openSUSE Weekly News, Issue 170 is out!

We are pleased to announce our new issue 170.

openSUSE Weekly News

### openSUSE Weekly News Team

170 Edition

Legal Notice

This work (compilation) is licenced under Creative Commons attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The rights for the compilation itself are copyright by Sascha Manns.

Opt-Out: If you are an Author and don’t want to be included in the openSUSE Weekly News, just send a Mail to: <[news@opensuse.org](mailto:news@opensuse.org)>.

Copyrights of the referenced articles are owned by original authors or copyright owners. If you want to reuse those articles, ask each original copyright owner which license should be applied. We don’t reprint any Article without a free license, we just introduce it then under the Agreement of the German Copyright Law.

If you are an autor and want to set your blog under a free License just visit: //goo.gl/tssEW

Published: 2011-04-09

Table of Contents

Announcements Google Summer of Code Status Updates

Distribution Team Reports In the Community

Postings from the Community People of openSUSE Events & Meetings openSUSE for your Ears Communication Contributors New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE Security Updates Tips and Tricks

For Desktop Users For Developers and Programmers For System Administrators Planet SUSE openSUSE Forums On the Web

Announcements Reports Reviews and Essays Feedback Credits Acknowledgements Copyrights

List of our Licenses Trademarks Translations

We are pleased to announce our 170th issue of the openSUSE Weekly News.

You can also read this issue in other formats. Just click here.

Enjoy the reading :-)

Announcements▼

“

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…

Or in other words, “The more things change, the more they stay the same…”

openSUSE does not ship major/minor releases, but our numbering/naming scheme – NN.X – has led to a common misperception that a .0 release was major and a .x release was an update. This created a number of issues, including lack of media attention for .x releases, and user misconceptions about stability of .0 releases.

We have traditionally released versions as 11.0, 11.1, 11.2 and so on up to .3. (The exception was 11.4 because the Project wasn’t sure what to number the next release.)

The only really clear thing was our release cycle timing, as follows:

“openSUSE releases on a fixed schedule every 8 months no matter what. Therefore, all releases occur in November, July and March.”

There has been a lot of discussion over time within our community about our versioning scheme for distribution releases. We want to ensure our growing community, including users and media, have a clear and correct understanding of our release cycle – so naming or numbering needed to reflect that, and not cause misunderstanding.

Recently, the Project took these discussions to a poll, to gauge community feeling about the different options. Generally, the community expressed that they wanted a scheme that was uniquely openSUSE’s and reflected our release methodology. We looked at other distros for examples, and while we felt many had come up with excellent versioning schemes for their distros, none properly reflected our own cycle.

From this discussion and results of the poll, we have come up with the following scheme:

• The .x shall henceforth reflect the month of release

  • 1 = November

  • 2 = July

  • 3 = March

• We will no longer ship a .0 version.

This solution brings a meaningful rationale to the scheme, without completely revising the look. And thus, our next release in November will be 12.1. In July 2012, we will ship 12.2 and in March 2013, we will ship 12.3. Then in November 2013, we will ship 13.1.

So as you can see… same great versioning look, now with explanation.

License: GFDL 1.2

”

“

Welcome GNOME 3! We have a present for you…

Dear GNOME 3,

So, you’re born, and we here at openSUSE Project are very excited to welcome you into the world. We’ve been watching with anticipation and excitement as the many thousands of developers and contributors mobilized around the world to make your first steps into this world a reality.The videos and plethora of information shown on gnome3.org make clear that you’re very welcome!

A little present

You are surely be the most anticipated GNOME ever and we congratulate your proud parents with their achievement! Of course, we also feel very proud as we are closely related and have done our very best to help bring you into this world. While you are still young, we are already very impressed with what you can do and we therefor have decided to help your friends and supporters tell the world about you!

Building on our strong technology we have created 10.000 Live DVD’s to present you in all your glory. These will be given to the GNOME Foundation who will take care of distributing them all around the world and handing them out at events!

We hope you will enjoy the present!

Get GNOME 3

For openSUSE users, GNOME 3 will be available next week from the GNOME Stable repository. The GNOME team wants to ensure it is stable before unleashing it on you all. Of course, experimental packages are available already, see link above.

License: GFDL 1.2

”

“

Linux is 20 years old!

We have two birthdays this week!

While on April 6th GNOME 3 was born, another kid became 20 years old! The Linux Foundation celebrates the 20th anniversary of Linux with among other things a video contest. We already mentioned it but it’s now time to get those video’s to the Linux Foundation!

Contest

The video should be 60 second long and celebrate the 20th Anniversary by showing the impact of Linux on culture and IT over the last 20 years. The more inspiring you can make it, the better!

Youtube: //www.youtube.com/v/5ocq6_3-nEw

The winner of this year’s 20th Anniversary of Linux Video Contest will win airfare, registration and hotel expenses to attend one of the following events of their choice: LinuxCon North America, LinuxCon Europe, SXSW 2012 or the LA Film Festival. The winning video will be unveiled at LinuxCon in Vancouver BC August 17-19, 2011.

Ranking is based on community voting with the final decision being made by uber-penguin Linus Torvalds himself!

More

However, the Linux Foundation does more: all events where they have a booth will have recording equipment where you can record a message and share your favorite Linux moment or talk about the future. There will also be a series of articles on trainings for Linux professionals.

Join

We’re surely proud of our Penguin! Join the celebration and visit the Linux Foundation 20th birthday site.

License: GFDL 1.2

”

Google Summer of Code▲▼

“

Kartik Mandaville: Karma Plugin for openSUSEConnect

This post is about an idea for GSoC 2011 regarding openSUSE Connect.

Short Description : Karma concept in openSUSE Connect that will collect points from wiki edits, bugzilla entries, planet.opensuse.org posts, distribution changelogs etc and use them in the Connect. Based on Karma, different badges to be given. Different categories – developer karma/marketing karma etc. Also, an option to reward/ transfer Karma points to another user in recognition of his work. API to be implemented to access/ modify Karma points.

For those of you who have time to read the long description :

So basic idea of this project is to create different kinds of karma and collect as many information as possible automatically. So we will have wiki karma that will grow with every wiki page edit. We will have marketing karma growing bigger with every tweet and blog post. Packager karma getting bigger with every change submitted to the openSUSE. So this project will be not only about displaying and managing karma points but also about collecting statistics from various different services. (…)

”

Status Updates▲▼

Distribution

Important Links

• Detailed Bugzilla Report

• Submitting Bug Reports

• Bug Reporting FAQ

Team Reports

Build Service Team

“

      [Adrian Schröter: OBS team meeting](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-buildservice/2011-04/msg00056.html)

Adrian Schroter gives a short meeting summary from the Build Service Team.

”

Build Service Statistics. Statistics can found at Buildservice

GNOME Team

“

      [Garrett LeSage: GNOME 3](//blog.crozat.net/2011/03/gnome-3-live-image-release-011.html)

GNOME 3 has been released! Congratulations to everyone involved in making this happen!

I’ve been using the prerelease versions and have found a few tips that are worth mentioning. (…)

”

KDE Team

“

      [Sebastian Kügler: Plasma Active – A Desirable User Experience Encompassing the Device Spectrum](//vizzzion.org/blog/2011/04/plasma-active-a-desirable-user-experience-encompassing-the-device-spectrum/)

Today, I’d like to announce to a wider audience a project we have been working on in and beyond the Plasma team. Its goal is to “Create a desirable user experience encompassing a spectrum of devices“, and it is called Plasma Active. A couple of things make Plasma Active special. First, the driver is the desirable user experience. That means that we want to create something, people want, and people want to use. It means we are less technology-focused, but are taken a user-centered approach. Second, we are not targeting a single device, or a narrowly-defined class of devices. Plasma Active is made to run on a spectrum of devices that make up the user experience together. Devices change, and so does the way the user interacts with them. By strongly separating data and visualisation / interaction, we do not re-invent the wheel but adapt to the requirements and expectations of a device, and about how devices work together for the user.

Running Plasma Active

We have a basic, Plasma-based shell right now, which runs on three target devices — and probably some more, but that’s what we’ve tested so far. It performs well, runs stable and is usable with a touch-screen. While Plasma Tablet is quite fun already, do not expect release quality yet, as it is a snapshot of our efforts. Find the download location for the Balsam Professional live image on the wiki.

open-slx has created a Balsam Professional live image based on openSUSE 11.4 running Plasma Active. open-slx (my employer) are developing Plasma Active for openSUSE in the openSUSE Build Service. We’ve also created packages which can be installed online on top of openSUSE 11.4. You can find installation instructions in our Wiki, also for Meego.

Of course you want to run Plasma Active on a ‘real’ device, we currently recommend either the ExoPC (WeTab), the Lenovo Ideapad, or a Viewsonic Viewpad 10. You can find instructions for devices in the Wiki

Youtube: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GAFfjscVyg

Status

There is still a long way to go. We’re missing key functionality, default applications, optimizations all over the place, and more. There is nothing fundamental that holds us back to bringing the full experience users expect to tablet devices, based on our well-known, beloved, proven software stack. We are focusing our first release, which is planned for September already, on tablet computers. Since fixing a bunch of showstoppers over the past two weeks, I’ve actually started using Plasma Active for some light reading tasks (mostly web and RSS), and I’ve got to say: It rocks your socks. Being able to use a tablet computer which is based on Free software that you created yourself, is real fun. I’ve also handed it to friends who came by, and while they understood it’s an early prototype, I had a really hard time getting my gadget back. And that is only just the beginning. We have an excellent base to build a complete experience upon. In other words, it’s the perfect time to jump in and become part of something great and to help it also making it something really big.

Different goals need different processes

When we put the pieces for Active together, it quickly became clear that if we want to succeed, we also have to rethink some of our collaboration processes. One of my pet peeves has always been that different essential parts of what the user gets in her hands come from different teams. If we want to put something desirable into the hands of our users we need to pull in the same direction. While we needed different skills, these skills have to align in how they’re applied. This makes communication more natural, leads to a more focused process, and ultimately a better result. It’s clear that such an endeavour will only work if enough people in our communities, and the communities around it think that this is a worthwhile thing to spend their time on, and that we can get the people that do to pull in the same direction. The good news, however is that we’ve been able to create a stable platform to do this, in terms of tools, processes, collaboration models and not at least software. That platform is Plasma Active.

Sounds interesting?

If you want to help us shape Plasma Active, and bring its vision to reality, we would like to invite you. Start with having a look at our list of tasks, and if you find something you can help with, tell us, subscribe to the Plasma Active mailing list, or join #active on Freenode’s IRC network. We have documented our ideas, concepts and processes in the wiki.

In the coming weeks, we will keep you updated about Plasma Active’s progress, and we will be able to reveal more of our vision as we give Plasma Active shape by making it become reality.

”

openFATE Team

Top voted Features

“

        [decouple download and installation (Score: 348)](https://features.opensuse.org/120340)

Network installation could be improved by running package download and package installation in parallel.

”

“

        [Look at plymouth for splash during boot (Score: 181)](https://features.opensuse.org/305493)

I wanted to open a fate feature about this when I first heard of plymouth, but reading //fedoramagazine.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/interview-fedora-10s-better-startup/ really makes me think we should go this way.

Ray’s comment starting with “Every flicker and mode change in the boot process takes away from the whole experience.” is especially interesting. Is it okay to track the “don’t show grub by default” here?

”

“

        [Replacement for Sax2 (Score: 122)](https://features.opensuse.org/308357)

We need a replacement for sax2 in 11.3, as a safety measure for when auto configuration fails to detect certain monitors/keyboards/mice. (…)

”

“

        [Update to GRUB v2 (Score: 115)](https://features.opensuse.org/308497)

Every single bug or feature that anyone has developed for GRUB 0.97 has been rejected by the upstream project in favor of using GRUB 2. There has been resisitence in the distribution community to switching boot loaders, but this stalemate isn’t going to go away. The code itself isn’t well written or well maintained. Adding a new feature involves jumping through a lot of hoops that may or may not work even if you manage to work around all the runtime limitations. For example, a fs implementation has a static buffer it can use for memory management. It’s only 32k. For complex file systems, or even a simple journaled file system, we run into problems (like the reiserfs taking forever to load bug) because we don’t have enough memory to do block mapping for the journal so it needs to scan it for every metadata read. (Yeah, really.) (…)

”

“

        [Popularity contest (Score: 93)](https://features.opensuse.org/305877)

We need a feedback about packages that are preferred by users and actively used. Debian already has a tool named Popularity contest (popcon)

• reusing popcon will give us results that are directly comparable with Debian and Ubuntu

• packagers team can take care of the package

• we need a configuration dialog in YaST that is visible enough

• we need a server infrastructure on opensuse.org. (There are certain privacy issues, see Debian FAQ for details)

”

Recently requested features

Features newly requested last week. Please vote and/or comment if you get interested.

“

        [Need Offline Dictionary/Thesaurus database & GUI](https://features.opensuse.org/312189)

In some cases when dictionary servers go offline or internet connection goes down looking up words becomes difficult

Hence there arises a need for an offline dictionary GUI and database Suggestion:-

I would like artha and wordnet to be added to the distribution

Even if the inclusion of above is not possible I am open for inclusion of any other Offline Dictionary/Thesaurus database & GUI

”

“

        [Right click mount .iso](https://features.opensuse.org/312190)

Make it so that one can merely rightclick a disk image to select “mount” to mount it.

”

“

        [Driver management YaST module](https://features.opensuse.org/312191)

Allow removing, inserting, and blacklisting of drivers via simple YaST module.

”

“

        [Open Mobile Suite](https://features.opensuse.org/312192)

inclusion of the “Open Mobile Suite” - as phone manager in openSUSE. Of course the project needs help but is very promising and really needed a modern computer OS.

//series60-remote.sourceforge.net/index.php?module=News&func=display&sid=7

”

“

        [Provide anonymous web surfing](https://features.opensuse.org/312205)

Anonymous web surfing should be only one, I mean one, click away on a default installation of openSUSE. I would love to see a little desktop applet or browser plugin which enables anonymous surfing for the logged in user.

There are various projects out there to help protecting our privacy such as Tor https://www.torproject.org/ and others like proxies and such. These should be nicely integrated into the system, ie. when setting up network there could be a swith “enable anonymous browsing by default” and such. All parts for such an solution are there, just investigation, planning and integration is needed.

Please note that anonymous internet usage is not illegal. Its like sending a letter in an envelope instead of without.

”

“

        [GTK+ client for Smolt](https://features.opensuse.org/312209)

A gtk client for smolt would enable it it to be bundled with the default distribution of openSUSE.

”

“

        [system ICC color management](https://features.opensuse.org/312211)

Add a colour management system (CMS) for assigning ICC device profiles to device + driver configurations. Starting with the monitor profiles some colour management aware graphics applications can already use this feature. These cover Scribus, Krita, Gimp, Inkscape and some more. A open source CMS, which has extensive support for setting up ICC profiles for monitors is Oyranos.

//www.oyranos.org

Dependencies:

• OpenICC profile set

• libXcm

• libxml2

• X11 development libs

• xcalib

Optionally are some more dependencies for CUPS, patched SANE, libraw/exiv2, Qt. UIs exist as Kolor Manager (KDE control panel) and Synnefo (Qt). The library is very modular and can simply be removed if needed.

Most packages (except Synnefo) exist in OBS already.

”

“

        [deprecate /var/lock](https://features.opensuse.org/312216)

/var/lock should be deprecated

• it never was really used properly on SUSE Linux

• using lockdev didn’t really help either as only few programs actually use it and it’s not bug free (should be setuid instead of setgid lock)

The suggestion would be to patch programs to use flock() on the device fd instead which would solve all problem wrt permissions ans stale lock files.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=581884

//0pointer.de/blog/projects/locking

//0pointer.de/blog/projects/locking2

”

Feature Statistics

Statistics for openSUSE distribution in openFATE

Testing Team

“

      [Larry
        Finger: Weekly News for Weekly News for April 9](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-testing/2011-04/msg00006.html)

The Testing Core Team will meet on Monday, April 11 at 17:00 UTC on our usual IRC channel. We will be discussing the Open Bugs Day that was held on Saturday April 2. In addition, we will have a post-release discussion of 11.4 to emphasize what was good, and what might be improved during the development of 12.1 between now and its release in November 2011.

There was limited participation in Open Bugs Day, with many fewer workers than the previous OBD. We are not sure of the reasons. Perhaps our target of bugs from 11.2 and older versions did not attract as much interest as the previous effort, when we targeted bugs in 11.4. In addition, last Saturday was reported to be a very nice spring day in Nuremberg and that some potential participants chose to be outside rather than sitting at a computer terminal. Despite the relatively few participants, we updated a large number of bugs. Our tool at //openbugs.zq1.de/ found a total of 1179 open bugs for versions up to 11.2. Of these, 365 were updated in the Bugzilla pages. Some of these were really old. For example, I found several bugs still open from versions 10.0 and 10.1!

”

Translation Team

• Daily updated translation statistics are available on the openSUSE Localization Portal.

• Trunk Top-List – Localization Guide

Weekly News Team

“

      [Sascha Manns: openSUSE Weekly News: New NavBar implemented](//saigkill.homelinux.net/computer/linux/opensuse/opensuse-blog/76-opensuse-weekly-news-new-navbar-implemented)

Good News from the openSUSE Weekly News!

Beginning with Issue #170, it will be easier to read the Weekly News.. Thomas Schraitle yesterday has implemented the Feature Request #5298. The Main Goal of that was to integrate a Navigations Bar for the Weekly News.

Now the first implementation looks like:

So you can skip a Section who you are not interested in.

If you have a new Feature you want to have implemented in the Weekly News, just visit our Feature-Request Site on BerliOS. ATM this feature is just implemented in the HTML Version.

”

In the Community▲▼

Postings from the Community

“

Greek openSUSE Ambassadors: Openfest 2011

This weekend Openfest 2011 is held at TEI Piraeus. openSUSE community will be there spreading the word about openSUSE project. You will find us at our booth, in the main room of the event.

On Saturday 9 April, Kostas Koudaras will make two presentations. The First will be a presentation about the Greek openSUSE Community and the second will be a presentation of openSUSE 11.4. In the evening Efstathios Iosifidis will make a presentation of SUSE Studio. After that, Efstathios Agrapidis will make an introduction to the OBS.

On Sunday there will be a workshop from Efstathios Agrapidis on “How to create packages for any distribution using the OBS”.

We will be waiting to meet you there and talk about openSUSE and FOSS in general.

License: CC-BY-SA

”

People of openSUSE

“

This Week: Per Jessen

My name is Per Jessen, I’m 46 and I live in Switzerland with my wife and son. I’m Danish and I grew up in Denmark, but left about 20 years ago and have since lived and worked in a number of European countries. Professionally I’m a software engineer, and have spent most of my career working on or with IBM mainframes. I’ve been running my own business since 2004. (…)

”

Events & Meetings

Past

• April 02, 2011 : Open Bugs Day from the testing team

• April 06, 2011 : Project Meeting

Upcoming

• April 11, 2011 : Testing Core Team Meeting

• April 20, 2011 : Project Meeting

You can find more informations on other events at: openSUSE News/Events. - Local Events

openSUSE for your Ears

The openSUSE Weekly News are available as livestream or podcast in German. You can hear it or download it on Radiotux.

Communication

• The Mailinglists

• The openSUSE Forums

Contributors

• The User Directory

New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE▲▼

“

Sascha Manns: Package Calibre updated to 0.7.53

Today i’ve updated Calibre to Version 0.7.53. If you’re interested which bugs are fixed or which new features are present, you can follow this link. Since a few versions we just can provide packages for openSUSE 11.4 and higher. The problem is, that the sourcecode now uses functions from newer python versions, who just are present in the 11.4 repositories.

For all, who are not knowing exactly what Calibre is: it is a free opensource Ebook-Reader. Now a little Screenshot:

A new service from the Calibre Project now is, a Database of DRM free Ebooks. This Database can found there. All Calibre packages are hosted in the Documentation:Tools repository. If you add this into your YaST Repository Manager, you always get the last version. Also the last Package can found in openSUSE:Factory Repository.

Now have a lot of fun

”

“

h-online: Skype 2.2 Beta for Linux released

Skype has announced its latest beta version (2.2.0.25) of its closed source P2P VOIP (Voice Over IP), video and text chat application. The new beta adds support for Skype Access, which allows users to use Skype credit to access 200,000 Wi-Fi hotspots. Linux users are not getting the controversial UI modifications of the recent Mac OSýX update to Skype 5.

According to Skype there are also improvements to audio, video quality and reliability and the “multiple calls” scenario has been resolved, allowing users to receive a second call whilst on a call. The company also says it has fixed PulseAudio issues for Ubuntu users and graphics issues for KDE users using the default Oxygen style. (…)

”

Security Updates▲▼

To view the security announcements in full, or to receive them as soon as they’re released, refer to the openSUSE Security Announce mailing list.

Tips and Tricks▲▼

For Desktop Users

“

    [HowtoForge/Falko Timme: The Perfect Desktop - OpenSUSE 11.4 (GNOME) ](//www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-opensuse-11.4-gnome)

This tutorial shows how you can set up an OpenSUSE 11.4 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you! (…)

”

“

    [Packt Publishing/Cedric Gemy: Scribus: Importing Images](//www.packtpub.com/article/scribus-importing-images)

Importing and exporting:

The concepts

To begin with, remember that there are two kinds of graphics you can add to your layout. You can have photos, generally taken from a digital camera, downloaded, or bought on some website. Photos will generally be stored in JPEG files, but you can also find PNG, TIFF, or many other file formats. The second kind of graphics is vector drawings such as logos and maps. They are computer-made drawings and are stored as EPS or SVG files. You will certainly need to work with both in most of your documents. (…)

”

For Developers and Programmers

“

    [Jeffrey
      Stedfast: Optimizing Merge Sort](//jeffreystedfast.blogspot.com/2011/04/optimizing-merge-sort.html)

A number of years ago I wrote about the Merge Sort algorithm. One of the advantages of Merge Sort is that it is a stable sort, meaning that elements that compare as being equal remain in their original order after being sorted.

Well, today I had need of employing a stable sorting routine for sorting elements by a ZIndex in Moonlight. Up until today, we had been using qsort() which, while not guaranteed to be a stable sort on any platform, happens to be implemented in glibc as a stable sort except in out-of-memory conditions. Since we’d like Moonlight to work on platforms other than Linux+glibc (such as Mac OS or BSD), it has become important enough to implement properly. (…)

”

For System Administrators

“

    [HowtoForge/Falko Timme: Installing Apache2 With PHP5 And MySQL Support On OpenSUSE 11.4 (LAMP)](//www.howtoforge.com/installing-apache2-with-php5-and-mysql-support-on-opensuse-11.4-lamp)

LAMP is short for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. This tutorial shows how you can install an Apache2 webserver on an OpenSUSE 11.4 server with PHP5 support (mod_php) and MySQL support. (…)

”

“

    [Novell Cool Solutions/fpernet: HOWTO: OpenLDAP 2.4.x Replication on SLES11 SP1](//www.novell.com/communities/node/12703/howto-openldap-24x-replication-sles11sp1)

Introduction

YaST has a module for the server and the client part of OpenLDAP (plus a very basic LDAP browser / editor).

On SLES11 we had the following problems regarding the use of the YaST module and OpenLDAP server configuration:

• Database version only to store the configuratio (cn=config).

• No way to set up any replication method or mode using this module.

• OpenLDAP modules available build in the SLAPD binary.

Then your choices in this SLES11 version:

• Use the configuration file /etc/openldap/slapd.conf but in this case, forget YaST for ever.

• Use YaST to set up a basic OpenLDAP server then use an external tool to set up the rest.

• If use of YaST only is mandatory, forget the replication.

An RFE (Request For Enhancements) was created at this time, to be able to set up replication from the YaST module, on SLES11 SP1. They did it! So, let’s check how it works.

Note: On SLES11 or SLES11 SP1, by playing with /etc/sysconfig/opendlap, you can use the configuration file (/etc/openldap/slapd.conf) to configure OpenLDAP server but in this case do not use YaST anymore. (…)

”

“

Carla Schroder: IPv6 Crash Course For Linux

You might be used to working with IPv4 on Linux, but like it or not IPv6 is on its way in. Roll up your sleeves, spit on your palms, and get ready to go to work because this is your crash course in actually using IPv6. It hardly hurts at all. Linux has supported it since the 2.1 kernel, so you shouldn’t have to install anything. Make sure you have the ping6, ip, and ifconfig commands.

Let’s get my favorite nitpick out of the way right now — we do not have IPs, we have IP addresses. IP stands for Internet Protocol. As my wise grandmother used to say, sloppy speech equals sloppy habits, which equals a trip to hell in a handbasket. (…)

”

Planet SUSE▲▼

“

Sebastian Kügler: of rockstars, unicorns and Isaac Newton

A question that has bugged me for some time, is “how we can bring our creations into the hands of more users”, and how we can show the world that a truely open and community developed system can bring great value to more people. How can we overcome the technical barriers that hold back so many people from benefitting from our hard work, all the genius, love and creativity we put into software. Since my first contact with Free software, Linux openSUSE and KDE, we have done some very solid work. We have technically caught up with Microsoft, and are delivering a product that is up to par in many aspects, and better in many more ways. While we have booked immense successes, we have not reached the goal of making the Linux desktop ubiquitous in the desktop market. In a world of iPhones and Android, we even see closed development models based on similar technology as ours being a big success, market-wise, but failing to deliver the full Freedom of a community-driven development model to end users. (…)

”

“

Anastasios Ksouzafeiris: Keep your SUSE rolling!

One of the new features the recent major release of openSUSE brought with it that really caught my attention is the ability to turn the distribution into a rolling one, effectively bringing it to the camp of the likes of Gentoo and Arch. As a former long time user of Gentoo I thought I’d install openSUSE and take it for a drive – but most importantly add the Tumbleweed repo to it and see what happens from there.

Tumbleweed is the name of the repository that once added to your openSUSE installation allows the whole system to be regularly upgraded to the latest and greatest software, without the need of ever upgrading the OS to a newer, major version of the distribution. The good news is that “latest and greatest” doesn’t mean “bleeding edge”. That may be the case with the openSUSE Factory repo, but not with Tumbleweed. The bad news is that by turning openSUSE into a rolling distro you’ll find yourself re-compiling and re-installing any closed-source drivers you rely on more often than you’re probably used to – and in most cases that entails some extra labor. But that couldn’t possibly stop me from trying Tumbleweed, so I set off to a quest for transforming a local openSUSE 11.4 VMware VM (GNOME edition) into an installation of a rolling distribution. Well, it very soon turned out that I was in for a pretty short yet quite enjoyable quest. Before I go any further, I should point out that I’m no openSUSE expert. I have used the distribution in the past but it never really won me. Despite that, I always enjoy trying out new operating systems in general and Linux distributions in particular – especially when there’s a new version of a popular brand out. I should probably mention here that this time around openSUSE left me with an excellent impression and that’s mainly because of zypper, the distribution’s command-line tool for package management. (…)

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Holger Hetterich: SMB Traffic Analyzer @ SambaXP conference 2011

The last time SMB Traffic Analyzer was present at the Samba eXPerience conference was in** 2009. Lots of stuff happened, and we gained a slot at this wonderful conference to take a short look back at **what happened since the end of 2009, where we currently are, and where we go to. This time, we’ll do a presentation featuring two speakers of the SMBTA team (me and Benjamin Brunner), and will hopefully be able to live-demonstrate **our latest development, an easy to use and intuitive **web-interface for smbtaquery, and smbtamonitor, our real time client. Get the conference schedule here. We’ll be around at the conference and welcome to talk to users and developers!

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Andreas Jaeger: Versionitis

The voting on how to do the versioning is over and the “old school” has won by 55 per cent (of 98 participants). Thanks to all that participated in the two votes and the discussion around the topic.

As Coolo said in on the project list, we’d like to make a small change to the numbering:

We will not have a .0 release but only .1, .2, .3 release. Since we have releases in three months, the November

release is always the .1 release, the July release the .2 and the March release the .3.

So, the plan is that the next release will be called openSUSE 12.1 and launched on the 10th of November, 2011! Two years later – on the 14th of November, 2013 – we will then have the openSUSE 13.1 release.

So, the next four releases are called:

• November 2011: openSUSE 12.1

• July 2012: openSUSE 12.2

• March 2013: openSUSE 12.3

• November 2013: openSUSE 13.1

Detailed results for logged-in openSUSE members are available at the connect poll page and I have reproduced them here as well:

• A: “old school”: Like currently but only counting the right number until 3:

55% (54 votes)

• B: “Fedora style”: Just integers:

29 % (28 votes)

• C: “Ubuntu style”: YY.MM:

16 % (16 votes)

This is also consistent with the results of the first public voting.

Note that openSUSE does not have a major and minor numbering, even if it seems so. There is right now no difference in any way between what we would do for openSUSE 11.4 or 12.0 or 12.1 – and no sense to speak about openSUSE 11 or openSUSE 11 family. We also had in the past no process on how to name the next release (when to increase which parts of the number).

I think this new versioning is still consistent with the old one but also an improvement since it’s now clear that we change the first digit every two year. The first poll showed that half of our users prefer a date based versioning and the other a consecutive numbering. So, depending on your point of view, you can see this as a mixture of both or as consecutive numbering

So, time now to make openSUSE 12.1 a great release!

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openSUSE Forums▲▼

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No Sax2 or xorg.conf - 11.4 x64

  Sometimes certain tools get deprecated, or become obsolete (to most of us). Up until openSUSE 11.2 we had to configure the X server -for our graphical desktop- by running SaX2 from the console in runlevel 3. Quite a hurdle for new users. After that autodetection and configuration entered openSUSE, so SaX2 is no longer maintained as a component of a default openSUSE install. This thread is opened by a user who does want SaX2 for a reason. There's another thread announcing SaX3, which should provide some basic functions for the X display server's configuration.

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Nvidia Video Problem after DVD update 11.3x64 to 11.4 x64

  A couple of editions ago I presented a thread about the debate Upgrade vs. Clean Install. Here's an example where users upgraded and ran into trouble. A lot of possible causes are mentioned, if you have trouble like these, read ahead and find some good pointers to what you might do. In the end, all in a linux install that does not do what it should do can be fixed, one just has to know how. 

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Should the developers release a new version of 11.4 Suzy?

  Some question...Some years ago, it became clear that a SuSE release contained a serious bug. It was then when the developpers decided to release new images for download. Today I tend to say most of us answer NO to the question answered in the title. Yet an interesting thread, a firm discussion. Where a lot of background is given by some of our members. 

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Can’t successfully download 11.4

  Here's a user reporting continuous failure of his DVD download. The causes for this can be many, but there's always a way out. Read some good advice, it may save some time.

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On the Web▲▼

Announcements

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    [GNOME 3.0 Has Arrived](//www.gnome.org/news/2011/04/gnome-3-0-has-arrived/)

After three years of planning and development, GNOME 3.0 is here. This new version of GNOME delivers an exciting new interface, major improvements under the hood, and enhanced applications. The GNOME release team’s official announcement congratulates and thanks the GNOME community for its hard work on the release:

GNOME 3.0 would not have come to exist without the passion and incessant work of hundreds of people from our community, and without the support of our users. Thanks to the artists, bug triagers, designers, documentors, hackers, packagers, testers, translators and to everybody else who helped us reach this milestone!

You can read about all the changes in GNOME 3.0 in the release notes, and you can find out more about the background and reception to GNOME 3 in the official press release.

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Reports

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    [h-online: Mozilla reintegrates Messaging](//www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Mozilla-reintegrates-Messaging-1221670.html)

Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation, has announced that Mozilla Messaging, a subsidiary created in 2008 to manage the development of Thunderbird, and other user to user communication tools such as Raindrop messaging client and F1 social sharing, is to be absorbed into Mozilla Labs.

There is currently a team within Mozilla Labs which works on identity and contact management; the Mozilla Messaging group will be merged with this team. The new “innovation group” within Labs will be lead by current Messaging head David Ascher and focus on “online communications and social interactions on the Web”. (…)

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Reviews and Essays

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    [DesktopLinux: OpenSUSE 11.4 bolstered by Novell services, says review](//www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3982709075.html?kc=rss)

OpenSUSE 11.4 is a modest improvement, hobbled by some installation and font-control issues, says this eWEEK review. Yet OpenSUSE remains compelling thanks to related Novell offerings such as SUSE Studio and OpenSUSE Build Service, plus a new Tumbleweed rolling release option and Evergreen long-term support project.

Released in early March, OpenSUSE 11.4 is a modest new release of the community-oriented Linux-based operating systems from Novell and the OpenSUSE community, marked by a raft of newly updated open source applications and components. As with previous OpenSUSE releases, this distribution can serve in roles ranging from desktop to server. However, where OpenSUSE once stood tall among its Linux rivals, I’d sooner recommend Ubuntu or one of the Red Hat-based distributions for most client-to-server uses. (…)

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    [Datamation/Matt Hartley: Problems Linux Enthusiasts Refuse to Address](//itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3929866/)

I like to think of myself as a relatively long time Linux enthusiast. In fact, I feel like a fish out of water when asked to work on a Windows box or with a Mac.

Like most of you, I can certainly make the adjustment for a day, but I always come away feeling a little stranger from the experience. Guess this happens when you’re bound to a single way of doing things for an extended period of time.

Now let’s flip the coin for a moment. Despite the many successes seen from the desktop Linux camp over the years, there are some areas that continue to be left largely unchecked. Rather than automatically painting my findings with a negative brush, instead let’s examine each issue closely.

Let’s see if there is in fact a real problem at all. In this article, I’ll tackle specific concerns I’ve noticed and focus on whether these issues present any real concern for us in the long run. (…)

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Credits▲▼

We thank for this Issue:

• Sascha Manns, Editor in Chief

• Satoru Matsumoto, Editorial Office

• Gertjan Lettink, Forums Section

• Thomas Hofstätter, Eventeditor

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Acknowledgements▲▼

We thank for this Issue:

• RenderX XEP, PDF Creation and Rendering

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• Docbook.org, Semantic markup language for technical documentation

• xmlsoft.org, XSLT Librarys

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Translations▲

openSUSE Weekly News is translated into many languages. Issue 170 is available in:

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Coming soon:

You can follow the status of the translation there.

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First published on: //saigkill.homelinux.net