposure that other distros receive.  Since openSUSE is the The Finest Distro, Period (as I asserted above), we can do better to make it known.

B) Promote openQA, and make it the bedrock of quality assurance for openSUSE. Improve the confidence that the community and the public should have in the quality of our great product! The Quality of openSUSE — out of the box, and updated over the wire, over time — is dependent upon a battery of high quality testing. Perception is everything in this business. Great testing will give us great quality, great results, and great users.

C) Support the improvements that have been incrementally made over time by prior board members, building on their successes. There are too many accomplishments to enumerate here, but the project has come a long way under some great leadership. We don’t need huge changes in leadership or direction; we need to capitalize on our prior successes and press forward.

And I wish to add one more goal to my original list:

D) Continue to foster community involvement and attract new talent to the project through high quality openSUSE Conferences. Bringing together the best talent to oSC events does a great deal to build bridges of trust and move the project forward in a unified way. A high quality oSC improves the quality of the brand and the product.

But of course, the few members of the Board are just a small functioning part of a successful community. The real success of openSUSE is a result of the hard work, the passion, and commitment of the members. As a member of the board, I intend to be someone who brings out the best in others; to help you do what you do best; to bring good people together fo the strength of the project. openSUSE is “The Finest Distro, Period,” only because its contributors are The Finest. Period.

As the polls open in a few days, please vote for Craig Gardner (@ganglia). You’ll get a firmly committed member of the board, who wants to help you — the community — to find even greater success.  And don’t forget to have fun.

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Posted in Board, Elections | Comments Off on Craig Gardner’s openSUSE Board campaign

Testing Android in openQA

January 6th, 2015 by

The other day Richard described in his blog how how he used openQA to test drive Fedora. Around the same time I read about Android x86 and saw that they offer iso images for download. So I wondered how hard it would be to get that one tested in openQA.
(more…)

Posted in Quality Assurance, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Testing Android in openQA