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OpenOffice_org 3.0rc4 available

October 9th, 2008 by

I’m happy to announce that OpenOffice.org 3.0.0.3.4 rc4 packages are available in the Build Service OpenOffice:org:UNSTABLE project.

We hope that this is the last release candidate and that we will provide the final package in the OpenOffice:org:STABLE project the following week.

Even though, we are very close the final release, the package still might include even serious bugs. Therefore it is not intended for data-critical usage. A good practice is to archive any important data before an use, …

We kindly ask any interested beta testers to try the package and report bugs.

Note: openSUSE-11.1-beta2 and FACTORY include totaly reworked packages where the build is split into many source packages. It is a bit broken right now. We would like to put it into the Build Service as soon as possible but it will take some time to fix the build on older distributions again. Please be patient.

(more…)

Posted in Desktop, OpenOffice.org | 5 Comments »

Enlightenment LiveCD

September 29th, 2008 by

Ladies and Gents!

Glad to announce the update of unofficial Enlightenment LiveCD based on OpenSUSE-11.0.

Download page
‘Welcome’ notes (PDF)

Please visit the download page to see the details and try the mirror provided by Yandex.ru – a leading Russian internet and technology company. We’ve got this mirror in September’08 because our server was loaded ‘over the top’. Please, read the Welcome.pdf before you pop the disk into the PC/Qemu/etc.

Here’s some download statistics data excluding the mirror and excluding the torrents:

Month Monthly Totals KBytes Average shipped Qty of images
Jul 2008 2226994785 3625
Aug 2008 1067698466 1655
Sep 2008 33425784636 47884
Total 36720477887 53164

The data is slightly rounded/diminished, but tiny 50k from a single server is the result no one expected. Thank you very much!

All components of this LiveCD are available for the ordinary openSUSE Users. Some of our improvements/modifications are outlined in the ‘Welcome.pdf’. We’re cooking now the simple package to make the Enlightenment LiveCD with a ‘single click’. Anyone could install that package, read instructions, add the drivers/packages/components we had missed and “pull the trigger”. It means that you can add there the beloved NVIDIA drivers, remove OpenOffice, add more themes, wallpapers, games etc.

The brief changelog comparing to the old ‘release’:

  • create_xconf service is modified and used instead of ‘traditional’ xdm to launch the GUI. If you decide to install the system to the disk – create_xconf will also help you there. A simple check of your video card/cards is added and ‘Sax2’ will be started on boot if your saved hardware configuration is altered (should we check the Monitor+Video Card configuration? should we modify the xdm service for better compatibility/integration?).
  • fonts are displayed with 96.0 ‘standard’ DPI despite on selected/chosen screen resolutions. It’s easy to change this value if 66.0 DPI or 130.0 DPI is your favorite Xft setup but… 96.0 is the value which is used mostly .
  • Enlightenment OBS repositories for openSUSE 10.2-11.0/Factory are updated to the current state. E-svn snapshot date is 20080924.
  • custom kernel from Jan Engelhardt repository replaced the default one. Thanks!
  • OpenOffice suite now uses the default/selected gtk-2.0 theme to display interface elements.
  • Tk package is removed and aria2c lost the tk gui. BitTorrent client is added. Anyway aria2c is best when used in CLI.
  • English thesaurus is removed from OpenOffice suite along with OpenOffice-Base. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.
  • 23Oz theme for E17 and ETK is updated. Glowing scrollbars and sliders – useless feature but looks nice.
  • sources of ATI fglrx drivers (without precompiled kernel module) are added, instruction for those who is not happy with radeon/ati opensource drivers are on the page 4 of Welcome.pdf
  • several .desktop files are improved (thanks to the Ariszló)
  • option to select the default login manager on first boot (‘Entrance‘ or ‘gdm‘) is added (though only ‘entrance’ works here).
  • a lot of components are added to provide better support of various equipment ‘out-from-the-box’ (like webcams, eeepc and so on)
  • other miscellaneous fixes and updates…

We will be glad to receive your feedback.

Acknowledgments:

Enlightenment Development Team and Enlightenment Community
OpenSUSE Build Service Team
OpenSUSE KIWI Team (schaefi, cyberorg, pzb, cgoncalves – THANKS!)
Stalwart, thanks for the hosting!
Packman Team
Novell
Jan Engelhardt
and all the others, who helped to make it (Engineers, Developers, Users, Maintainers…)

Thanks!

Regards,
SOAD team

Posted in Build Service, Desktop, Distribution | 5 Comments »

Wiki Meeting Summary

September 24th, 2008 by

Well, for just a whirlwind summary, we met for the wiki cleanup and have come up with a few tasks to take care of.  I kept a bulleted list of the discussion here:

http://en.opensuse.org/User:Hobbsc/GNOME_Wiki_Cleanup_Notes

I’ll start work on a mockup of a landing page in the next few days.  I will also open up discussion on the list once I’ve got something solid in place.  The mockup (currently blank) will be available here:

http://en.opensuse.org/User:Hobbsc/GNOME_Wiki_Mockup

Thanks to everyone who attended, I appreciate all the input.  I think this will work out well for us.

Lastly, I have a bit of a support request.  We’ll be periodically checking the /GNOME section of the wiki for lost or un-necessary pages.  Does anyone know of a simple way to search for lost pages under /GNOME?  What about a way to track page changes under that namespace?

Posted in GNOME | Comments Off on Wiki Meeting Summary

Late openSUSE-GNOME wiki reminder.

September 24th, 2008 by

Just wanted to post a (late) reminder that we will be having a quick meeting regarding cleanup of the GNOME section of the openSUSE wiki today in #opensuse-gnome on Freenode.  We will meet at 1230 CDT (1730 UTC) and will be having an informal discussion about ideas for the GNOME page of the wiki.

See the openSUSE-GNOME mailing list archives for previous discussion.

Posted in Documentation, Events, GNOME | Comments Off on Late openSUSE-GNOME wiki reminder.

OpenOffice_org 3.0rc2 available

September 24th, 2008 by

I’m happy to announce that OpenOffice.org 3.0.0.3.2 rc2 packages are available in the Build Service OpenOffice:org:UNSTABLE project.

The package still not final and might include even serious bugs. Therefore it is not intended for data-critical usage. A good practice is to archive any important data before an use, …

We kindly ask any interested beta testers to try the package and report bugs.

Note: openSUSE-11.1-beta1 and FACTORY include totaly reworked packages where the build is split into many source packages. It is very broken right now. I would like to put it into the Build Service after I solve the most annoying problems. It might take one or two months. The new packages will also provide some extra OOo extensions.

(more…)

Posted in Desktop, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice_org 3.0rc2 available

What should happen happen if I transplant a brain?

September 23rd, 2008 by

I’m currently involved in a discussion on factory about what should happen if I replace the graphics card, or when I move the hard disk from one machine to another one, with different hardware.

I wished SUSE did handle such transplants gracefully, maybe for the same reason I do not wish my 2CV back:

My first car was a Citroën 2CV.

On some summer day I did a very long autobahn trip with it and the engine got real hot as it was air cooled.  When I finally had arrived in my home town late at night, I rolled down a long hill using the engine brake and at the end of hill at a red light I stopped the car — and oops: so did the engine…

(more…)

Posted in Base System, Usability, X.org | 5 Comments »

openSUSE-GNOME Wiki Cleanup

September 18th, 2008 by

Greetings!

As a side note, I’ll be posting my openSUSE/SLE related writings from http://altbit.org here on Lizards from now on.  I think this is a great service to the openSUSE community and I’m appreciative for it.  With that out of the way, on to the topic at hand…

We’ve had some discussion over the past few GNOME meetings (and a little banter on the mailing list) about cleaning up the /GNOME section of the wiki.  In today’s GNOME meeting, I announced that I’d like to organize a meeting to get some open discussion for potential wiki changes.  You can view the thread here.

Please hop in and get involved if you have any ideas for the GNOME section of the wiki.  You’re welcome to chime in on the mailing list or stop by #openSUSE-GNOME on Freenode.  So far here are some ideas we’ve come up with:

  • Assign a maintainer/janitor (likely myself) to periodically check for broken links and out of date or irrelevant pages.
  • Re-organize the opening /GNOME page.
  • Produce a ‘quick links’ section at the top of the page, with more detailed information (such as what is already availalbe) below.
  • Provide a basic calendar of openSUSE-GNOME events.
  • Create a tips/tricks section (perhaps to assist with Helping Hands).

I’ll follow up to this post as more information (and a meeting time) is available.  We’d like your input, feel free to join the discussion!

cmh

Posted in Documentation, Events, GNOME | Comments Off on openSUSE-GNOME Wiki Cleanup

Introductions

September 16th, 2008 by

I recently became an openSUSE member and good manners dictate that I introduce myself.

My name is Johan Kotze and I work as a pre-sales engineer for Novell. I live in Paarl, South Africa – a beautiful town in the Cape winelands. I am married and have a 5 year old daugther (yes she does have her daddy wrapped around her little finger )

Like all geeks I like to play with new stuff, so my primary contribution to openSUSE is to try out all the new releases and file bug reports. I run openSUSE on all of my machines at work and at home and spread the word whenever I can.

My other interests include programming (pascal and C#) and bird watching (the feathered kind) and traveling. I’ll gladly give advice to anyone wanting travel info on Souther Africa.

I am currently running openSUSE 11 with KDE 4.1 on my primary laptop (a Lenovo T61p). It took me a while to figure out that you  to have to click on the little kidney thing in the right corner before you can move plasmoids around on the taskbar.

I will try (no promises) to blog about my experiences with openSUSE and other open source software.

Posted in KDE, Miscellaneous | 2 Comments »

OpenOffice_org 3.0rc1 available (ask for testing)

September 12th, 2008 by

I’m happy to announce that OpenOffice.org 3.0.0.3.1 packages are available in the Build Service OpenOffice:org:UNSTABLE project. They are the fitst release candidate of the OpenOffice.org 3.0 version.

We kindly ask for testing. Please, try and report bugs.

Note: They might still include bugs and are not intended for data-critical usage. A good practice is to archive any important data before an use, …

(more…)

Posted in Desktop, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »

KDE3 and KDE4 for openSUSE

September 10th, 2008 by

As Zonker announced yesterday (and I copy some lines from his message), the KDE team has decided to take the following course of action after receiving a great deal of feedback on the issue of KDE 3.5 inclusion in openSUSE 11.1 – and state of KDE 4.1:

  • KDE 3.5 will be part of the DVD media for openSUSE 11.1, though space constraints may require to slim the package selection for 3.5 slightly.
  • KDE 3.5 will be included in the main selection page under “Other Desktop Environments” (during installation).
    This way new users will learn KDE4 directly and those users updating from a previous openSUSE release will not see this dialog at all.  Those that want KDE3 to install anyhow will still be able to easy install it.
  • We encourage and support contributors who are interested in maintaining KDE 3.5 for future releases of openSUSE, however the Novell employed part of the KDE team will shift focus to maintaining the KDE 4 packages for the openSUSE releases after the next one.
  • While KDE 3.5 will be on the openSUSE 11.1 media again, KDE 3.5 will not be included on any 11.2 “official” media or repositories, but the community certainly has the option of creating live CDs with KDE 3.5 packages for 11.2.
  • The Novell KDE team will only be addressing high priority bugs for KDE 3.5.x from this point forward. Again, this does not preclude community contributors from supporting KDE 3.5.x, and we encourage them to do so.
  • We will work on an easy migration from KDE3 to KDE4 desktops so that settings and data will persist.  This has already been started for openSUSE 11.0 and will continue to get improved.

We’d like to thank all the people who helped provide constructive feedback while we evaluated the best course for the next release of openSUSE. While we know that no solution is guaranteed to make every user happy, we think that we’ve reached the best compromise for openSUSE 11.1 and beyond, to ensure a smooth transition. (more…)

Posted in Desktop, Distribution, KDE | 1 Comment »

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