openSUSE Weekly News, Issue 179 is out!

We are pleased to announce our new openSUSE Weekly News 179.

openSUSE Weekly News

### openSUSE Weekly News Team

179 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 author and want to set your blog under a free License just visit: //goo.gl/Tw3td

Published: 2011-06-11

Table of Contents

Announcements Google Summer of Code Status Updates

Distribution Team Reports In the Community

Postings from the Community Events & Meetings openSUSE for your Ears From Ambassadors Communication Contributors New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE Games Corner Security Updates Kernel Review Tips and Tricks

For Desktop Users For Commandline/Script Newbies 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 179th issue of the openSUSE Weekly News.

You can also read this issue in other formats here.

Enjoy reading :-)

Announcements▼

Important

The Articles inside this Section are in full. If you are already knowing the stuff in news.opensuse.org, then you can skip this section through using the TOC.

“

Get your fresh kernels from openSUSE and test Linux 3.0!

The openSUSE kernel developers have recently announced that the kernel git trees have moved to kernel.opensuse.org/git, providing better reliability than gitorious. Gitorious had trouble with cloning the nearly 1GB repository sometimes, but the developers will keep syncing to gitorious so nothing should break. Moreover, kernel.opensuse.org offers an easy interface to install openSUSE kernels on a variety of openSUSE releases.

More things are planned for kernel.opensuse.org including the introduction LXR. cgit was already added during the writing of this article!

What is there – daily fresh kernels!

kernel.opensuse.org offers an interface for users to find a specific version of a kernel for openSUSE. As the wiki states, there is a number of different kernels build for openSUSE. This includes the default kernel (usable for desktops and real-hardware servers), the desktop kernel, optimized for desktop usage and a number of more specialized kernels including Xen and EC2 ready kernels, debug, trace and of course a vanilla (standard kernel.org) kernel. On kernel.opensuse.org you can find (links to) repositories for all current openSUSE and SLE releases with up to date versions of all the mentioned kernels and more. Most of these are build daily to keep ‘em fresh!

Follow upstream

If you want to follow upstream kernel development closely, vanilla is probably your thing. This will turn into the upcoming Linux 3.0 kernel! If you feel adventurous and want to test patches that are not yet ready to go in the mainline kernel, check the linux-next branch. These are patches which will go into ‘Linux 3.1′, the upcoming+1 version of the Linux kernel.

Or track openSUSE

Or, you might want to test what is coming in the next openSUSE release via the ‘master branch’. This will give you a kernel that is ahead even of the Factory kernel! Each of those kernels is build for a large number of build targets including openSUSE 11.2, 11.3, 11.4 and a number of SLE versions. Clicking on Packages (under the Tools menu top-right) and then the kernel branch you like (the kernel from openSUSE 11.4, SLES10_SP3, linus’ git tree ‘vanilla’, etc) will show you the repository and how to add it. These kernels are build daily, so tracking what the kernel developers are up to is easy as pie!

Michal Marek, working on kernel.opensuse.org told us that:

“

master, openSUSE-11.3, openSUSE-11.4, vanilla, stable and linux-next should work on any of 11.3, 11.4 and Factory. I fixed the spec files now so that the packages also install on 11.2, but that release is out of support, anyway.

”

How to use it

To add a specific kernel to openSUSE, click on the branch you are looking for and then on packages under the Tools menu. You will then see the zypper command which will help you add this kernel to your openSUSE installation.

By default, the kernel will replace your old kernel. If you want to be keep the old one as a fallback, go to /etc/zypp/zypp.conf and uncomment the line starting with “multiversion =”. For the vanilla and linux-next branches, this is not needed, the default configuration puts Linus’ kernel-vanilla next to your default kernel-desktop in parallel. Having the kernel available as option the boot menu and not replacing your current kernel protects you from issues with the latest piece of technology you are testing out!

Figure 1. openSUSE kernel commit activity overview

If you want to get the source code of the kernel branch, or browse its git tree, click on GIT Clone or GIT Browse under the Tools menu to get the commands for cloning the repository to your drive or see the code. You can also follow development and see what patches are added by who in the Figure 1, “openSUSE kernel commit activity overview”GIT Browse page. For example, this link brings you to a page showing the latest activity of the openSUSE kernel developers in Factory.

More coming

For developers, the site provides a git viewer based on cgit. An LXR source code browser is planned in the future. LXR is a tool that displays source files with links to function, macro and type definitions and usage.

License: GFDL 1.2

”

“

Time to vote on the openSUSE Strategy!

Over the last year an openSUSE strategy discussion has been ongoing. Beginning this year things went quiet for a while as everyone was busy with the openSUSE 11.4 release and now the conference but we’re at the final stage and want to finish this. Time to vote!

Forward

The openSUSE board has reviewed the text and after fixing one or two typo’s and updating it to the latest state of affairs, they have asked Thomas Thym from the strategy team to start a vote among openSUSE Membership. So every Member can go to connect and vote on the proposal!

We’re not asking everyone if they think it is a perfect fit for themselves – we’re a diverse community and we’ll never fully agree on anything. But this proposal has seen lots of thought, discussion, revision, input – it is arguably the best we could come up with to describe who we are and where we want to go. So the question is – do we agree this describes us? Is it good enough for us to support? Can we move on with this?

Results

You can find the result of our one-and-a-half year discussion on the openSUSE Strategy wiki page. Note that the Community Statement is an integral part of it.

This is the start of our Strategy document, describing our mission:

“

The openSUSE project is a worldwide effort that promotes the use of Linux everywhere. The openSUSE community develops and maintains a packaging and distribution infrastructure which provides the foundation for the world’s most flexible and powerful Linux distribution. Our community works together in an open, transparent and friendly manner as part of the global Free and Open Source Software community.

”

So, if you’re an openSUSE Member, it is time to read the document one more time and cast your vote!

Note that the voting page is only accessible to logged in openSUSE Members and the results are hidden until June 30th.

License: GFDL 1.2

”

“

openSUSE conference looking for sponsors

Like the previous years, the openSUSE conference team is looking for sponsors. The conference has grown 35% last year and we expect it to grow even more this year so financial help is needed!

openSUSE Conference

Now in its third year, the openSUSE Conference has become one of the most dynamic and collaborative events in the FOSS world, by bringing together both openSUSE contributors and other members of the open source community. Last year we welcomed participants from Fedora, Debian, the GNOME project and numerous others, creating a rich environment for innovation. Topics for the openSUSE Conference range from technical talks about packaging, Open Build Service and development tools to more community-oriented discussions about our future and direction. With over 35% more attendees than in 2009, last year’s conference was a resounding success and this year promises to be even greater with an expected number of 500 attendees.

Sponsors needed

To make this event possible, the community needs help. Sponsorship is required for travel costs for speakers and attendees as well as facilities costs. As the openSUSE community is very international, we want to support people from Brazil, India, Australia and many other countries to come to Nuremberg. By securing sponsorships, companies can demonstrate their support for the community and garner valuable brand recognition. If you are interested in sponsoring this event, please see the online sponsorship brochure or contact us for more information on the sponsor benefits and offerings. If you know someone who might be interested in sponsoring, please help us reach out to them!

Our contact person is:

Izabel Valverde <[izabelvalverde@opensuse.org](mailto:izabelvalverde@opensuse.org)>

Sponsorship manager

openSUSE Conference Organization

This year: Read, Write, Execute and SUSE LABS

In 2011, the theme of the combined openSUSE and SUSE Labs Conference is RWX, the UNIX acronym for Read-Write-Execute. To bring this theme to life, the sessions at oSC 2011 will have a strong focus on getting decisions made and work done in small, collaborative teams. Again many visitors from other projects will be invited and by co-locating with the SUSE Labs Conference, the larger number of community members at the conference will greatly increase its impact.

SUSE Labs

The SUSE Labs Conference is a SUSE internal conference that has been organized by SUSE engineers for SUSE engineers for many years. Most SUSE technical employees travel to meet once a year and exchange ideas, share their work and learn from each other. The topics for the SUSE Labs Conference tend to be very technical, ranging from Kernel, Samba and GCC to high performance networking technology.

Place and date

The openSUSE Conference and SUSE Labs Coference 2011 takes place in Nuremberg, Germany at Zentrifuge Nurenberg, from September 11 to September 14. Zentrifuge is an independent cultural center providing room for art and music performances and exibitions. This location gives the openSUSE Conference a culturally rich, creative environment, challenging visitors to bring their best!

License: GFDL 1.2

”

“

World IPv6 Day Results

Yesterday was World IPv6 Day and openSUSE participated in it. We hope the experiment was as successful for the other participants as it was for us!

Here is a short status update from the openSUSE infrastructure. openSUSE has currently two major server locations and we tested IPv6 at both separately. Note that there are more openSUSE infrastructure locations, including the server which runs the popular planet.opensuse.org (which supports IPv6 as well now)!

Nürnberg

In Nürnberg, Germany, the following main services were enabled:

• download.opensuse.org

• build.opensuse.org

• lists.opensuse.org

• {many_web_sites}.opensuse.org

Just two services did not make it in time: the torrent tracker and the email servers. Our current tracker software does not support IPv6 – and the dedicated new tracker needs more love from our packager. The mail servers are provided by our ISP so we left them as they were.

All our other services are RUNNNING on IPv4+IPv6 and WILL STAY on IPv4+IPv6 even if the IPv6 day is over now. We have seen an increase from ~1% IPv6 bandwidth usage to ~7% bandwidth usage today, which is impressive and encouraging!

Provo

In Provo, US, the following main services were enabled:

• {lang}.opensuse.org wikis

• forums.opensuse.org

• lizards and news.opensuse.org

Currently these services provide IPv6, but we are facing two kinds of problems, proving how useful the World IPv6 day was for us:

1. Native IPv6 users reported problems which are MTU related. Manually lowering the MTU on the client side fixed their problems, but this is something that we are working on closely together with our ISP.

2. Some sites are not accessible from some clients. But clients from the same subnet did not have the problems. More mysterious: the problematic clients can reach other servers without problems. This is currently the problem which needs some deep investigation.

We are currently discussing whether we can solve these issues quickly or have to disable IPv6 again for our servers in Provo.

The following problems were solved during World IPv6 day:

• One package on our openSUSE distribution needed patches: the apache2-mod_geoip package used on download.opensuse.org

• we found two packages (vsftpd and torrent-seeder) which can’t handle IPv4 and IPv6 at the same time

In conclusion, the world IPv6 day participation showed openSUSE to be quite ready for IPv6 – and we will work on fixing the few problems we encountered.

I’d like to mention two people especially and thank them for their hard work, great help and enthusiasm:

Christian Deckelmann (who provides us with the needed infrastructure, resources and knowledge) and Markus Rýckert (who handled all the configuration changes and patches that are needed on our servers).

License: GFDL 1.2

”

“

New Leadership inside the Medical Project

During the first openSUSE Conference in 2009, the idea was born to start a project to package and publish software for medical purposes. Since then, many packages were built and updated: software from the FreeMedForms project, OpenEMR, GnuMed, software for viewing images in DICOMM format and recently, a plasmoid for diabetics.

The first stable release (v 0.0.6) was released on November 2010, based on openSUSE 11.3 and as contestant in the “The Disters“-Contest. This release was produced with SUSE Studio, and published via SUSE Gallery.

The goal of this openSUSE derivative was to give medical people all they need in their daily work. So the image contained OpenOffice, KMyMoney, mail, calendering and all other basic office tools. And of course the content from the medical repository. There was some press attention in Linux Weekly News andLinuxtoday!

Provided Software

openSUSE Medical provides tools from the FreeMedForms Project. FreeMedForms is a Electronic Medical Record Application. There doctors can manage clients data and diagnostic information. The second Application from this Project is FreeDiams, a electronic prescriber. And FreeICD helps to find the right ICD Code.

The GNUmed project builds free, libre open source Electronic Medical Record software in multiple languages to assist and improve longitudinal care (specifically in ambulatory settings, i.e. multi-professional practices and clinics). It is made available at no charge and is capable of running on GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. It is developed by a handful of medical doctors and programmers from all over the world. It can be useful to anyone documenting the health of patients including, but not limited to,ýdoctors, physical therapists, occupational therapists, acupuncturists, nurses and psychologists.

TEMPO is open source software for 3D visualization of brain electrical activity. TEMPO accepts EEG file in standard EDF format and creates animated sequence of topographic maps. Topographic maps are generated over a 3D head model and the user is able to navigate around the head and examine maps from different points of view. Most mapping parameters are adjustable through the graphical user interface. Also, individual topographic maps could be saved in PNG format for future examination or publishing.

The software from the Oyranos Project is also part of the medical repository and in openSUSE Medical. It allows medical professionals to view medical file formats like DICOMM Files.

The newest addition to the medical repository is plasmoid-glucose, a KDE Plasmoid for diabetics.

The openSUSE medical project has been a success. The SUSE gallery image has been downloaded well over 1400 times and was cloned by 162 users so they could provide their own variations of openSUSE Medical!

The team is very much interested in more feedback, however. Especially when it comes to real-life usage of openSUSE Medical. Feedback from professionals in the field using the software can be very valuable in improving it and would be highly appreciated. So if you study medicine, work at a pharmacy or are a doctor and you use or might use openSUSE Medical, please let us know! You could tell the whole team by subscribing to the openSUSE Medical mailing list which is very low-trafic (3-4 mails per week) or contact one of the team members like Sascha Manns directly. Of course you are also very much welcome on the openSUSE Medical IRC channel and can join the facebook page!

New leadership and project plans

Today, the team announces a shift in leadership and a road map for the future.

Two years after the start of this project, the former team leader Sascha Manns has stepped down and Thanasis Rous will take over. Last November, the first official release was published with a range of desktop and server packages. openSUSE medical is now part of the Linux Medical Taskforce and has exciting plans for the future. These include:

• Importing more applications dealing with diabetes care and diabetics

• Importing applications that would be useful for medical students (some educational applications like Kalzium are already added)

• Bug testing applications (maybe create a new mailing list for this purpose e.g “opensuse-medical-bugs”)

• Translating the included applications into more languages

The new leader Athanasios-Ilias yesterday has released the new image under SUSE Gallery. Also available at : OVF image, VMware Image, Live CD/DVD.

More information and helping out

Anyone interested in the project can read more about it at the Medical wiki portal.

There are many ways to help with working in the project – you don’t need to be a developer or packager, nor do you need to be a medical specialist, though of course these skill sets are very welcome. If you’re not sure how to help, sign up to the mailing list and introduce yourself. If you’re a user of this software and would like to see it develop in certain directions, this is also a great place to get your ideas heard.

If you want to get involved, subscribe to the mailing list with “opensuse-medical+subscribe@opensuse.org“. We very much welcome your feedback!

Have a lot of fun :-)

Contributed by Sascha Manns, Athanasios-Ilias Rousinopoulos and Jos Poortvliet.

License: GFDL 1.2

”

Google Summer of Code▲▼

“

Ratan Sebastian: GSOC 2011: ssc - Week 2

In terms of user functionality, searching for software, templates, appliances and packages has been implemented this week. The actual api calls are performed by handler classes like SSC::Handler::Appliance which exposes public methods like list, show, repositories and installed_software. I’m trying to follow a template that allows any command of the type ssc to map directly to Class#action(arguments) with minimum modification along the way. The command line arguments (—option value) are parsed into an options hash that keeps getting passed down the stack and used as necessary. Right now I’m not happy about exposing data that is unnecessary for certain functions via this hash but it makes sense to have the checking of data in the handler action rather than at the top level which makes that inevitable.

There’s been some abstraction and refactoring to make way for having the .sscrc file what will hold the appliance configuration in the appliance directory. Right now there isn’t a lot of validation of options and the parser merely merges options from .sscrc and the command line to pass into the various handlers.

One tiny useful takeaway from this week has been learning about the Method class. Its very useful in meta-programming. For instance when calling methods with the Class#send method it would be useful to make sure that you’re passing the correct number of arguments. The Method#arity method can be used to check the number of arguments that a method takes before passing arguments to it.

Next week I’m going to be focusing on the structure of the appliance directory and handling those commands that work locally.

”

“

  [Manu Gupta:
    SaX3 – GSoC 2011 – Work Report](//sysbytes.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/sax3-gsoc-2011-work-report/)

This week I worked on SaX3 internal UI architecture, offcourse we will be using libyui but we wanted to make it as flexible as possible so that the UI Library can be replaced by anybody and still keep SaX usable, for that we implemented the factory pattern and most of the code was working. Finally, we have something working and the screenshots below show that SaX3 is working in graphical mode and ncurses mode.

I am adding screenshots of the launcher that will launch various configuration modules such as keyboard, mouse, graphic card etc etc . Also this is just a start and by the time I present my next report I week, this will be much cleaner and you can play around more with it. Right now it does not do anything so dont get surprised.

Source code can be found at github.com/manugupt1/sax3 The working branch is newui1.

cmake is a bit messy, I will update it in the following week and a bit of other clean up tasks and try some other stuff like localisation in it.

”

“

  [N.B.Prashanth: GsoC
    Report – 1](//nbprashanth.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/gsoc-report/)

This is my GsoC report for the first two weeks (May 23 – June 04). Iwill also in brief state the goals of the project and the future plans.My project for this years GsoC is “Separating libYUI” for the OpenSUSEorganization. My mentor for the project is Martin Vidner and theabstract can be found at: //www.google-melange.com/gsoc/project/google/gsoc2011/nbprashanth/22003

Let me begin by laying out the main goals of this project. The projectaims to:

1. Separate YUI from the YaST framework.

2. Port YUI to other major Operating Systems such as Ubuntu and Fedora.

3. Remove the libzypp dependency for the gtk pluging and hence making YUI SUSE-independent.

4. Improve documentation with doxygen.

5. Provide small tutorials.

6. To provide a large and non-trivial example to show the capability of YUI.

The work done so far is listed below :

1. libYUI has been successfully compiled on Ubuntu 11.04 and Fedora 15.

2. Initial packages for libYUI along with ncurses and Qt plugins havebeen made. They are available in my gitorious account: gitorious.org/libyui

3. Small scale examples are being added to this blog. I will try tomaintain a weekly schedule.

4. Currently, I am trying to eliminate the libzypp dependency for the Gtk plugin. This is important as libzypp is highly OpenSUSEcentric.

5. The packages are currently in the testing phase. So all interestedpeople, please feel free to test and post any bugs you may find in thecomments section. Please note, this is an initial version.

6. Patches have been made for small bugs like “long long” warnings andenumeration ending with a ‘,’. More serious bugs, if reported will betended to when encountered.

Another important change that I would like to implement is the use of auniform build system. Currently, some parts use CMake while others useautotools. Though this does not make much of a difference to the outsideworld, I think it will be easier for developers and porters in the longrun. But this will be done later on unless there is an urgent need forit.

Since my end semester exams ended on May 27th, no work was done duringthe first week of GsoC. Hence, this can be regarded as a summary of mywork for the second week (May 29 – June 04). Also, please note that Iwill maintain weekly reports on the blog henceforth.

Please feel free to add comments and suggestions below.

”

“

Jos Poortvliet: GSOC mentoring

Dave Neary has written an interesting blogpost on ‘effective mentoring’.

If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing (it’s big, yes) I can give you some highlights on common issues that make mentoring less effective:

• communication. Apprentices often expect their mentor to check in, the mentor expects apprentices to ask questions if they have any. This means it is a wise thing to contact your apprentice and:

  • ask how it is going, if they need any help

  • tell them they have to be pro-active: ask questions and give you reports. Just to correct their perception if they expected YOU to ask them! Make clear it has to be pull from their side, it won’t be push from yours. Their GSOC project is their responsibility.

• Mentoring doesn’t stop in August: realize YOU are the friendly face to the project for the student/apprentice. Please be prepared to keep talking to the students and help them, even (especially!) if GSOC is over! And tell them so.

• Regular meeting are really important. Have a weekly IRC chat and just talk. Both about personal things (get to know each other!) and about the project.

• And please tell the students to help each other and others. That is both a learning experience for them, AND they understand others who are new better than anyone!

If you have questions, please ask on the mentor mailinglist, not only on IRC. Others can learn from the answers. Others here includes me, btw, I love to know what issues you bump into!

Good luck mentoring and remember, we want the students to STAY, not just fire some code at us and go again ;-)

”

“

Justine Leng: [Seeking Feedback] OBS mobile: project / package page makeover

In this post, I would like to discuss some ideas I’ve had on improving the project / package view pages in the OBS mobile client, and seek users’ feedback. (Please also take a look at my proposal on the request page makeover.)

On the OBS mobile client’s homepage, the “List of All Projects” displays as follows:

”

“

Alex Eftimie: PackageKit backend for Software Center: week 2 report

A week of fail and win has almost ended.

On the fail part, I had a hard time building pygobject, gobject-introspection and glib from git.gnome.org. At first I’ve trying pulling from git, configuring and building, without luck. Then I switched to jhbuild, which after a few sanitychecks, bootstraps and configuration, worked; a day after I found that I’m on the stable branch (-2-28/gnome-3) which wasn’t good enough for my aim at patching master, and have switched branches to master, trying build -n. Of course it didn’t work until I hacked PKG_CONFIG_PATH to include paths such as /usr/share/pkgconfig, /usr/lib/pkgconfig and /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pkgconfig – with help from walters on #introspection. This week my hard drive was about to die – because of a bug in the kernel driver for ata, it was reset every 30 seconds, causing everything to freeze. Different liveCDs have failed, the symptoms were ambigous and hard to reproduce – almost an entire day of fun.

On the win side, I figured out the hdd problem, and locked the kernel version to 2.6.38-9 for now. Hacked pygobject, posted patch in bugzilla B-), I’m one step further into making packagekit python bindings work; also I used the remaining time to push forward some more preparation refactor on software-center.

I have also updated the GSoC timeline – I’ll try to keep it up to date.

For the next week, same objectives remain.

PS: If you’re a python hacker and feel like helping out , please check this bug report out.

”

“

Christos Bountalis: A utility for merging configuration / sysconfig files – Week 3 Report

This my regular weekly post on my GSoC project. Even though this week I had to give my last exams for my bachelor degree and some days of the week I had to spent them on reading, I did some progress on the actual project. First of all, I created my first patch for Augeas, yes this is my first patch not for this particular project, but in general. Every week I found my self, reading learning and carrying out new things, this is the coolest and most exciting thing in the GSoC experience until now. (…)

”

“

Marcus Hüwe: [gsoc] summary of week 3

here’s a small summary of the 3rd (coding) week. This week I spent most of my time with developing the remote model classes. The goal was to put most of the code into a base class from which all remote models will be derived (if you’re interested how it works have a look at it). So far we have classes for:

• a remote project (RemoteProject – manages project metadata)

• a remote package (RemotePackage – manages package metadata)

• a request (Request)

TODO for this week:

• add exception handling to the httprequest.py module

• add a RemoteFile class which can be used to access a remote file

like a buildlog, prjconf or a source file

• add a BuildResult class:

• get the build results for a project or package

• get the buildlog of a package

• get the binary/binaries from the api

”

Status Updates▲▼

Distribution

“

    [Frédéric
      Crozat: The road to systemd for openSUSE 12.1](//blog.crozat.net/2011/06/road-to-systemd-for-opensuse-121.html)

systemd is coming for next openSUSE (12.1) scheduled next fall.

I’ll help for systemd integration in openSUSE Factory and will act as an interface between you (openSUSE testers, packagers, developers) and systemd upstream.

As you might guess, switching boot manager is not a trivial task and issues will be found. So, we want to have as much feedback and testing as possible, to try to tackle as much (if not all) issues in time for 12.1. (…)

”

Important Links

• Detailed Bugzilla Report

• Submitting Bug Reports

• Bug Reporting FAQ

Team Reports

Build Service Team

Build Service Statistics. Statistics can found at Buildservice

GNOME Team

“

      [Dominique Leuenberger: Libproxy 0.4.7 released](//dominique.leuenberger.net/blog/2011/06/libproxy-0-4-7-released/)

Today we released version 0.4.7 of libproxy. This version add support for Gnome 3 GSettings and bugfixes. Enjoy !

ChangeLog:

• Support/require xulrunner 2.0+

• Support linking againgst libwebkit-gtk3 (-DWITH_WEBKIT3=ON)

• Port to gsettings for gnome3. (-DWITH_GNOME3=ON[default])

• Issues closed:

  • #149: always test for the right python noarch module path

  • #155: Cannot compile with Firefox 4

  • #156: libproxy should build against webkitgtk-3.0

  • #158: Won’t compile w/ xulrunner 2.0 final

  • #159: libproxy fails with autoconfiguration “//proxy.domain.com”

  • #131: GSettings-based GNOME plugin

  • #150: SUSE sysconfig/proxy config support

Packages for opoenSUSE Factory are already in their works and have been submitted for inclusion. That means that we will finally get all the apps supporting libproxy read the gnome3 proxy settings for us again.

”

“

Nelson Marques: A few more things working…

A few days ago there was a new release of Unity 2D which fixed a few things, starting with the AppMenu integration. It’s finally working with the previous packages. A few updates have also happened, just to mention a few:

• libzeitgeist was updated to version 0.3.10;

• zeitgeist-datahub was updated to version 0.7.0;

• ubuntu-mono-icon-theme package was added;

• light-themes package was added (includes Ambiance and Radiance);

• unity-asset-pool package was added (includes unity-icon-theme and some unity artwork which is required);

Adittionally during this weekend I’m working on the Ayatana Scrollbar which seems to be a pleasant feature that Canonical has created.

”

KDE Team

“

      [Cornelius Schumacher: More Polka, please](//linux42.org/stories/More+Polka,+please?id=14358)

After blogging about Polka, my experiment with a radically new take on an address book, I got a lot of great feedback. I appreciate all the comments, questions, and encouragement. Two people made me particularly happy, as they not only sent feedback, but also contributed some welcome work. Sascha Manns built packages, and Saleel Velankar created a beautiful logo. Free software rocks.

”

“

      [Sebastian Kügler: There is no KDE5](//vizzzion.org/blog/2011/06/there-is-no-kde5/)

…and in retrospect, adding to the confusion, there is not even a KDE4. cue puzzled faces

Let me explain this. About 1.5 years ago, we’ve repositioned the brand “KDE” to reflect how our community is structured. In short, KDE is the community (unversioned :-)), the workspaces are called Plasma Desktop, Plasma Netbook, etc. Then we have the KDE development platform. In the future we will be referring to these as the KDE Frameworks, since that communicates more accurately the results of the ongoing process of modularisation. And then we have of course the KDE Applications, which all have their own names or brands.

In essence, this means there is no KDE 5, and there will never be. During the sprint here in Randa, we’ve spent a lot of thinking about the future of the KDE Frameworks, and we will be forthcoming with plans to further modularize these frameworks, which consist of what’s currently found in the kdelibs, kdesupport, kdepimlibs, kde-runtime and kdepim-runtime modules. We’re already working on turning our meeting notes, minutes and results into something digestable and understandable, so stay tuned.

”

Medical Team

“

      [Rousinopoulos Athanasios-Ilias: Announcement of openSUSE Medical 11.4- No2](h//zoumpis.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/announcement-of-opensuse-medical-11-4-no2/)

1. What is openSUSE Medical Project?

The openSUSE Medical project supports the use of openSUSE in doctor’s practices and other clinical environments. We try to collect and update software. As base for packaging we use: List of Open Source Healthcare Software List. After we have packaged enough software we will try to create an openSUSE based Distribution out of it.

1. Where can i find more info about the project?

//en.opensuse.org/Portal:Medical

1. What’s new in this release?

openSUSE 11.4 Repositories :

* openSUSE 11.4 Updates remove

* openSUSE 11.4 OSS,

* education 11.4,

* Nvidia 11.4,

* Libre Office Stable 11.4,

* 11.4 Wireless,

* Medical 11.4,

* non-ossd

1. New features that will impress you!

2. Where can i download it ?

//susegallery.com/a/UbPYJM/opensuse-medical-114

Also available at : OVF image , VMware Image , Live CD/DVD

1. Ok , i would like to make some comments or contribute in the project , what do i have to do?

Comments are great, you can sent us with an Email to:opensuse-medical@opensuse.org.

If this don’t run directly, then you must subscribe the List (mail to opensuse-medical+subscribe@opensuse.org).

Feel free to express your opinion!

”

openFATE Team

Top voted Features

“

        [decouple download and installation (Score: 354)](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: 186)](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?

”

“

        [Update to GRUB v2 (Score: 131)](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: 102)](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.

“

        [Linux administrative toolkit](https://features.opensuse.org/312475)

Create Linux administrative toolkit to provide multiple distribution administrative tool. This set should contains cli, cui and gui tools.

Also prepare documentation of usability to help creating similar tools.

Also add metapackage to install each tool from this set.

”

“

        [automatic daily fstrim for SSD](https://features.opensuse.org/312476)

As SSD are becoming more affordable they are also becoming more widespread on laptop and desktop computer. Modern SSD supports the TRIM functionality. This functionality delays costly erase operation to speed up performance ; these erase operations are then executed by batch (this is SSD equivalent to defragmentation).

SSD can only run at their full potential if this functionality is also supported by kernel and/or userland on the OS. Sadly TRIM support by kernel is not optimal yet. Erase operation are not launched automaticaly and this impacts overall SSD performance.

A cron script written at setup phase could launch fstrim program each night; this program performs the erase operation needed not to struggle the SSD.

”

“

        [Search for GUI applications in YaST](https://features.opensuse.org/312489)

Now YaST allow to see mixed packages: applications, libraries, extentions for programs… For new users it would be very friedly interface, wich has feature to filter only Applications (programs with GUI). Process of filtering could be based on searching for /usr/share/applications/*.desktop in RPM.

(Maybe additionally: extract icons, related to *.desktop files)

”

“

        [Explicit IPv6 support for YaST printer module](https://features.opensuse.org/312491)

Currently there is not any kind of special IPv6 support in yast2-printer. Currently IPv6 works only where it is compatible to IPv4 but there are cases where IPv6 needs special handling: For example the tests whether or not a remote host is accessible run “ping IP-address or hostname” which fails if IP-address is an IPv6 address because for IPv6 ping6 must be used. See Bug #697833

Unfortunately ping6 cannot be used for IPv4 addresses so that yast2-printer needs to implement special distinction of cases in particular if a hostname is given depending on whether or not this hostname has an IPv4 or IPv6 address or both.

Probably there are some more special distinction of cases needed to distinguish between IPv4 and IPv6 stuff.

”

Feature Statistics

Statistics for openSUSE distribution in openFATE

Testing Team

“

      [Larry
        Finger: Weekly News for June 11 ](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-testing/2011-06/msg00011.html)

The Testing Core Team held an IRC meeting at 17:00 UTC, June 6 on our usual channel.

We first discussed our experiences with 12.1-MS1. The KDE Live CD has the login problem (Bug #687781) and is nearly unusable. The bug report lists some workarounds. I used the Gnome Live CD for the initial install. When I added the KDE Desktop to that configuration, I could then log into the KDE desktop normally.

Next, we discussed what might be changed to increase testing participation so that the workload might be diversified. We think there is increased testing with the RC1-2 releases, but many of the bugs reported at this stage are not fixed by the time that the Gold Master is frozen. We realize that there is little opportunity to stretch the timing of the release schedule, thus we need to attract users at an earlier stage. As some testers might be reluctant to try the Milestone releases, we are proposing that MS6 be relabeled as a “Beta”. We would then have MS1-5, Beta, and RC1-2 as the stages. The relative timing of the steps would be the same, only that one stage would be renamed.

Our next IRC meeting will be on June 27, 2011 at 17:00 UTC when we hope to be discussing MS2.

”

Translation Team

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

• Trunk Top-List – Localization Guide

In the Community▲▼

Postings from the Community

“

    [Jos
      Poortvliet: Strategy voting has started!](//blog.jospoortvliet.com/2011/06/strategy-voting-has-started.html)

Awesomeness!!! Yup - we’ve got a strategy proposal under vote. Sorry it took so long. Everyone, both from the board and the strategy team, has been busy with the openSUSE 11.4 release and the upcoming openSUSE conference. But the board has asked Thomas Thym to get it out 2 weeks ago and he asked me to create a openSUSE Members poll (he’s not a member yet). And I did. So if you’re an openSUSE member, go to connect.opensuse.org and cast your vote!

Meaning

I’ve blogged before about what this strategy is and isn’t about but I’d like to re-iterate it one more time.

No, it’s not about finding a perfect description of all of us. We’re way too diverse for that to ever work. It also isn’t about carefully describing a grand, detailed plan for what we will do. We don’t tell our contributors what they can and can’t work on. And it’s not about writing a sexy and engaging text. The marketing team will do the marketing texts, this is too much based on compromise for that to be possible.

It is about having a reasonably accurate description of who we are, what we want and where we stand.

Yes, it does say some things about where we might not want to go or where we focus. That is because the majority of us focuses on certain things and doesn’t care about other things. IF someone wants to take those things on, change that focus, fine. But they have to be prepared to do a LOT of work and get little support. In a sense, this ‘strategy’ can tell people they should join openSUSE because we are the perfect community to do what they want. Or not…

Now surely we can and will revise it in the future, but in small steps. We’ll update it if people start doing cool new stuff, for example. We already had to add Tumbleweed and Evergreen! And if enough people want to work on mobile devices, ARM or other stuff - well, we just do it and then change our ‘strategy’.

So, now go to connect.opensuse.org and cast your vote!

Green Picture in the Article

On the green “I want you” picture on news.opensuse.org: I got it off the web and used Krita to make it green. I know, Krita is meant as an artist tool, a painting app. Wrong tool for the job. I just didn’t think about using the Gimp… Actually, on my laptop I usually use Showfoto for these things which is far superior to both for basic photo manipulation. Forgot to use that too. Yes, right tool for the job isn’t always high on my agenda, hehe.

The image in the previous Milestone 1 article WAS made with the right tool: Krita again. Just 5 minutes with the right brushes and layers and it’s awesome… Obviously, this is NOT a serious proposal for openSUSE 12.1 artwork.

License: CC-BY-SA

”

Events & Meetings

Past

• June 06, 2011 : Testing Core Team Meeting

Upcoming

• June 15, 2011 : Project Meeting

• June 21, 2011 : openSUSE Marketing Team Meeting

• June 29, 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 podcast in German. You can hear it or download it on //saigkill.homelinux.net/podcasts.

From Ambassadors

“

    [Greek openSUSE Ambassadors: Report from EL/LAK Conference (Thessaloniki)](//opensuseambassadors.blogspot.com/2011/06/report-from-ellak-conference.html)

Report from EL/LAK dConference (Thessaloniki,Greece,22/05/2011)

As an openSUSE Ambassador, I ‘m very happy toreport for another time what took place in the conference.

So the conference lasted 1 day

The Day : Booth and Presentation

We set up the booth as an openSUSE Community. All the related stuff (about Medical and openSUSE) was available around the booth. Furthermore me and Stathis Iosifidis informed people about the openSUSE Project and openSUSE Medical Project as well as the applications which are available via the openSUSE Medical Distro. Efstathios Agrapidis also made an introductory presentation about OBS. The presentation rolled out smoothly. Although there wasn’t enough time to answer questions, the audience showed their interest by coming later to the booth asking for more details; not only about the platform and the infrastracture itself, but also about packaging generally. (…)

”

Communication

• The Mailinglists

• The openSUSE Forums

Contributors

• openSUSE Connect

New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE▲▼

“

Sascha Manns: Skrooge 0.9.0 available for openSUSE

Just now i’m finished the last things for the skrooge package and made the update to 0.9.0. (…)

”

Games Corner▲▼

The Section provides the Game of the Week, and Updates in the Game Repository

“

  [Nelson Marques: World of Warcraft in openSUSE 11.4 – awesome experience!](//www.marques.so/2011/06/world-of-warcraft-in-opensuse-11-4-awesome-experience/)

With the long summer nights ahead I’ve decided to enable my subscription of World of Warcraft and update it to Cataclysm. World of Warcraft classic was awesome, and I’ve seen my best days as a player during The Burning Crusade… the Wrath of the Lich Kingýexpansionýsucked and I like to dub it as a ‘beggarsýexpansion’… where casuals could have some fancy epic gear even without knowing how to play!

The first requirement for World of Warcraft under Linux is wine… This is one of the best things in openSUSE, the wine builds done by Marcus Meissner which live under the Emulators:Wine repository. To install this repository in openSUSE 11.4, the easy way:

1. Install the Repository and change it’s priority (we want to have this with higher priority than openSUSE normal repositories (default is 99 for openSUSE repositories, and the lower the number the higher the priority is):

zypper ar -f //download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine/openSUSE_11.4/ Wine

zypper mr -p 75 -r Wine

1. Install Wine (we also want wine-gecko):

zypper install wine wine-gecko

1. I had World of Warcraft installed on a windows partition on my PC hard-drive, and since I don’t really care to download the awesome 21GB’s again, I’ve decided to use that installation. At first I had my drive auto-mounted through fstab, which generated a few issues (login always failed). As explained here, I’ve made the necessary changes mounting the drive and now it works fine.

2. Running through wine (I’ve made a small shell script for this). It is imperative that we run the game with the -opengl switch :

#!/bin/sh

WoW_INSTALL=”/mnt/windows/World of Warcraft/” BINARY=”Wow.exe” ARGS=”-opengl”

cd $WOW_INSTALL && wine $BINARY $ARGS

The game runs fine, the biggest improvement I saw was the drop of latency values, from 130/140 in Windows to 66/70 in Linux, while the FPS values are pretty much the same. Everything works and I look forward to level this char fast enough to see some cool 25 men Raids in Linux!

”

“

Techsource/Jun Auza: 3 Ways to Play Windows Games on Linux

We’ve already ranted a lot about the sorry state of gaming on Linux. However, we were also kind enough to tell you some of the best paid games for Linux. Many of the games were indie games, which are great for casual gamers expecting to kill some time. But, if you are a hardcore gamer who dual boots to Windows solely for the purpose of playing games, there are some nice ways in which you could stop yourself from hitting that dreaded reboot button. (…)

”

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.

“

  [SUSE Security Announcement: SUSE-SU-2011:0608-1: important: bind](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2011-06/msg00000.html)

”

“

  [SUSE Security Announcement: SUSE-SU-2011:0614-1: important: flash-player](//lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2011-06/msg00001.html)

”

Kernel Review▲▼

“

  [Linus Torvalds: Linux
    3.0-rc2](//article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1150660)

You all know the drill by now: another week, another -rc. It’s been reasonably quiet, although the btrfs update is bigger than I was hoping for. Other than that, it’s mostly driver fixes, some ubifs updates too, and a few reverts for the early regressions. But -rc2 is already small enough that it easily fits as an appended shortlog, and hopefully things will stay calm. Of course, part of that may be due to other people also havin been busy traveling, so let’s see (and hope for the best). And I haven’t been super-eager to pull, so there is a couple of pending requests still in my mail queue.

”

“

h-online/Thorsten Leemhuis: Kernel Log: Coming in 3.0 (Part 1) - Networking

A Just-in-Time compiler promises to provide fast network packet filtering. The Wi-Fi stack now supports the Wake-on-Wireless-LAN standard, and unprivileged users are allowed to “ping”. New and improved drivers enhance the kernel’s support of network components by Ralink and Realtek.

At the beginning of the week, Linus Torvalds issued the second release candidate of Linux 3.0. After a rather surprising version jump from 2.6.39 to 3.0, RC2 has internally presented itself as another Linux 3.0.0 release candidate for reasons of compatibility, although the eventual kernel is to be called 3.0. In his release email for RC2, Torvalds writes that things have been reasonably quiet, although a Btrfs update was bigger than he had hoped; “hopefully things will stay calm”, he continued.

As scheduled, most of the changes for the next major kernel revision were incorporated into the main development branch of Linux during the merge window. As only corrections and minor improvements are likely to be incorporated from now on, the Kernel Log is already in a position to provide a comprehensive overview of the most important advancements of Linux 3.0, which is expected to be completed near the middle or end of July.

Several articles in the “Coming in 3.0” series will gradually cover the kernel’s various functional areas. The first part in this mini series follows below and describes the most important changes to the network stack and the drivers that are based on it. Over the coming weeks, further articles will discuss the kernel’s graphics drivers, storage support, file systems, architecture code, infrastructure and other hardware drivers. (…)

”

“

Rares Aioanei: kernel weekly news – 11.06.2011

Rares Aioanei gives a short Overview about the Kernel changes.

”

Tips and Tricks▲▼

For Desktop Users

“

    [Linuxaria: Ekiga and SIP to replace Skype](//linuxaria.com/article/ekiga-sip-skype)

In a former article I’ve talked about the XMPP:Jingle protocol to find a good replacement for Skype.

Some people asked me about Ekiga, is this a good software or not ? and how you can use it ?

Ekiga (formely known as GnomeMeeting) is an open source SoftPhone, Video Conferencing and Instant Messenger application over the Internet.It supports HD sound quality and video up to DVD size and quality.It is interoperable with many other standard compliant softwares, hardwares and service providers as it uses both the major telephony standards (SIP and H.323). (…)

”

For Commandline/Script Newbies

“

    [Linuxaria: 5 grep like commands](//linuxaria.com/howto/5-grep-like-commands?lang=en)

Everyone knows (and loves) grep, I’ve also wrote an article on it, but today we’ll see other small utility that have some things in common with it.

In particular I’ll show you: pgrep, grepcidr, ngrep, pdfgrep and taggrepper.

All are command line tools to be used with your favorite shell, I’ll show you some example for every command. (…)

License: CC BY-SA 3.0

”

For Developers and Programmers

“

    [Dominique Leuenberger: GObject Introspection based typelib Provides and Requires](//dominique.leuenberger.net/blog/2011/06/gobject-introspection-based-typelib-provides-and-requires/)

In a constant battle to improve the quality of the packages provided by the openSUSE GNOME Team, we have been working hard on additional automatism in adding Provides and Requires symbols to our packages. This will make it less common to be able to install a package without the needed libraries. (…)

”

“

    [Justine Leng: Create my first demo app with jQuery Mobile Alpha 4](//obsforandroid.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/create-my-first-demo-app-with-jquery-mobile-alpha-4-rails-3/)

The promising jQuery Mobile project is now in its first Alpha 4.1 release! What better time to give it a spin with our (err… my) favorite web framework?! The principle if simple: you include jQuery Mobile on the page, format your markup to conform to its requirements and reap the benefits. Yay, let’s write a (very contrived) CRUD application with Rails 3 and jQuery Mobile! (…)

”

For System Administrators

“

    [Pavol Rusnak: PS1 tricks](//stick.gk2.sk/blog/2011/06/ps1-tricks/)

Many of you know already about this feature, but some of you don’t so I wanted to share it with you. I just changed mine PS1 configuration in ~/.bashrc to look like this:

export GIT_PS1_SHOWDIRTYSTATE=1 export GIT_PS1_SHOWSTASHSTATE=1 export GIT_PS1_SHOWUNTRACKEDFILES=1 export PS1=’[\033[1;37m][[\033[1;32m]\u[\033[0m]@\h[\033[0m] $? [\033[1;34m]\w[\033[0;35m]$(__git_ps1 “ %s”)[\033[1;37m]][\033[0m] ‘

Take a look at the following picture to see how it works:

or check the video on youtube.

The number between user@host and the current working directory is the exit status of the most recently executed command (or pipeline). This is great because you don’t have to type echo $? everytime you want to find it out. The __git_ps1 magic will print git branch name if you are inside of the git repository. Furthermore it will add special characters indicating the state of the repo: % – untracked files present, + – new files added, * – some tracked files changed, $ – there is something in the stash (see git stash –help). Pretty cool, right?

License: CC-BY-NC-ND

”

“

    [EveryDayLHT: Undelete Files on an ext3 or ext4 File System](//everydaylht.com/howtos/system-administration/undelete-files-on-an-ext3-or-ext4-file-system/)

So you’ve been futzing round in the file system, and been over vigorous with the rm command and deleted a crucial file that you or (more scarily) a significant other, can’t live without. What to do? After that initial hot flush has died down, you must be calm, and work fast. You have three options: (…)

”

“

    [BeginLinux: Using and Understanding IPv6 on openSUSE 11](//beginlinux.com/desktop/opensuse/using-and-understanding-ipv6-on-opensuse-11)

So IPv6 has been around a while now but do we know any benefits? We may know that it is 128bits long and too difficult to type but if that is all then we do ourselves a little injustice in not knowing how easy IPv6 can make our lives. So let us take a look at some of the automation features of IPv6 including auto-address assignment, router discovery and why we do not need a broadcast address. (…)

”

Planet SUSE▲▼

“

  [Alex Eftimie: PackageKit backend for Software Center: week 1 report](//alex.eftimie.ro/2011/06/04/packagekit-backend-for-software-center-week-1-report/)

This week was a good week for coding, and the best part about it: most of my changes are now in s-c’s upstream trunk.

I started out trying to populate s-c database with only a few applications; this meant updating the update-software-center tool, and also changing some bits on the database update module. I was glad to discover that some functionality I have planned to develop in week 6 (parsing AppStream app-data xmls) was already there, thus making my job easier :-) (…)

”

“

Mikolaj Siuda: Sonar color scheme for KDE

I always thought why GNOME in openSUSE has (and had) green theme(Sonar), while KDE sticks with default color scheme, which isn’t bad, but…We could also change it to integrate with the openSUSE style.I made a quick Sonar color scheme and here is what it looks like:

You can find my Sonar color scheme here: //pastebin.com/BiapkPxn . Save it as “Sonar.colors” and import in “System settings”. I know that it isn’t perfect, but it matches original pretty good (you can see Gimp in the screnshot).Hope you like it!

”

“

Jos Poortvliet: On the value of contributing opinions

I recently read a mail on the KDE core-devel mailinglist by Eike Hein. It was quite a good description of the value of opinions and ideas for a FOSS project - something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately. What is the value of an idea, suggestion or opinion? That is a much harder question to answer than it might seem. Free Software projects solicit user feedback in a variety of ways. For example via a bug tracker or comments on announcements. Users are sometimes asked to participate in mailing lists or on forums. Interestingly, both users and developers often complain about the process and results. Users feel they are not heard, developers say the comments are unfriendly, de-motivating or useless. In Eike’s case, he commented that the user was

“

sort of implying that the current placement of things in workspace isn’t already the result of a thought and decision process, while not actually having done your homework yet on what the purpose of the components in question is

”

So, he felt attacked a bit - the user makes it seem like the developers just did something at random. And the user didn’t bother to inform himself, so the comments aren’t useful either. (…)

”

openSUSE Forums▲▼

“

An overview of functionality

”

“

  [Articles](//forums.opensuse.org/content/)



  The title covers it. We already had our FAQ, New User HOWTO FAQ and some other subforums with limited posting access for members, to collect and present general information on openSUSE installation and usage, graphic card drivers etc. Now we have the option to promote these to Article. Check it out, the first ones are there, categorized and all.

”

“

  [Forum](//forums.opensuse.org/forum.php)



  This is the former landing page of //forums.opensuse.org. An overview of the international forums, and the language specific subforums -we currently serve Nederlands (Dutch), Français (French), Deutsch (German), Ελληνικό (Greek), Magyar (Hungarian), 日本語 (Japanese), Portuguese (Portuguese), Pусский (Russian) under the big openSUSE Forums umbrella, plus links to the עִברִית (Hebrew) and Español (Spanish) ones. Other languages are under contstruction, awaiting setup etc.

”

“

  [Blogs](//forums.opensuse.org/blogs/)



  Another new piece of functionality is the Blogs section. A couple of entries have already been made, the Forums Team is still discussing to whom it will be open to post. Team member @malcolmlewis is presenting a package-of-the-day as a structural entry. others are still searching for a good modus to post in a blog style. 

”

“

[New](//forums.opensuse.org/search.php?do=getnew&contenttype=vBForum_Post)



  This one was already there before the new items. It gives the regular visitor a list of recent threads and posts, from the international as well as the language specific subforums. A very nice tool, for those members who want to help out.

Remember: any issue, problem you may meet using openSUSE has probably hit others too. Always check the forums to see if a solution for the issue, problem, is not already available. Enjoy the forums like you enjoy your distro

”

On the Web▲▼

Announcements

“

    [Free Software Foundation/Brett Smith: Two new projects can help free software replace Skype](//www.fsf.org/blogs/community/skype-replacement-projects)

Skype has been in the news a lot lately: Microsoft agreed to buy the company, their network has gone down twice recently, and they’re threatening to take unspecified action against developers who try to write free software to make calls on their system. This all merely adds insult to injury; the software has always been nonfree, and that’s why a free software replacement for Skype has been on our High Priority Projects list since October 2008. Lots of people use software like Ekiga and Twinkle to make simple VoIP calls, but they’re still missing some features, and that prevents people from making the switch to using free software. Thankfully, a couple of new projects aim to close this gap, and both have made some promising progress over the last month.

GNU Free Call wants to help people easily connect with each other without relying on any one centralized network. To do that, they’re creating a peer-to-peer calling network, along with client software for traditional desktop computers and mobile devices. The project recently released stable call server software, GNU SIP Witch 1.0, and now the team is beginning to focus its efforts on building the client software.

WebRTC is coordinating an effort to let people call each other and hold videoconferences just by visiting a Web site. If they’re successful, Web developers will be able to add these features to their sites just by using some relatively simple JavaScript code. Even better, the audio and video codecs WebRTC uses have free software implementations, and come with patent licenses that offer legal protection to users and developers. This project is still in its early stages; right now, the effort is focused on adding the necessary support to different browsers.

If either of these projects interests you, they could both benefit from your help. The GNU Telephony wiki suggests several ways you can get involved with the GNU Free Call project. Since WebRTC is focused on browser support right now, the best way to contribute is to get it integrated with your favorite free browser, like GNU IceCat or others based on Firefox. Both projects offer a great opportunity to get involved and help important work in the free software community.

License: CC-BY-ND

”

“

    [The Linux Foundation Announces New Linux Training Scholarships, Student Day at LinuxCon](//www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2011/06/linux-foundation-announces-new-linux-training-scholarships-student-)

SAN FRANCISCO, June 7, 2011 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced its new Linux Training Scholarship Program and Linux Learners’ Student Day.

The Student Day will take place at LinuxCon in Vancouver, B.C. on August 16, 2011 and includes transportation on the “LinuxCon or Bust” bus for students and faculty traveling from Corvallis and Portland, Ore.

Both programs are aimed at training the next-generation of Linux developers as Linux approaches its 20th anniversary. (…)

”

“

    [Linux Certification/Mark Matthews: Free Creative Commons LPI Level 1 Linux Training Manual Released](//www.linuxcertification.co.za/linux-system-administration-training-manual)

Last year (2010), in August, I was engaged as one of the authors to write the recently released, “Linux System Administration, LPI Certification Level 1” manual. The training manual has been released under a creative commons license and is free for users to redsitribute and use.

Besides myself the other authors were Chris Brown, author of the O’Reilly book “Suse Linux” and Brian Ssennoga a system administrator from Uganda. The book was officially launched at the recent e-learning conference held in Tanzania. (…)

”

Reports

“

    [ Novell's open source legacy – wake up, little SuSE! ](//www.h-online.com/open/features/Novell-s-open-source-legacy-wake-up-little-SuSE-1254835.html)

Novell’s unrequited romance with Linux and free software is over. Having completed its$2.2 billion takeover, Attachmate is dividing the spoils. Novell and its legacy networking business will survive in Utah. NetIQ will inherit Novell’s identity and security management solutions, and SUSE has been given autonomy and control of Novell’s open source projects from its base in Nuremberg.

Mono has been cast adrift, and the worst aspects of Novell’s attempt to sell off a large part of its patent portfolio to a consortium led by Microsoft have been scuppered by the US Department of Justice and the German Federal Cartel Office. But there are still questions left to answer. (…)

”

“

    [ Linux Journal/Susan Linton: The Open Source Office Software Sector Heats Up](//www.linuxjournal.com/content/open-source-office-software-sector-heats)

The world of LibreOffice and OpenOffice(.org) has been heating up recently with several exciting and, at times, bewildering developments. The Document Foundation remains very active as is LibreOffice development, but Oracle has given up on OpenOffice and slapped LibreOffice in the face by giving it to Apache. Perhaps the most important announcement was the release of LibreOffice 3.4.0.

The recent release of LibreOffice 3.4 demonstrates the very philosophical differences in community projects and those stifled by commercial interests. LibreOffice development has been happening at an unprecedented pace while OpenOffice lagged behind and lost many of its previous users. Even under Sun development was tightly controlled, but Oracle increased the bonds. In contrast, according to the release announcement, LibreOffice now has 120 happy developers committing approximately 20 changes per day. Cedric Bosdonnat puts the number of contributors at 223. Italo Vignoli is quoted as saying, “We care for our developers, and it shows.”

Just before LibreOffice 3.4 was released Oracle announced that it was donating OpenOffice to the Apache Software Foundation. Pundit have speculated all around the spectrum of how that will affect the office suite with some thinking it will certainly benefit while others think it will most likely wane even further. The Document Foundation expressed disappointment that a reunification of the two projects will probably not occur but offered their best wishes for OpenOffice. They were upbeat about including OpenOffice code since the Apache license is compatible with the GNU Lesser General Public License under which LibreOffice is released. Given these facts, “the event is neutral for The Document Foundation.” (…)

”

Reviews and Essays

“

    [Justine Leng: A close look at jQuery Mobile](//obsforandroid.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/a-close-look-at-jquery-mobile/)

An early Alpha of the jQuery Mobile library was released late last year. A couple of months ago, jQuery Mobile 1.0 Alpha 4.1 came out. Given the popularity of the jQuery library for traditional desktop web development, most web developers may be very excited about its mobile releases. But what exactly is jQuery Mobile, and what are the cases in which you’d consider using it? (…)

”

“

    [Frank Karlitschek: Welcome to the cloud age, Apple](//blog.karlitschek.de/2011/06/yesterday-apple-announced-their-new.html)

Yesterday Apple announced their new internet service called iCloud. They finally have features which are essential for people who live in a connected world and have more than one device. I can’t help myself but to compare this features with the stuff we are doing in KDE with the ownCloud project since last year.

It seems that we support everything iCloud is doing and a bit more if you look into the feature set. And we have a fundamentally more advanced vision and architecture. (…)

”

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Credits▲▼

We thank for this Issue:

• Sascha Manns, Editor in Chief

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Acknowledgements▲▼

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Translations▲

openSUSE Weekly News is translated into many languages. Issue 179 is available in:

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First published on: //saigkill.homelinux.net