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The *real* antidote to Conficker…

April 1st, 2009 by

I’m almost as sick of this Conficker stuff as I am going to be sick of April Fools Day stuff when I wake up tomorrow (not to mention I think this is a big promotional stunt for a movie called ‘Conficker’ coming out soon. You watch!), but I have to laugh when I see all these mainstream news organizations falling all over themselves to tell people how to get rid of this malware. In reality, all you have to tell your friends and family is to use one product that will protect them from Conficker and future viruses:

openSUSE 11.1

No joke. Happy April Fools Day, I guess.

Posted in Marketing, Miscellaneous | Comments Off on The *real* antidote to Conficker…

Happy Birthday RadioTux

March 31st, 2009 by
Radiotux

Radiotux

Many People thought at 1 April 2001, that is a hoax. Few Linuxuser announced, that they would like to create an Radio about Linux. 2001 Streaming was not cheap, so the Guys behind RadioTux looks for another Way. Radio on demand now known as Podcast.

At first April 2001 Steffen Zoerning and Ingo Ebel starting the Open Project Radiotux [1], an free Internet Radio. The Themes now are similar to the beginning Themes: Informations about LINUX and the OpenSource Scene.
RadioTux has the following Guests: John `Maddog` Hall, Richard Stallman (GNU Founder), Hans Reiser, Marc Shuttleworth (Ubuntu Founder), Klaus Knopper (Knoppix Founder). In the meantime many People are standing behind the open Project.

Now we celebrating the 8th Birthday, and RadioTux has an new, fresh Internet-Presence. The whole Archive of the past broadcasts, the actual Brodcasts and actual Informations are ported to the New Site. Through the Mailinglist everyone can join to the Team or can give an Feedback.

RadioTux sends on his Birthday a new Magazine-Broadcast, as OGG-Vorbis or MP3.The broadcast can be recieved via an Livestream or on the next Day via Podcast.
The Themes are Radiotux itself, an Article about the Mindmapping Tool XMind and the Virtualisation Software KVM. The next Themes are Groupware-Solutions. The first Broadcast from this Series are with the Theme Zarafa.

[1] http://radiotux.de

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Posted in lizards.openSUSE.org, Marketing, Miscellaneous | Comments Off on Happy Birthday RadioTux

WeeklyNews@RadioTux.de

March 24th, 2009 by

We’re pleased to announce that as of today the great team of RadioTux will include a summary of openSUSE Weekly News in their German-speaking podcast “Radiotux@HoRads”. It’s planned to make this a fixed part of the shows. Air date will be today between 18:00 CET and 19:30 CET.

So here are the links:
* http://blog.radiotux.de/ – link to RadioTux
* http://blog.radiotux.de/play LIVE
* http://blog.radiotux.de/podcasts – link to the podcasts/archive

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Posted in lizards.openSUSE.org, Marketing | Comments Off on WeeklyNews@RadioTux.de

OSF Status Report #3

March 3rd, 2009 by

Let me present you the openSUSE forums statistics for February 2009.

Up to the 28th of February 2009, we achieved a membership of 23.464 (+2.142) members, 23.463 (+2.390) threads and 136.684 (+13.989) posts. The number in brackets shows the increase of the corresponding measurement compared to the last snapshot taken on the 31st of January 2009. The user activity, i.e. the number of individual visits to the openSUSE forums, was 12.382 for the observed period. Most users ever online still was 7.771 on the 2nd of December 2008.

The following diagram shows the monthly development of new user registrations, user activity, new threads and new posts since the launch in June 2008.

osffebruarystats

Kudos to our Top5 posters during February 2009

  • oldcpu – 566
  • caf4926 – 560
  • ken_yap – 362
  • mingus725 – 254
  • Malcolm – 223

Thanks as usual for making the openSUSE forums a worthwhile place to be.

If you haven’t signed up for the openSUSE forums yet, please consider doing so. It’s a great way to contribute to the openSUSE community in a non-developing capacity.

Any contribution to the recently announced “experts approach” collaboration between the openSUSE forums and the openSUSE Weekly Newsletter is much appreciated. If you’re interested to participate, please don’t hesitate to contact me for further information. Any comments and suggestions of the community about the OSF status reports is much appreciated by the openSUSE forums team. We’re certainly interested to know what the community would like to be covered in coming issues.

Posted in Marketing | Comments Off on OSF Status Report #3

How developers see openSUSE

February 19th, 2009 by

You probably know that a lot of openSUSE developers are sitting in the SUSE office in Prague, Czech Republic. They are also openSUSE users.

The whole story started by a flame on a mailing list why some of us are not happy with the current state of openSUSE. It turned out there is a lot of different issues. So, we’ve met on a raining winter Friday 3 weeks ago to collect those issues as well as things that people consider to be good about openSUSE.

The result of the hours-long discussion is a list of positive and negative things about openSUSE, very subjective view of the group of developers in Prague. Go, look at the list. There is a lot of problems that I personally see lurking in our community, spelled out loud. The range is wide, from basic community issues to very technical problems that are basically missing features in the distribution.

So, we have collected the feedback. But the question is, what to do with it?

Firstly, I believe the lists are great food for thought. You might not agree with everything, but still, there is some truth in it. At least, those are problems that people consider important enough to try to solve them – encouraging.

Secondly, consider this blog as call for contribution. If you believe some of the areas are really worth improving, get in touch with people listed on the wiki, improve the description  in the wiki, propose solutions. One restriction though – please, do not add additional items to the page. We want to keep the ideas where they belong – features eventually to end up in openFate, project-related problems on the mailing lists, …Also, this is not a general list of issues the openSUSE project needs to address. As I’ve written above – the page is a subjective view of a group of people. If you think we need a more general approach, please, bring the idea on openSUSE mailing lists.

Looking forward to your feedback!

Posted in Distribution, Events, Marketing | 10 Comments »

OSF Status Report #2

February 5th, 2009 by

In January 2009, the openSUSE forums achieved the highest user activity ever since the launch in June 2008. The user activity measures the number of individual visits and is therefore an indicator for the vitality of the openSUSE forums.

Up to the 31st of January 2009, we achieved a membership of 21.322 (+2.550) members, 21.073 (+2.929) threads and 122.695 (+17.492) posts. The number in brackets shows the increase of the corresponding measurement compared to the last snapshot taken on the 31st of December 2008. Most users ever online still was 7.771 on the 2nd of December 2008.

The following diagram shows the monthly development of new user registrations, user activity, new threads and new posts since the launch in June 2008. We experienced 15.104 individual visits to the openSUSE forums in January 2009, which is an increase of 14% compared to December 2008 and is even 25% above average.

Kudos to our Top5 posters during January 2009

  • caf4926 – 575
  • ken_yap – 455
  • oldcpu – 439
  • Malcolm – 405
  • Axeia – 405

Thanks as usual for making the openSUSE forums a worthwhile place to be.

Any comments about the OSF status reports are much appreciated by the openSUSE forums team.

Posted in Marketing | Comments Off on OSF Status Report #2

Modding the openSUSE flashlight

January 19th, 2009 by

The openSUSE flashlight

The boxed version of openSUSE 11.1 comes bundled with a LED-flashlight. Nice black and sturdy aluminum, Modern design with 9 white LEDs, no old-fashioned bulb that would produce more heat than illumination. Not flimsy, not heavy, just practical and quite bright. Batteries included. Exactly what I like.

But alas, this high-tech-toy is not perfect. The LEDs produce a strange unnatural light, which makes people look really sick. It gives a bluish-greenish tint to everything. This I don’t like. Okay, it is state of the art with regard to white LEDs, so this is no real reason to complain. Still, it leaves room for improvement.

Let us adjust the color of the light, so that objects look more natural. This posting explains you how to do it in 3 easy (or 4 not so easy) steps.
(more…)

Tags: , ,
Posted in Contrib, Hackweek, Marketing, Toolchain | 2 Comments »

Community Content Required

January 15th, 2009 by

At the launch of 11.0 there were several little projects started by the community these projects were actually really helpful and we would like to think contributed to the uptake and success of the 11.0 release. Now I will admit that I can’t substantiate this with any hard (or soft) facts, but none the less that’s our gut feeling 🙂

So what are the projects in question? Well they are: Helping Hands, openSUSE-Tutiorials and openSUSE TV. Funny I can hear some people moaning and groaning that these are GNOME Team projects, WRONG!! These projects have indeed been started by members of the GNOME Team, but they are for the whole distribution and project. I know suseROCKs has tried in the past to try and get some contributions from other teams, so don’t blame the GNOME Team for the content blame yourselves.

Actually on second thought, drop the whole blame game thing. A better solution is to start a fresh and keep up the momentum. I am basically asking members of the openSUSE Community (that means ALL of you!) to step up and take the wild Geeko by the reigns and help teach all those non-believers that it really is easy to use, has some brilliant features (easily found and hidden), and generally a great distro and project to use and be involved in.

So if we take each item in turn:

1) Helping Hands: HH (as we affectionately call it) is aimed at giving an insight into certain aspects of the distro that a user may come across or wish to use. In the past we have had sessions on Inkscape, Evolution, Banshee, general GNOME usage and other applications. We are hoping to have one on packaging RPMs and using the Build Service in the not so distant future. We would love to see members of the KDE community enlighten us (yes some of the GNOME users are scared of things that begin with K) about things that are going on in there, I know there are loads of great things I’m just really knowledgeable in them or even know 25% of them. We would also like members of XFCE and any other desktop environment that’s out there to do the same. You can focus on a specific application, a suite of applications or anything that will be helpful to users. If possible get someone from upstream join in, it makes things much more interesting and actually opens eyes on both sides of the fence as to what is going on. If you are interested (why wouldn’t you be?) and are willing to help out (you know you want to) then please let wither myself (FunkyPenguin) or suseROCKs know on IRC, we hang out in most of the openSUSE channels.

2) openSUSE-Tutiorials: oS-T is aimed at being a repository of insights, tips & tricks etc on applications and other things with the distro. Why not just use the Wiki? Well in a nutshell there are times when the Wiki just isn’t suited, and this way topics can be easily grouped so are ultimately easily searchable. Not only by the big search engines, but also by any user who visits the site. Content is moderated prior to being published, and before you start screaming of a conspiracy to silence the truth it is actually to try and ensure that those items published are actually of good quality and will genuinely be of use. For more info on publishing something for oS-T then please ask either decriptor or suseROCKs on IRC (again they loiter in most channels).

3) openSUSE TV: oS TV is aimed at providing a medium to show all the wonderous videos that we have on and about openSUSE. These don’t have to be any of the official videos that are done at conferences but can also include screencasts, interviews and almost any other form of video that we have about openSUSE (both distro and project). The channel is part of the blip.tv service and as such is aimed at all platforms, not just Linux. We want to try and grow our user base and community which means looking at the competing Operating Systems. I am hoping to do a series of interviews at the upcoming FOSDEM show similar to those that I did in Nurenberg for Hack Week III; I have pencilled in the title of “Face to Face @ FOSDEM’09”. So if you’re going to be at the event (try and make it if you can because it is really a great event), and you have a specific topic you’d like to speak about then let me know. I would love to get more content on there, screencast would be great as would videos from LUG meetings where openSUSE is used/showcased etc. Remember oS TV is about the community, for the community, by the community. So your input is needed!

There is no reason why you can’t do an item on all three of the above and have them linked. For an example you could do a HH item on the KDE desktop (general first look etc), you could also do a screencast of that item and have the screencast posted to oS TV and to finish it up you could have an oS-T article on tuning your desktop to get the best out of it. If you feel that any of these are wrong/bad/need improving/$COMMENT then please keep those comments to yourself!! In all seriousness, they can only improve with your help so please let us know all and any feedback that you may have. Most importantly, please join in 🙂

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Posted in Distribution, Marketing | Comments Off on Community Content Required

openSUSE forums has reached 20K members

January 15th, 2009 by

The openSUSE forums has reached another key milestone. After hitting the 10K members in September 2008, we now did it again – Member 20.000 registered yesterday at 20:37 UTC.

Congratulations to the openSUSE forums team!

If you haven’t signed up for the forums yet, please do so. Sharing your knowledge with other openSUSE users at the openSUSE forums is a great way to contribute to the openSUSE community in a non-developing capacity.

Posted in Marketing | 2 Comments »

OSF Status Report #1

January 6th, 2009 by

7 months have been passing by since the launch of the official openSUSE forums back in June. Since then a lot has been done by both the membership and the forums team to make this a big gain for the whole openSUSE community. From now on we are going to provide status reports on a monthly basis to represent the progress we make. As this is the first issue of status reports, we’d like to provide some long-term openSUSE forums statistics along the statistics for December 2008.

Up to the 31st of December 2008, we achieved a membership of 18.772 members, 18.144 threads and 105.203 posts, which is quite a lot considering that we started with an empty database due to some technical issues we had during the merge of the three independent parties that initially joined forces. Most users ever online was 7.771 – including guests – on the 2nd of December 2008.

The following diagram shows the monthly development of new user registrations, user activity, new threads and new posts since the launch in June. The user activity measures the number of individual visits to the openSUSE forums. We started strong with the release of openSUSE 11.0, then the traffic has been slowly declining followed by another peak with the release of openSUSE 11.1.

The next diagram outlines the daily statistics of the same measurements for December 2008. As you can see, the release date of openSUSE 11.1 – the 18th of December – had a significant impact on all presented measurements.

Kudos to our Top5 posters during the last 7 months…

  • oldcpu – 4.558
  • caf4926 – 3.643
  • kgroneman – 2.536
  • ken_yap – 2.375
  • swerdna – 2.355

…and to our Top5 posters during December 2008.

  • caf4926 – 795
  • oldcpu – 658
  • mingus725 – 449
  • ken_yap – 441
  • BenderBendingRodriguez – 284

Thanks a million for making the openSUSE forums useful.

We’d like to take the opportunity to thank the whole openSUSE community for their participation – without your great support during the last 7 months the success of the openSUSE forums would never be possible. The openSUSE forums are accessible through the website and the NNTP gateway. If you’re interested in the latter possibility, be sure to read my former article about NNTP access to the openSUSE forums.

As of the issue #49 of the openSUSE Weekly Newsletter, we present hot topics and asserted threads at a dedicated openSUSE forums section to the openSUSE community. If you are a frequent forums visitor and you’d like to contribute to this openSUSE forums section, you are very welcome to join the Newsletter Team. If you’re interested, please contact me – rhorstkoetter/at/opensuse.org – for further information.

Happy New Year from the whole openSUSE forums team!

Posted in Marketing | Comments Off on OSF Status Report #1

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