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News from the Zypper Revolution

April 5th, 2010 by

Maybe revolution is a bit strong, but at this hour in the night I can probably be excused for using a bit of hyperbole – besides, nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion as Hegel would have it, so I am on solid ground here.

I have been going over customer feedback from Novell’s Brainshare conference for my internal “Systems Management Zeitgeist” report, and there are a couple of points I just had to share with you all as they are plain simply inspirational.

Our update stack is, well, zippy.  Like greased lightning, according to this happy SUSE Linux Enterprise customer:

Zypper updates a Linux system across major versions in 5 minutes, full Oracle server update done in 15 minutes

We of course appreciate speed in of itself, as a technical achievement powered by enhancements like libsat and DeltaRPM, and Community users share this point of view with us.  But Enterprise users have a different and equally valid point of view: administrator time is costly, and while many management consoles exist, industry data shows that tools do help, but not nearly enough: administrators are still involved, personally, in most Systems Management tasks —  I could quote analyst data, but not at this wee hour, so just trust me on this point.

This one medium-sized customer actually took the time to calculate what the time savings meant to his business:

The faster update stack is resulting in 56,000 dollars in [operational budget] savings

It is not everyday a customer gives you a precise dollar number in describing what a technology’s impact is on his expenses — So I just had to share it with you all, it is such a nice commentary on our effort’s tangible impact.

I can hear some of you wonder why I blogged this on my Lizard’s Community account, rather than on Novell’s Corporate site, since I am talking up Enterprise distro data and as the Systems Management guy I really have either option.  Good question!  I could say it is because I was not in the mood to dig up analyst quotes, and this setting allows me to be more cavalier and just waltz over those references, but there is a more important reason, read on.

We in the Systems Management team happen to think sleep is for the weak, and have been cooking up our next scheme for improvement — but we need your help to get there.

As the keenest observers among you have long ago noticed, with the 11.2 release we declared “zypper dup” a supported migration path, and received some accolades for it already.  But we all know that live distro upgrade migration across major version changes is a big endeavor, and we would like to solicit your help in improving it: if you have the time and inclination to test zypper dup and provide a properly filed bug report of any kinks you might discover, we would be delighted to use your feedback to improve the 11.3 implementation of this process.

Just a word of caution: comments to this entry, or bugs filed without sufficient data to be analyzed, are not going to further the result we all seek.  If you report something, make sure enough data to reproduce the issue is included, and that you are able to provide additional data upon request of the developer handling your report: if we cannot reproduce a problem, we cannot fix it.

Thanks in advance to those among you joining us in this effort!

Posted in Base System, Distribution, openSUSE 11.2, Software Management, Systems Management | 2 Comments »

Announce: openSUSE Beego

April 1st, 2010 by

the openSUSE distribution is the perfect base for specialized projects focusing on a certain area of application. Today, I am happy to announce the start of the openSUSE Beego project and ask you to join in and help to bring it to a success, because we rely on your support and enthusiasm.

What is openSUSE Beego about? Beego is the perfect customized linux distribution for beekeepers who want to manage their bees on a by today never unreached level. With openSUSE Beego we focus on key features like KHive, the management software for the beeyard, the bluetooth based Weightwatch to monitor the hive weigt and of course GHoney, which takes its users to a new level of honey blending by the latest Computer Aided Honey Blending Technology (CAHBT). The latest release of Queen on Rails, a web based bee queen marking and scheduling software is preinstalled and -configured.

All that relies on a perfectly customized kernel to meet the tough requirements of beekeeping. With solid real time capabilities the Beego kernel is able to process all incoming bees at the hives gate for up to 25,000 bee colonies, which is an outstanding high volume no other system ever reached. Both nectar and pollen of each incoming bee are measured and stored into MyBeeSQL, a tuned MySQL variant. Moreover the kernel needed a huge sting proof patch to give it the needed robustness. We could convince a well known openSUSE kernel developer to work on it, discussions on the kernel lists are ongoing under the subject “Sting Proof Patch”.

This project has a bright future for both openSUSE and the world of beekeeping. Again I like to ask for your help and contribution. Please spread the word, join our mailinglists, test and use openSUSE Beego.

That will make the honey even sweeter this year 🙂

Tags: , ,
Posted in Boosters, Derivative, Distribution, Marketing, Miscellaneous | 5 Comments »

Annuncing KIWI-LTSP package updates

March 31st, 2010 by

Hello Community

openSUSE packages are updated to use the latest LTSP. Here are the highlights of this release:

* LTSP 5.2.1
* LDM 2.1.1
* LTSPFS 0.6.0
* kiwi-ltsp-prebuilt 0.8.2
* kiwi-ltsp-bootimage 0.8.2

Follow the Quick Start guide here: http://en.opensuse.org/LTSP

Give it a test and let me know your feedbacks.

On the side note,  jury verdict in the Novell vs SCO Group trial, Novell wins. Good news for Novell, for Linux and for OSS

Have a lot of fun…

Posted in Build Service, Education, openSUSE 11.2, Server | Comments Off on Annuncing KIWI-LTSP package updates

Russian openSUSE community

March 30th, 2010 by

Hello everybody,

I want to share some ideas about the success of the Russian openSUSE community, and try to answer the question about its popularity. As you can see it is one of the top places:

The reason for the high popularity of this distribution in Germany is of course the fact that the German SuSE distribution and the main branch of development is located in Nuremberg. Popularity in the U.S. is due Novell – an American company, and of course the language is English. But why are so many people in Russia choosing openSUSE?

Good question. One of the main things that influence the choice of distribution – the quality and localization. The global community plays a top role for quality of distribution and local make it appropriate for Russian language users (of course a local community can be as part of a global community).

Perhaps most important is the documentation. And of course, not everyone wants (or can) read the documentation in English. Everyone wants to read the documentation in their native language. The distribution may be in a good shape and stable, nice and convenient, but without documentation it will use very few. Translated documentation is very important to the community. The translation must have a high quality, understandable, and as it must be kept up to date.

For the community its also profitable that 2 guys from the community working for Novell (in Nuremberg and in Prague). This provides better communication between “developers – community”. It helps to be closer to the project. This allows you to always be aware of all the major news of the project. And of course the translation is much better if they are engaged not just as a translator, but the employee who works on the distribution.

Of course this also applys for software. Although it is not as important as documentation, it still makes an impression on the quality of distribution. Everyone wants to work with the software in their native language %)

A successful community is a group of people who love openSUSE, who understands why the software should be free, who wants to make openSUSE better and better… every day.

Tags: ,
Posted in Contrib, Documentation, Forums, Localization, Wiki | 5 Comments »

Li-f-e updated

March 24th, 2010 by

openSUSE Education team is happy to announce the availability of the updated openSUSE Education Li-f-e DVD iso. The Linux for Education (Li-f-e) contains the wide selection of education, development, office, as well as multimedia packs to meet all possible computing needs of students, teachers and parents.

Some of the highlights of this update:

Desktop Environments:

Additions:

Updates:

  • All official updates to openSUSE 11.2 since its release
  • LTSP 0.5.1.99, includes fat-client support
  • Banshee 1.6 RC1
  • Code::Blocks SVN 6182
  • and of course most of the education packages like gcompris and tux4kids suite got updated.

Download:

Direct Download | metalink | torrent | md5sum

More mirrors on sourceforge

More information here: http://en.opensuse.org/Education/Live

Have a lot of fun

Your openSUSE Education team

Posted in Derivative, Distribution, Education, GNOME, KDE, openSUSE 11.2, Server, Systems Management | Comments Off on Li-f-e updated

How to Add New Packages to the openSUSE Distribution

March 23rd, 2010 by

I’ve added a new package (grub2) to the openSUSE distribution and like to share with you what needs to be done for it, I’m using the package “grub2” as example. To get a package in the distribution, it needs to be in the openSUSE:Factory project in the openSUSE Build Service.

  1. Get an openSUSE Build Service account.  It’s free, just go to the Build Service and register.
  2. Go to your “Home Project” and follow the link to “add a new package”, I use “grub2” as package and filled in the details.
  3. Now add all the files you need to properly build the package.  For openSUSE Factory, you need the spec file (grub2.spec), an empty changes file (grub2.changes) and all source files.
    1. Some of the next steps are done best by the openSUSE Build Service command line client osc, so you should install the current version on your system. If you’re running openSUSE, just do a “zypper in osc”, if you use another distribution, download it from the “openSUSE:Tools” project for your distribution (best way to find it search via our search interface for osc).
    2. I propose to check out the files with osc, e.g. “osc co home:a_jaeger grub2”.
    3. Use “osc vc” to add entries to the new changes file describing what you have changed in the package.
    4. Go to your “Home Project” in the web user interface and add “openSUSE Factory”  using “Add Repository” as build target.
    5. Build the package locally using “osc build”.  If it succeeds, submit all fixes with “osc ci” to the build service.
    6. Now it’s time to wait until the build succeeds on all platforms and distributions you have enabled – and if not to fix it until it succeeds.
  4. Tell the openSUSE Factory maintainers about the new package in an email to the opensuse-factory list with all details as explained here and discuss which devel package should be used for it.
    Note that all packages in openSUSE:Factory are developed in so called “devel projects”.  So, decide where your package fits best – or add it to “devel:openSUSE:Factory”. I choose the later.
  5. Submit the package to the devel project with “osc sr <your-home-project> <packagename> <devel-project>” and add a nice comment  (in my case “osc sr home:a_jaeger grub2 devel:openSUSE:Factory”).
  6. Once the submitrequest gets accepted, check that you are setup as maintainer for the package with “osc maintainer devel:openSUSE:Factory grub2”, if you are the maintainer, you have write and review access to the package.
  7. Submit the package from the devel project to openSUSE:Factory using osc. I did a “osc sr devel:openSUSE:Factory grub2 openSUSE:Factory”.
    Since the package gets submitted the first time, it will go through a good first review including a license check.  So, give the team a week or two for the review.  Eventually you’ll get noticed about the check in.
  8. Now you can update the package in the devel project at your own consideration and don’t forget to submit it timely again after testing to openSUSE:Factory so that people running Factory can use it.

I advise to read the documentation about Factory to understand the mentioned concepts and not just blindly follow my cook book.

Keep in mind that having packages in openSUSE is an honor and an obligation.  An openSUSE release gets fixes for 18 months and as a maintainer of the package, it’s expected that you take care of the package. With having it in Factory, please remember to update it in time for a release and keep in mind that we’re not doing any major updates in a released distribution.

Posted in Distribution, Factory | 2 Comments »

openSUSE Boosters update: build.opensuse.org improvements

March 16th, 2010 by

In January, the Build Service squad of openSUSE Boosters worked to improve the openSUSE Build Service web client experience.

One focus was to make it easier for project maintainers to review and accept package submissions from contributors.  As explained in detail in the Collaboration article, when a contributor has made a local change to a package in her branch of a project, she then submits a request to merge the changes back to the original project (‘osc submitrequest’).  This request is received by the maintainers of the original project, who review it, and then submit it onwards towards openSUSE:Factory, for example, where it is reviewed again.  This distributes the workload of assembling a distribution by using the ‘many eyes’ typical of Free Software development in a structured way.

Until now, the list of requests waiting to be handled was very basic, only showing that a request was made regarding a particular package.  It was necessary to use the osc command line client to actually review and accept or reject requests.

Accepting a submitrequest from the web client

The Boosters’ sprint resulted in a fully-featured web frontend, where the reviewer can check if a submitted package actually builds, the differences in the request, accept or reject with comment, and also immediately submit the changes onward to openSUSE Factory.

Checking that submitrequests build

Showing the changes in a submitrequest

Showing the changes in a submitrequest

Another focus has been to make the overall process of preparing an openSUSE release easier.  The release manager’s job involves bringing together the output of many Build Service development projects, making sure that they all build, and that they have submitted their latest versions from the development projects to openSUSE:Factory.  This is the Build Service collaboration model.  If packages don’t build for a milestone release, or are not submitted, then the release manager can only take the previous version or choose to exclude a package from the release, which doesn’t help in getting the distribution tested.

Factory Status showing packages from GNOME:Factory

Factory Status showing progress from GNOME:Factory

The new project status page gives a project maintainer, for example the openSUSE release manager, a bird’s eye view of what needs to be done in his project: a list of packages that are currently failing; where there is an outstanding submit request, where there are unsubmitted changes in the development project, and where there is a newer version available upstream.  With quick links to projects and packages of interest, and a powerful set of filters, a project maintainer can quickly see where there are problems then drill down into the details.

Filtering problem packages by development project

Posted in Boosters, Build Service, Factory | 1 Comment »

openSUSE-LXDE Live CDs

March 13th, 2010 by

We have them!

http://en.opensuse.org/Derivatives#Unofficial_updated_LXDE_live_CDs

Thanks to Dmitry serpokryl (The author of SOAD), to make it possible!

i586 and x86_64 isos are both available! But most of all, they provides the latest LXDE packages like pcmanfm 0.9.2

Now it’s your turn, download them, test them, report issues so i can fix them! Oh btw, you can also install them 😉

And finally

Have lot’s of fun

Andrea

Posted in Desktop, openSUSE 11.2, X.org | 9 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

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 »

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