openSUSE Weekly News, Issue 145 is out!
17. Oct 2010 | Sascha Manns | No License
We are pleased to announce our new openSUSE Weekly News.
In the issue 145 you can read
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Jos Poortvliet: Last piece of strategy before the conference
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Linux User & Developer/Ken Hess: openSUSE 11.4 Milestone 2 review
Content:
Editors Note
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:OWN-oxygen-EditorsNote_draft02.png) | We are pleased to announce our **145** issue of the [openSUSE Weekly News](//en.opensuse.org/Portal:Weekly_news). We hope that you will enjoy reading. |
Announcements
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:Marketing.png) | #### [Finalizing who we are…](//news.opensuse.org/2010/10/15/finalizing-who-we-are/) "Again there was quite some feedback on the strategy doc. We have worked to shorten the document – a difficult thing with something which is the result of many thoughts and ideas. We tried to bring the piece on our target users back to it’s essentials and now have a short and a long version – input on what to do with either of those is very much welcome. In the other area’s, shortening was even harder – we appreciate input there as well. The plan is to do this one last round of feedback before we will try and finish it all off at the openSUSE conference next week. So if you’ve held back, have not had a look at this yet – now or never! Provide your input on the draft on co-ment and help shape our description of what being a Geeko means to us all. Yes, this will hopefully describe ourselves – where we stand, but also add a bit of pepper and salt and show our ambitions. Our strategy document has to be inclusive – but not too long. It has to show some ambition – but must also be realistic. Please note that the stuff under ‘background’ is – well, background. The first 3 parts (target users; what openSUSE offers; and what do we not focus on) are our future self-description! Those are the arguments you have when talking to others about openSUSE – make sure they are convincing and true. So, again, go to [co-ment](https://lite.co-ment.com/text/lNPCgzeGHdV/view/) and help shape our future!" |
Status Updates
Distribution
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:Suse_Box.png) | #### [Jos Poortvliet: Last piece of strategy before the conference](//nowwhatthe.blogspot.com/2010/10/last-piece-of-strategy-before.html) "The strategy discussion in openSUSE is a difficult one. I wrote in the latest announcement this: So if you've held back, have not had a look at this yet - now or never! Provide your input on the draft on co-ment and help shape our description of what being a Geeko means to us all. Yes, this will hopefully describe ourselves - where we stand, but also add a bit of pepper and salt and show our ambitions. Our strategy document has to be inclusive - but not too long. It has to show some ambition - but must also be realistic. This is not easy. We're a hugely diversified community with all sorts of users and contributors. We do NOT aim to change that - we're openSUSE after all. But we also have to make choices and have a profile potential users and contributors can recognize themselves in. Take 'beginners'. What does that mean? Are we talking about people who haven't used computers before? openSUSE should be fine for them - if they are looking to learn, play with it a bit. Someone who only needs a computer to check mail will probably need help, however, to get it up and running. They are not interested in reading on a forum about how to install multimedia codecs. So we target the person who will help him or her installing it and setting it up! Which again doesn't exclude a community team working on a super-simple openSUSE with everything a beginner needs - our infrastructure supports them. But we have to pick our battles, and openSUSE is traditionally a distribution which is powerful and flexible - we don't want to sacrifice functionality in our default offering. We want a graphics professional to be able to have all the powertools at his or her fingertips; we want a sysadmin to have an easy-to-administer system; we want a teacher to have a wide choice of interesting learning tools; we want a pro-audio user to easily install a low-latency kernel. openSUSE should not be harder than it has to be - but you may notice the power under your fingertips." #### Bugzilla **Important links:** * [Detailed Bugzilla Report](https://bugzilla.novell.com/report.cgi?x_axis_field=bug_severity&y_axis_field=product&z_axis_field=&query_format=report-table&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&short_desc=&long_desc_type=fulltext&long_desc=&classification=openSUSE&bug_file_loc_type=allwordssubstr&bug_file_loc=&status_whiteboard_type=allwordssubstr&status_whiteboard=&keywords_type=anywords&keywords=&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=NEEDINFO&bug_status=REOPENED&emailassigned_to1=1&emailtype1=substring&email1=&emailassigned_to2=1&emailreporter2=1&emailqa_contact2=1&emailcc2=1&emailtype2=substring&email2=&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&votes=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&format=table&action=wrap&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=) * [Submitting Bug Reports](//en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Submitting_bug_reports) * [Bug Reporting FAQ](//en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Bug_reporting_FAQ) |
SUSE Studio
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:Built-with-web-big.png) | #### [SUSE Studio: Activity visualization](//blog.susestudio.com/2010/10/activity-visualization.html) "SUSE Gallery has been publicly announced a few months ago and we've seen many great appliances being published there. While we're working hard to improve it further and add new features we also took some time to visualize the activity that's going on there. Here's the result: (...)" #### [SUSE Studio: Featured appliance - FreeSWITCHBOX](//blog.susestudio.com/2010/10/featured-appliance-freeswitchbox.html) "This week's winner of our Amazon voucher giveaway is Gourav Shah. His winning entry is FreeSWITCHBOX, custom made VoIP distro that includes the latest stable FreeSWITCH build. FreeSWITCH is a scalable open source and cross-platform telephony solution for routing and interconnecting multiple communication protocols. These include Skype, SIP, H.323, GoogleTalk, sipXecs, Call Weaver, Asterisk, and many more. If you are looking for a VoIP solution, check this one out!" #### [SUSE Studio: New Preload ISO build format](//blog.susestudio.com/2010/10/new-preload-iso-build-format.html) "A common use case in Studio is the creation of hard drive images for preloading systems. This is great for setting up, say a computer lab or a server farm, where you want all systems to have the same software and configuration. It is also a step that system hardware vendors (OEMs/IHVs) often include in their production process. SUSE Studio makes the creation of these images easy, but it's a bit more tricky to get them on to your target system. One way is to use a boot disk, like a Live CD/DVD or Live USB stick, and then dd the image to the target hard drive. This can be largely automated with a smart boot image (such as this) that can, with a bit of scripting and setup, automatically load the image from a server via the network and write it to the target drive (eg. dd over netcat). Unfortunately this does not work in networkless environments and may not be worth the effort if applied to just a couple of systems. [](//en.opensuse.org/File:Preload-iso-build.png) Fret not, for we have added the new Preload ISO build format to facilitate this process. A preload ISO is simply a Live CD/DVD that contains the preload hard disk image. When booted, it overwrites the target disk (after user confirmation), verifies the checksum, and then boots directly into the freshly loaded system. A word of warning - this format is meant for preloading and hence will overwrite all data on the target drive. Do not use this on your system unless you want to perform a clean installation! It is currently available for all base systems except SLE10." |
Team Reports
Build Service Team
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:OWN-oxygen-Build-Service.png) | #### [Alexander Naumov: Documentation](//lizards.opensuse.org/2010/10/13/documentation/) "Hi folks, this post is just request for all obs-packagers. Please, don’t forget write some documentation about your projects (which you maintain or develop). I mean, documentation for developers. This make more easy to understand logic of program, connection between some modules inside or interfaces between widget/applet and “system/hardware part”. For sure, comments in source code (or in changelog) help, but some times they give not so much clarity. This is not so complicated to write one-two pages about project, which you hack. This also can save time of new developers. They will not ask you about architecture of project, and that will save your time too ;) I don’t know how will be better to do it: use wiki (create a new page) or add just text-file in source project. Anyway it’s not so important where will be this documentation, main things that this documentation will be exist :)" #### Build Service Statistics Statistics can found at [//build.opensuse.org](//build.opensuse.org/) |
GNOME Team
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:GNOME-foot.jpg) | #### [Luis Medinas: Zenity 2.32 "Still rocking" - Missing Feature from release notes](//lmedinas.livejournal.com/15717.html) "Since Lucas passed Zenity to me and Arx Cruz we worked to fix some issues/bugs and add new features. You can see some of the action on bugzilla or on git. Here we carefully select and thought about bugs and enhancements so we won't break Zenity compatibility with older versions delivering users the same usability and don't break scripts." |
openFATE Team
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:Logo-fate.png) | #### [#310690: improve zypper se to include or suggest zypper wp](https://features.opensuse.org/310690) "I'm sure I'm not the only one to not notice wp in the man page after finding se, or forget that se is not full search. When zypper se finds nothing, it should either suggest to use zypper wp instead, or just rerun itself substituting wp for se." #### [#310695: boot with gag or similar by default](https://features.opensuse.org/310695) "dear developers, I'm a user, simple user, not advanced or power, only simple, one of the problem of a user like me is the bootloader, as simple wannabe better users usually do I have a double or triple boot pc (...)" #### [#310697: Deliver kde with pulseaudio](https://features.opensuse.org/310697) "I use kde4 with pulseaudio since opensuse-11.2 and once setup, it really works much nicer than the suse-default alsa-setup. There is already support in kmix for volume and moving streams (still missing some functionality from pavu-control, someone should continue the work on kmix..). (...)" #### [#310701: package byobu in an opensuse repository](https://features.opensuse.org/310701) "Would be great if anyone using opensuse could zypper in byobu . Unfortunately it's not in any opensuse repo despite it being a great tool for administrating linux servers. I'm quite surprised this isn't already available for opensuse. Would be a nice addition for 11.4." #### [#310704: Update emacs to 23.2](https://features.opensuse.org/310704) "Please upgrade emacs to 23.2. It has many improvments, you can read here: [//xahlee.org/emacs/emacs23.2_features.html](//xahlee.org/emacs/emacs23.2_features.html)" #### [#310706: zypper: allow to adjust proposed solver solution](https://features.opensuse.org/310706) "It would be nice if it would be possible to change the solver solution at the point when the installation summary is shown and zypper prompts whether to continue. This would allow the user to conveniently remove unwanted packages automatically chosen for installation, add another package, etc. This is especially needed if it is difficult to work one's way to the solution (in case of many dependency problems, e.g. during an upgrade). Removing, adding, and keeping an installed version of a package could be implemented as part of this feature request first. Further enhancements can be done later." #### [#310709: Dazuko](https://features.opensuse.org/310709) "Dazuko has been a long time feature of this operating system and it is no longer found. Please return this feature as it is very helpful to catch viruses in action." #### [#310710: Integrate the functionality of "fusermount -u" into umount](https://features.opensuse.org/310710) "It is confusing that FUSE mount points need a different command to unmount them than everything else. Historically FUSE had to bring its own command, because traditional umount refuses umounting of mounts that are not in /etc/fstab for non-privileged users. But now that FUSE has become mainstream, I think it is time to integrate it better and get rid of the need for "fusermount -u". So my proposal is to either add the implementation of the "fusermount -u" functionality to mount, or let it execute "fusermount -u" as a subprocess for FUSE mountpoints. As root can already use umount for FUSE mount points, it probably doesn't need more than skipping the /etc/fstab test when umount is called on a FUSE mountpoint that is owned by the calling user." #### [#310712: Constantly usable Factory](https://features.opensuse.org/310712) "I recently read about the Debain CUT project, ( [//cut.debian.net/](//cut.debian.net/) , [//kitenet.net/~joey/code/debian/cut/](//kitenet.net/%7Ejoey/code/debian/cut/) ) looking at the current situation with openSuSE Factory i see that it is dangerous to use, unstable alpha or beta packages come into Factory all the time, while other packages become out of date. The result is a system that is pretty much unusable. (...)" #### [#310713: put /etc under (git) version control](https://features.opensuse.org/310713) "put /etc under (git) version control to track changes made to the configuration, merge new configuration options coming from package updates / security fixes an handle the case where RPM decides to create a .rpmsave - where a administrator would need to migrate all changes from the old version to the new one in order to not end up with an unusable system upon reboot. (...)" #### [#310714: Bring TabCandy-like functionality to desktops](https://features.opensuse.org/310714) "I don't know if anyone here has used TabCandy (now called Panorama - [//www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVdlSXiX1c4](//www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVdlSXiX1c4) ) by Firefox but I think the concept would be PERFECT for desktops, sort of a better way of doing Desktop Activities. Some of the great things about it: (...)" #### Statistics [Feature](https://features.opensuse.org/) statistics for [openSUSE 11.4](https://features.opensuse.org/statistic/product/22236) [More information on openFATE](//en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Openfate) |
OpenOffice.org Team
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:Nuvola_apps_ooo_gulls.png) | #### [Petr Mladek: LibreOffice 3.3 beta2 available for openSUSE](//lizards.opensuse.org/2010/10/15/libreoffice-3_2_99_2/) "We are going to switch from the OpenOffice.org to the LibreOffice code base on openSUSE. I’m happy to announce LibreOffice 3.3 beta2 packages for openSUSE. They are available in the Build Service LibreOffice:Unstable project. They are based on the libreoffice-3.2.99.2 release. Please, look for more details about the openSUSE LibreOffice build on the wiki page. The packages are beta versions and might include even serious bugs. Therefore they are not intended for data-critical usage. A good practice is to archive any important data before an use, … As usual, we kindly ask any interested beta testers to try the package and report bugs." |
Translation Team
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:Icon-localize.png) | #### Localization * Daily updated translation statistics are available on the [openSUSE Localization Portal](//i18n.opensuse.org/). * [Trunk Top-List](//i18n.opensuse.org/stats/trunk/toplist.php) – [Localization Guide](//en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Localization_Guide) |
In the Community
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:Icon-project.png) | #### [Jos Poortvliet: marketing and talking points](//nowwhatthe.blogspot.com/2010/10/marketing-and-talking-points.html) "Next week - conference :D Looking forward to meeting many of you... But I blog about something else - I've spend a significant proportion of Monday on making screenshots... I saw an email on the GNOME marketing list mentioning how impressed they were by a slideshow used by the KDE team at the Utah Open Source Conference. This turned my mind back to an earlier discussion about screenshots. KDE.org has nice screenshots on pages like this one, GNOME does not. So while creating screenshots for an openSUSE slideshow I made a few with the stock GNOME artwork and send them their way..." ### Events & Meetings Past: * [**October 13, 2010: German Wiki Team Meeting**](//news.opensuse.org/2010/05/30/german-wiki-team-meeting-2/) * [**October 14, 2010: openSUSE KDE Team meeting**](//news.opensuse.org/2010/05/13/%ef%bb%bfopensuse-kde-team-meeting/) Upcoming: * [**October 20, 2010: openSUSE Board Meeting**](//news.opensuse.org/2010/03/24/opensuse-board-meeting/) * [**October 20-23, 2010: openSUSE Conference 2010 (Nuremberg, Germany)**](//en.opensuse.org/Portal:Conference) * [**October 21, 2010: Lizard Lounge**](//news.opensuse.org/2010/10/14/lizard-lounge-2/) * [**October 27, 2010: German Wiki Team Meeting**](//news.opensuse.org/2010/05/30/german-wiki-team-meeting-2/) * You can find more informations on other events at: * [openSUSE News/Events](//news.opensuse.org/category/events/) – [Local events](//en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Ambassadors_events) ### openSUSE for your ears * The openSUSE Weekly News are available as Livestream or Podcast in the German Language. You can hear it or download it on [//blog.radiotux.de/podcast](//blog.radiotux.de/podcast). ### From Ambassadors #### [Stathis Iosifidis: openSUSE at the celebrations for the 100 years Scouting in Greece (report)](//opensuseambassadors.blogspot.com/2010/10/opensuse-at-celebrations-for-100-years.html) "In October 1-3, we participated to the celebrations for 100 years Scouting in Greece. The last day was dedicated to animals since it was their world day celebration. We were guests of GreekLUG. The main idea was to run a future park. Since the audience was mainly kids, we setup computers running network games and games in general. As community, we made some Geeko origami some Geekos out of empty bottles and plaster. We also informed people about FOSS and openSUSE. Main concern of the adults was if it's easy and if it runs with windows dual boot. We gave about 50 PromoDVDs and some leafs where they can find help in Greek. Here are some pictures: (...)" #### [Manu Gupta: Session at Manipal](//en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Manipal_session) "openSUSE was well received in Manipal during the session. It was conducted by LUG Manipal on 11th and 12th October 2010 and students specially from the first years showed great enthusiasm. LUG Manipal was self financed by itself (I owe a big thanks to everyone in LUG Manipalfor supporting and making this event a success). Manu Gupta showed up as the openSUSE ambassador. More than 40 Promo DVDs and laptop stickers were distributed during the session (Thanks to P Sankar, Michael & Andreas). I would like as openSUSE Ambassador would like to take more session. (...)" ### openSUSE in $COUNTRY "Details" ### Communication * [The Mailinglists](//lists.opensuse.org/) * [The openSUSE Forums](//forums.opensuse.org/)] ### Contributors * [The User Directory](//users.opensuse.org/) |
New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:OWN-oxygen-New-Updated-Applications.png) | #### [Packman: xnoise 0.1.10](//packman.links2linux.org/package/xnoise) "XNOISE is a media player for Gtk+ with a slick GUI, great speed and lots of features. Unlike Rhythmbox, Banshee or itunes, Xnoise uses a tracklist centric design. The tracklist is a list of video or music tracks that are played one by one without being removed (right side of window). This gives you the possibility to enqueue any track in any order, regardless if they are on the same album or not. The tracks can be reordered at any time via drag and drop. The media browser (left side of the window) contains all available media in a hierarchical tree structure of the available metadata. It is easy to find a single track, artist or album by going through this tree or by just entering a search term. From the media browser, music or videos can be dragged into the tracklist to every position. Single or multiple tracks, streams, albums or artists can be dragged onto the tracklist and be reordered. Within the playing track, it's possible to jump to every position by clicking the position bar. Xnoise can play every kind of audio/video data that gstreamer can handle. " #### [Packman: mixxx 1.7.2](//packman.links2linux.org/package/mixxx) "Mixxx is designed for DJ'ing for both professional and semi-professional users. Mixxx was started in early 2001 as one of the first digital DJ systems. Today Mixxx includes many features common to digital DJ solutions, but also some very unique features: It is free, and runs on all major desktop operating systems. Furthermore Mixxx has a number of key features to help the DJ in the live mix: Beat estimation, parallel visual displays, and support for many DJ input controllers. Mixxx is software for DJ'ing. You can use wave based audio files, Ogg Vorbis and MP3 files as audio input. Mixxx can be controlled through the GUI and with external controllers including MIDI devices, joysticks and more." #### [Packman: gxine 0.5.905](//packman.links2linux.org/package/gxine) "This is a GTK+ based GUI for the libxine video player library. It provides gxine, a media player that can play all the audio/video formats that libxine supports. Currently, this includes MPEG1/2, some AVI and Quicktime files, some network streaming methods and disc based media (VCD, SVCD, DVD). A more complete list can be found on [//xinehq.de/](//xinehq.de/) Most DVDs on the market today are play-protected by the Content Scrambling System (CSS). libxine does not provide any code to descramble those DVDs, because of legal uncertainties. If you still want to play those DVDs, you'll need a CSS decryption library like libdvdcss that is supported by libxine." * You can find other interesting Packages at: * [Packman](//packman.links2linux.de/rdf/packman_en.rdf) – [OBS](https://hermes.opensuse.org/feeds/53368.rdf) |
Security Updates
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:Logo-SecurityUpdates.png) | To view the security announcements in full, or to receive them as soon as they're released, refer to the [openSUSE Security Announce](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/) mailing list. #### [SUSE Security Announcement: acroread (SUSE-SA:2010:048)](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2010-10/msg00001.html) * Package: acroread * Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2010:048 * Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:00:00 +0000 * Affected Products: openSUSE 11.1 * openSUSE 11.2 * openSUSE 11.3 * SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 SP3 * SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 * SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 SP1 #### [SUSE Security Announcement: Mozilla Firefox (SUSE-SA:2010:049)](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2010-10/msg00002.html) * Package: MozillaFirefox,MozillaThunderbird,seamonkey * Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2010:049 * Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 13:00:00 +0000 * Affected Products: openSUSE 11.1 * openSUSE 11.2 * openSUSE 11.3 * SUSE Linux Enterprise Software Development Kit 11 * SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 * SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 * SUSE Linux Enterprise Software Development Kit 11 SP1 * SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 SP1 * SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1 #### [SUSE Security Announcement: Linux kernel (SUSE-SA:2010:050)](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2010-10/msg00003.html) * Package: kernel * Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2010:050 * Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2010 17:00:00 +0000 * Affected Products: SLE 11 SERVER Unsupported Extras * SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 11 SP1 * SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 SP1 * SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1 #### [SUSE Security Announcement: Linux kernel (SUSE-SA:2010:051)](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2010-10/msg00004.html) * Package: kernel * Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2010:051 * Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2010 14:00:00 +0000 * Affected Products: openSUSE 11.3 * Vulnerability Type: local privilege escalation * CVSS v2 Base Score: 7.2 (AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C) * SUSE Default Package: yes * Cross-References: CVE-2010-2962, CVE-2010-3310 |
Tips and Tricks
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:OWN-oxygen-Tips-and-Tricks.png) | ### For Commandline/Script Newbies #### [Linuxaria: How to run commands in the background](//www.linuxaria.com/article/how-to-run-commands-background-nohup-disown?lang=en) "Suppose you have a long-running task (for example, compiling a large program) that you need to run, but you also want to get some other work done. Linux lets you start a task in the background and keep on doing other things from the command prompt. (...)" ### For Developers and Programmers #### [Acrossad.org/Rex Djere: C++ Snippets on Linux: Vectors Vice Arrays As a Better Way to Store Data](//www.acrossad.org/node/64) "You may have read and enjoyed my recent article ["C++ Snippets: Converting Hexidecimal Values to Decimal Values."](//www.acrossad.org/node/63) In that article, I briefly discussed a secret project that I have undertaken that will eventually result in my first GUI application for GNU/Linux, Windows, and perhaps even MacOS. At that time, I said that I could not reveal the exact nature of the program. I still cannot reveal the exact nature of the program, but I am releasing more of the source code under the GNU GPL license version 3. If you look at this code, run and compile it, you may glean a few more hints as to what kind of program I am actually aiming to write. in this article, I will reveal a few more details as to how I came up with this program idea. (...)" #### [nixCraft/Vivek Gite: HowTo: Use Bash Parameter Substitution Like A Pro](//www.cyberciti.biz/tips/bash-shell-parameter-substitution-2.html) "The $ character is used for parameter expansion, and command substitution. You can use it for manipulating and/or expanding variables on demands without using external commands such as sed or awk. (...)" ### For System Administrators #### [Linux User & Developer/Swayam Prakasha: Shell scripting for system administrators: beyond the basics](//www.linuxuser.co.uk/tutorials/shell-scripting-for-system-administrators-beyond-the-basics/) "In an earlier article, we studied the fundamental aspects of shell scripting and covered topics such as redirection, variables, arithmetic expansions and control constructs. In this part, we will focus on more advanced concepts that are useful for system administrators and software developers…" #### [Linuxaria: MAC Address on Linux](//www.linuxaria.com/pills/mac-address-su-linux?lang=en) "A Media Access Control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on the physical network segment. Logically, MAC addresses are used in the Media Access Control protocol sub-layer of the OSI reference model. MAC addresses are most often assigned by the manufacturer of a network interface card (NIC) and are stored in its hardware, the card’s read-only memory, or some other firmware mechanism. If assigned by the manufacturer, a MAC address usually encodes the manufacturer’s registered identification number. It may also be known as an Ethernet hardware address (EHA), hardware address, adapter address, or physical address. (...)" |
Planet SUSE
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:Logo-PlanetSUSE.png) | #### [Kohei Yoshida: Key binding compatibility options](//kohei.us/2010/10/12/key-binding-compatibility-options/) "As I posted on the libreoffice development list, I’m currently working on adding a new option page in the Options dialog, to provide a quick way to switch key bindings between LibreOffice’s default and OpenOffice.org’s for Calc. For the most part, the default key bindings are identical between LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org as far as Calc’s concerned, but there are some differences, which are enough to annoy those users who are accustomed to the old key bindings from OOo Calc." #### [Rémy Marquis: Getting Plymouth on openSUSE](//lizards.opensuse.org/2010/10/12/getting-plymouth-on-opensuse/) "**What is Plymouth?** After many years of service, it seems that the good old bootsplash is slowly going on retirement. Although there were a few attempts to replace the aging bootsplash (Splashy, usplash, ..), it is Plymouth that positions itself the best as the standard bootsplash of modern distributions. Developped by Fedora, Plymouth supports is a logger and a splash system that supports advanced animations when booting and brings a non flickering, professional looking boot similar to what we can observe under other operating systems. Plymouth was first included in Fedora 10 “Cambridge” shipped on November 2008, Mandriva switched from splashy to plymouth with in Automn 2009, and Ubuntu includes it since the 10.04 release shipped on April of this year. However, despite being the actual second most voted feature on openFATE, Plymouth hasn’t been integrated in openSUSE yet, mainly because nobody took time to “make it happens“." #### [Andrew Wafaa: Hyenas and Beagles snapping at the heels of Smeegol](//www.wafaa.eu/entry/hyenas-and-beagles-snapping-at-the-heels-of-smeegol-1-43.html) "I unfortunately received an e-mail just now from the Linux Foundation with regards to our precious Smeegol, and it appears on the face of it that they're not that impressed with our efforts. Somewhat bizarrely as they have had plenty of opportunity to respond. Now I'm not going to start ranting and raving about injustice etc, what I will say is this and it is a bit of a rant ;-): Since Moblin morphed into MeeGo, things appear from the outside to have taken a bit of a dip for the worse :-( MeeGo is now pushing the fact that it is a distro in it's own right which is perfectly acceptable and fair (although I think the world has enough distros). There are several people within the paid community who look on our efforts and those of Fedora's as wasteful, and not for the greater good. Sorry but bollocks to you!! I wholly understand now why Canonical & Ubuntu dropped it and went down their own road with UNR & Unity. They don't mind if someone else packages it and uses it - they and everyone else knows where it came from - for that I doff my cap to the Ubuntu crowd. If the Linux Foundation really want to make MeeGo work and be prevalent everywhere they need to look to the wider community to help it. Having a niche distro is all good and well, but without the wider eco-system that goes along with a distro you're buggered. One of the reasons I started working on Smeegol is openSUSE has a fantastic ecosystem, we've got pretty good tools and have a shit load of applications available. The same goes for Fedora. We both also have a pretty vibrant community with lots of friendly and knowledgable people willing to help." #### [Matthew Ehle: Blocking Bad Crawlers with Apache mod_evasive](//www.matthewehle.info/blog/?p=130) "Back in March, I wrote an article on a great little Apache module for blocking automated scans and attacks on your system. Since that article was written, the module has blocked and notified me of a couple vulnerability scans being run against my web server. Basically, it has been doing exactly what I expected of it. However, what I didn’t expect was a very pleasant side effect that the module would bring. A few weeks ago, I received an email from my web server that it had blacklisted an IP address. I logged onto the machine and checked the logs to see when and where the attack was ran. As it turns out, the “attack” was actually coming from an aggressive crawler from a company called Brandwatch. A quick search on Google revealed dozens of complaints from webmasters about the overly aggressive crawling rate of the brandwatch crawler (identified in user-agent strings as ‘magpie’). The 4 or 5 entries in the access log (before mod_evasive was activated) indicated a crawling rate of over 3 pages per second! The good news is that mod_evasive blocks all high rate scans of the system, whether they are malicious or just plain annoying. If you’re having a problem with aggressive crawlers, check out the above article on mod_evasive and give it a shot. I didn’t have bad crawlers in mind when I first implemented it, but it seems to work very well for them." |
openSUSE Forums
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:OWN-oxygen-openSUSE-Forums.png) | #### [KDE Hangs on New Updated Install](//forums.opensuse.org/english/get-help-here/applications/447902-kde-hangs-occasioanlly-new-install-11-3-updates-installed.html#post2235828) "KDE and nVidia on 11.3 seem to be producing a swathe of freezing/hanging issues, mostly it seems just brief delays where the mouse is frozen for a few seconds as an application loads." #### [Question about Firefox4 beta 6 Availability](//forums.opensuse.org/english/get-help-here/applications/447850-firefox-beta-6-a.html) "Development of Mozilla-Firefox4 is well under way but the build service repo does seem to lag behind. It might be easier just to get the tarball from Mozilla, unpack it and run it direct from the folder." #### [How to View other Partitions?](//forums.opensuse.org/english/get-help-here/install-boot-login/447794-how-view-my-other-partitions.html) "Users are still finding this difficult, though typically it should be easier than it is. KDE users may experience more difficulty as there appears to be a bug preventing mounting unless the partitions are manually edited in to fstab. Gnome seems to work as it should. Good advice here." #### [11.3 SATA Install Issue](//forums.opensuse.org/english/get-help-here/install-boot-login/447655-opensuse-11-3-install-issue-sata_nv.html) "Having an existing 11.2 install you would expect 11.3 to go the same way, at least as far as HD detection is concerned. Not it seems, in this case. Kudos to the OP for sticking with it." |
On the Web
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:OWN-oxygen-On-the-Web.png) | ### Announcements #### [New Chart features in OpenOffice.org 3.3 Beta (part 1)](//blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/new_chart_features_in_openoffice3) "Arbitrary text shapes and drawing objects now can easily be inserted into Charts. As within the other applications the drawing toolbar allows to insert simple shapes such as lines, rectangles and text objects or more complex shapes such as symbols or block arrows. The drawing objects and texts can be manipulated via several dialogs available from the context menu. Use these additional shapes to add explanatory notes to your chart for example." ### Reports #### [Phoronix/Michael Larabel: Multi-Touch For The X.Org Synaptics Driver](//www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODY2Mw) "Takashi Iwai of Novell/SuSE has just published a series of 18 patches for the X.Org Synaptics input driver that primarily provides multi-touch support. There's also some fixes and other changes to this Synaptics driver for X, but the primary feature is the addition of multi-touch support under Linux (and other X.Org-using operating systems) for supported hardware. (...)" #### [Phoronix/Michael Larabel: 2010 Linux Graphics Survey Results](//www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=lgs_2010_results&num=1) "Last month we carried out our fourth annual Linux Graphics Survey in which we sought feedback from the Linux community about the most common graphics drivers and hardware in use, what display/GPU-related features desktop users are most interested in, and collect other metrics to aide developers. Here are the results from this year's survey. (...)" #### [Vincent Untz: freedesktop.org specifications migrated to git](//www.vuntz.net/journal/post/2010/10/16/freedesktop.org-specifications-migrated-to-git) "A few months ago, after talking about this for a while, I finally did a git migration of various XDG specifications (autostart, basedir, desktop-entry, menu and systemtray). It was a test migration, so I only published this in a personal repository on freedesktop.org. And I quickly became busy with other things. I finally pushed this repository to xdg/xdg-specs on Thursday. It's a shame it took so long, especially since some people were waiting for it. But it's done. So what's next? I'll see if we can import a few more specifications in there, but I'll also look at improving the website, and how it's generated. It might make sense to re-use what was done for library.gnome.org here. Oh, and it's also a good opportunity to start fixing some long-standing issues with some specifications :-) I have some list of improvements I'd like to see, but do not hesitate to share some of the annoyances you experience with the specifications!" ### Reviews and Essays #### [Linux User & Developer/Ken Hess: openSUSE 11.4 Milestone 2 review](//www.linuxuser.co.uk/reviews/opensuse-11-4-milestone-2-review/) "There’s nothing quite like looking at a new Linux version—especially a minor release that promises to bring so much to the user as does OpenSUSE’s latest effort: 11.4. OpenSUSE 11.4 might prove to be the best upgrade since the leap from OpenSUSE 10.X to 11.X. Though these early “Milestones” as they’re called, are alpha versions, 11.4 Milestone 2 is very stable and surprisingly responsive, even installed into a virtual machine the speed enrichments are quite striking. That performance boost is one of the big improvements over earlier versions with 11.4’s new kernel (2.6.36) and updated Xorg packages. Expect impressive boot times and enhanced performance for application launches. (...)" #### [Datamation/Bruce Byfield: KDE 4 vs. GNOME 3: An Early Comparison](//itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3907876/KDE-4-vs-GNOME-3-An-Early-Comparison.htm) "How will GNOME 3 compare to KDE 4? The picture is still emerging, since GNOME 3's official release is still months away. However, with GNOME Shell available as a preview in the latest GNOME releases, a general outline is starting to be visible. (...)" |
Feedback / Communicate / Get Involved
| [](//en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Weekly_news_team) | Do you have comments on any of the things mentioned in this article? Then head right over to the [comment section](//news.opensuse.org/?p=5158) and let us know! Or if you would like to be part of the [openSUSE:Weekly news team](//en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Weekly_news_team) then check out our team page and join! Or Communicate with or get help from the wider openSUSE community -- via IRC, forums, or mailing lists -- see [Communicate](//en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Communication_channels). [](//en.opensuse.org/File:Rss_32.png) You can subscribe to the openSUSE Weekly News RSS feed at [//news.opensuse.org/category/weekly-news/feed/](//news.opensuse.org/category/weekly-news/feed/) |
Credits
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:OWN-oxygen-Credits.png) | * [saigkill](//en.opensuse.org/User:Saigkill) [Talk](//en.opensuse.org/User_talk:Saigkill) - [Contributions](//en.opensuse.org/Special:Contributions/saigkill) Sascha Manns (Editor in Chief) * [STS301](//en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=User:STS301&action=edit&redlink=1) [Talk](//en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=User_talk:STS301&action=edit&redlink=1) - [Contributions](//en.opensuse.org/Special:Contributions/STS301) Sebastian Schöbinger (Tips/Tricks) * [HeliosReds](//en.opensuse.org/User:HeliosReds) [Talk](//en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=User_talk:HeliosReds&action=edit&redlink=1) - [Contributions](//en.opensuse.org/Special:Contributions/HeliosReds) Satoru Matsumoto (Editorial Office) * [Caf4926](//en.opensuse.org/User:Caf4926) [Talk](//en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Caf4926&action=edit&redlink=1) - [Contributions](//en.opensuse.org/Special:Contributions/Caf4926) Carl Fletcher (Main-Newsletter, Forums Sec.) * [Okuro](//en.opensuse.org/User:Okuro) [Talk](//en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Okuro&action=edit&redlink=1) - [Contributions](//en.opensuse.org/Special:Contributions/Okuro) Thomas Hofstätter (Events & Meetings) * add translators |
Translations
| [](//en.opensuse.org/File:OWN-Icon-locale.png) | openSUSE Weekly News is translated into many languages.Issue #145 of the openSUSE Weekly News is available in: * [English](//en.opensuse.org/Archive:Weekly_news_145) Delayed / to be translated: * [Magyar](//hu.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Heti_H%C3%ADrmond%C3%B3/145) * [Español](//es.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Noticias_Semanales/145) * [繁體中文](//zh_tw.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/145) * [日本語](//ja.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/145) * [Русский](//ru.opensuse.org/%D0%95%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8_openSUSE/145) * [Indonesia](//en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/145/indonesian) * [简体中文](//en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/145/chinese) * [Deutsch](//de.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE-Wochenschau/145) * [Français](//fr.opensuse.org/Lettre_d%27information_openSUSE/145) * [Polski](//pl.opensuse.org/Tygodnik_openSUSE/145) * [Português](//pt.opensuse.org/Not%C3%ADcias_da_semana_no_openSUSE/145) * [Italiano](//it.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Newsletter_Settimanale/145) * [Svenska](//en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/145/swedish) * [Ìesky](//cs.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_t%C3%BDden%C3%ADk/145) |
Categories: Weekly News
Tags: Newsletter opensuse Weekly News