openSUSE Weekly News, Issue 195 is out with: Get your package in 12.1, Hackweek and Getting your Article in news.o.o

1. Oct 2011 | Sascha Manns | No License

We are pleased to announce our next openSUSE Weekly News 195.

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openSUSE Weekly News

### openSUSE Weekly News Team

195 Edition

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Published: 2011-10-01

Table of Contents

Announcements Hackweek VII Status Updates

Team Reports In the Community

Postings from the Community Events & Meetings openSUSE for your Ears Communication Contributors Security Updates Kernel Review Tips and Tricks

For Desktop Users For Commandline/Script Newbies For Developers and Programmers For System Administrators Planet SUSE On the Web

Call for participation Reports Reviews and Essays Feedback Credits Acknowledgements Copyrights

List of our Licenses Trademarks Translations

We are pleased to announce our 195 issue of the openSUSE Weekly News.

You can also read this issue in other formats here.

Enjoy reading :-)

Announcements▼

“

Get your package in Factory for 12.1!

The upcoming openSUSE 12.1 release is being developed in Factory. According to the release schedule the Toolchain and several other critical components are frozen, but there is still time to get most package updates in! It’s not hard to do that, especially if you build packages on the Open Build Service anyway and you get your software to be part of openSUSE! Read on to learn more. (…)

”

Hackweek VII▲▼

“

Cornelius Schumacher: SUSE hack week

Hack week. One week of ferocious hacking on new ideas without interruptions. SUSE does this twice a year to trigger those innovations, you can’t realize when you are swamped by day-to-day work. Of course it’s not the only way or opportunity to do new things, but it gives the freedom to actually get something done on a topic, which is not covered by conventional product planning. It’s productive, it’s fun, it creates great results.ýNext week it’s the seventh edition of hack week. We are collecting ideas and activities in openFATE.

”

“

Michal Ìihař: GePeS - another hacweek project

With no clear plans for Hackweek this year, I decided to play even more with N950. As I quite lack some GPS application I decided to write it :-). The feature set will be based on things I would use, though I still think it will be useful for others:

Display basic GPS info (coordinates, speed, etc.)
Compass
Moon and sun rise and set calculations for current location

I’ve named the application as GePeS and you can find sources on Gitorious: https://gitorious.org/gepes

During first day I’ve managed to implement basic things, check screenshots:

”

“

Alexander Naumov: openHackWeek 7

This week is special… and not for SUSE’s employees only, but also for the openSUSE community. A lot of ideas from the openFATE will be implemented on this week. What’s about myself? Well… as you know I don’t work for SUSE anymore. Now I work for company in Göttingen, which use GNU/Linux and Free Software in industry sector. Xplace provide open solutions, for example, at POS terminals in almost all European countries. (…)

”

Status Updates▲▼

Team Reports

Build Service Team

Build Service Statistics. Statistics can found at Buildservice

openFATE Team

Top voted Features

“

decouple download and installation (Score: 368)

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

”

“

Look at plymouth for splash during boot (Score: 191)

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?

”

“

1-click uninstall (Score: 165)

An easy way to remove Software! For example: you installed an application with “1-click install” (which will install all the packages that you need), there should be an easy way (also with 1 click) to remove what you have installed with that 1-click operation… in another words: an “1-click Uninstall” to remove installed software (dependencies and packages included).

”

“

Update to GRUB v2 (Score: 153)

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: 111)

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.

“

Opensuse 12.1 - integrate PulseAudio 1.0

Among the features of PulseAudio 1.0 is a D-Bus based control protocol, source output volumes, passthrough audio support, echo cancellation support, restored Windows support, and improved sample rate adaptation in the module-rtp-receive module.

”

“

make nfs-client setup in YaST to modify /etc/fstab

when setting up a NFS-Client in YaST, it does not modify the /etc/fstab. So it always throws an error message “shares cannot be mounted from /etc/fstab” after one has finished the setup of the shared folders.

So in the current state, the user has to modify the /etc/fstab manually. But when you set up the nfs client in YaST, you already have provided all information to the system and it could easily put all this into the /etc/fstab file.

So if we had such a function, even if it just was a checkbox “write to /etc/fstab” so that experienced users or the ones who want to do something advanced, have the choice not to modify /etc/fstab, this would be great.

”

“

make nfs-server and nfs-client setup in YaST themselves deal with the Firewall

when setting up a NFS Server or a NFS client, you can tick “open firewall port” That is really convinient. But there are also other services involved with NFS, which also require some modifications to the firewall.

As far as I understood (I do not have that much clue about all this), it is rpc.mountd and rpc.statd, which need to go through the firewall as well. So the normal user (like me) is not able to setup NFS at home, without switching off the firewall completely as it seems like that you can not force these two services to use ports, which you specify as open. Switching off the firewall completely is a workaround but it leaves a bitter taste, as it lowers the security.

So it would be cool, if YaST could take care of all services related to NFS in terms of firewall settings and also the settings coming from the NFS setup.

”

“

Transion to MariaDB as the default SQL server

Building on this feature from 11.3: Include MariaDB

https://features.opensuse.org/308937

Given the Oracle ownership of MySQL and their move to an OpenCore development model it is time OpenSUSE transitions away from MySQL as the default database to the MariaDB.

”

Feature Statistics

Statistics for openSUSE distribution in openFATE

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

“

openSUSE Pizza Parties the Geeko Way

The new openSUSE 12.1 Release is approaching very soon and all you Geekos should not miss the opportunity of becoming a double GPM!

Party time starts this weekend and lasts until November 2011 in all Geeko-towns and Geeko-homes. Gather all your fellow Geekos to the best local pizzeria and let the party begin!

HowTo

So, the first GPM: Geeko Party Maker. As you might have seen, you’ve all been invited to organize a pizzabeta party. The beta has been delayed a bit but party can still be had – the release will be this weekend. Of course, instead, you can organize a launch party for 12.1 once it is out – which is currently planned the third week of November. (…)

”

Events & Meetings

Past

September 21, 2011 : Project Meeting

Upcoming

No News!

You can find more information 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/podcast.

Communication

Contributors

openSUSE Connect

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.

“

openSUSE-SU-2011:1076-1: important: mozilla-xulrunner192: Update to Mozilla XULRunner 1.9.2.23

Table 1. SUSE Security Announcement

Package:	mozilla-xulrunner192
Announcement ID:	openSUSE-SU-2011:1076-1
Date:	Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:08:20 +0200 (CEST)
Affected Products:	openSUSE 11.4
Description:	fixing various bugs and security issues.

”

“

openSUSE-SU-2011:1077-1: important: seamonkey: Update to Mozilla Seamonkey 2.4

Table 2. SUSE Security Announcement

Package:	seamonkey
Announcement ID:	openSUSE-SU-2011:1077-1
Date:	Thu, 29 Sep 2011 15:08:19 +0200 (CEST)
Affected Products:	openSUSE 11.4 openSUSE 11.3
Description:	Mozilla Seamonkey was updated to version 2.4, fixing various bugs and security issues.

”

“

openSUSE-SU-2011:1079-1: important: MozillaFirefox: Update to Firefox 3.6.23

Table 3. SUSE Security Announcement

Package:	MozillaFirefox
Announcement ID:	openSUSE-SU-2011:1079-1
Date:	Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:08:17 +0200 (CEST)
Affected Products:	openSUSE 11.3
Description:	Mozilla Firefox was updated to version 3.6.23, fixing various bugs and security issues.

”

Kernel Review▲▼

“

Rares Aioanei: kernel weekly news – 01.10.2011

Rares gives his weekly Kernel Review with openSUSE Flavor.

”

Tips and Tricks▲▼

For Desktop Users

“

Wazi/Carla Schroder: Become an ImageMagick Ninja: Doing Things in Batches

Last month we introduced ImageMagick, a software suite that lets you manipulate images in several interesting ways. In that article we learned a lot of ways to resize images, make thumbnails, and convert image file formats. Today we’re going to unleash more of the mighty ImageMagick power and learn to make drop shadows, raised buttons, and proof sheets, and generate different sizes of the same image.

As always, before you manipulate irreplaceable photos, back up your originals first! (…)

”

“

Dmitri Popov: Open Source Photography Tools Five Quick digiKam Tricks

Tip #1

To quickly adjust thumbnail size in the Album view, press and hold the Ctrl key, then use the mouse scroll wheel to make the thumbnails larger or smaller.

Tip #2

With the Non-Destructive editing and Versioning feature enabled, digiKam automatically hides originals and displays the latest modified versions of the photos. For example, if you process a NEF file and save it in the JPEG format, digiKam hides the original RAW file and shows only the JPEG photo. To disable this feature, choose Settings → Configure digiKam → Editing Images and make sure that the Always show original images option in the In main view section is enabled. To keep things tidy, you can then group the original and all its versions. To do this, select the photos you want to group, right-click on the selection, and choose Group → Group Selected Here. (…)

”

For Commandline/Script Newbies

“

Linuxaria: Pipes – what are they and Example of Use

Unix based operating systems like Linux offer a unique approach to join two commands on the terminal, with it you can take the output of the first command and use it as input of the second command, this is the concept of pipe or

. Pipes allow two separate process to communicate with each other also if they were not created to do it, so this open an infinite series of opportunity. (…)

”

“

Home ERA Computers & Consulting: Custom Weekly Backup with tar

This page describes one method of backing up data from one’s Linux or Unix based system to an external medium using a bash script and tar. Here is the script for the impatient ones who “Just want some code!”: (…)

”

For Developers and Programmers

“

Joe Stagner: Selecting and Installing JavaScript Developer Tools for Linux

Choosing an editor or IDE for development is a personal thing, like choosing a car. What is a perfect ride for one person offers no interest at all to another. Personally, I was never happy with only one car and usually want different ones in the garage so that I can choose the one that most closely matches my mood or the kind of driving that I need to do.

Some folks like the help and tooling of a fully integrated environment like Visual Studio. Others like the hardcore elitism of EMACS or Vi. I’m a pragmatist, I like tools that just help me get the job done. (…)

”

For System Administrators

“

LinuxJournal/Leon van Kammen: Playterm, Platform of the Gurus

There are hundreds of command line tools in Linux. For a person who has just started using Linux, learning the various commands could at times, be a chore. But not any more, if you see what this website has achieved.

Playterm is a site which hosts videos of commands / tasks executed in the Linux terminal. (…)

”

“

IBM Developer Works/Roderick W. Smith: Learn Linux, 302 (Mixed environments): SWAT configuration

The Samba Web Administration Tool (SWAT) is a web-based administration tool for Samba, enabling GUI configuration from any computer with a web browser. SWAT is a server in its own right, and like all servers, it requires at least minimal configuration. In this article, learn how to install and configure SWAT itself and how to use SWAT to manage Samba. (…)

”

“

BeginLinux: OpenSUSE PXE Boot

What we will look at

What is PXELinux
DHCP Configuration
Confirm the Installation Server Source
Installing PXE and TFTP
Populate the TFTP Directory
Configure and Test PXE (…)

”

Planet SUSE▲▼

“

Bryen Yunashko: Getting Articles into News.openSUSE.org

At the recent 12.1 Marketing hackfest, we devised an editorial schedule and folks have begun writing articles for promoting 12.1. However, some of these articles haven’t been submitted yet. We suggest that in order to minimize confusion and reduce excessive pinging, you create an ietherpad with your article and link to it in the editorial schedule at //ietherpad.com/sked or send your article directly to news@opensuse.org. (…)

”

“

Raymond Wooninck: Chromium browser got accepted into openSUSE:Factory

After maintaining the Chromium browser in the openSUSE Contrib repositories, the last few weeks things got accelerated and as of this moment the Chromium browser has become officially part of openSUSE:Factory (the future 12.1).

The first step wa taken about 3 – 4 weeks ago when a separate development project was created (network:chromium). From there onwards it was just a matter of getting the package in the right shape for Factory and making sure that all legal and security conditions were met. Those who are tracking the updates of Chromium in this devel repo, might have noticed that a number of rebuilds were triggered for the 16.0.880 version of Chromium. This all had to do to get a single spec-file that would satisfy both Factory requirements but also would be able to build for the older distributions. At this moment this special repository offers builds for 11.3, 11.4, Factory and also for Tumbleweed.

I am quite proud on this fact and I hope that the openSUSE Chromium users will be happy with this fact. At the moment I am preparing an update to the 16.0.891 version and hopefully sometime beginning of next week the new snapshot will become available.

”

“

Bryen Yunashko: Take Geeko to the Races!

Anyone who is part of the openSUSE Project knows that wherever you go, Geeko is with you. Geeko is that awesome mascot that brings the spirit of the openSUSE Community alive. Actually, Geeko isn’t just a mascot. Geeko lives within us all. Are you a Geeko?

Now you can take Geeko to the races. SuperTuxKart has a new addon, that includes Geeko, thanks to Luke R. It’s pretty simple to install and then let your work pile up while you tryto win the races with Geeko at the wheel.

”

“

Christian Boltz: 1001 bugs - or: the golden rules of bad programming

If you missed my talk at the openSUSE conference or want to see the slides (including notes) again - here we are:

1001 bugs - or: the golden rules of bad programming as PDF (If you need an editable LibreOffice file, just drop me a note.)

”

“

Kai-Uwe Behrmann: Colour Correction Concepts for Monitors

Colour management for the desktop is a long standing issue not only for Linux. The following text will concentrate on colour correction of monitors. This means the experience, when you switch your computer or handheld on and look on the screen.

**Why colour correct the desktop? **

People tend to compensate for quite a lot of different types of monitors. They are most often able to adapt to one full screen and see colours as they are intended to look like. Thats fine as long as they are concentrated on the visual event on that one display. But in this article we want to discuss how to compensate the monitor colours to our human visual needs in environments with various displays side by side, as is the typical situation for more and more people today. They take pictures with mobile phones or other digital cameras and look at them on laptops, tablets, picture frames, TV sets and printouts often side by side. Or we look at them over the internet and want to share the same visual impression with other people. Many people with uncorrected systems see quite a difference between various colour devices and try to figure out how to conveniently synchronise them. Colour management should help accomplish that task. (…)

”

“

Jos Poortvliet: Tumbleweed image dream

At the (pretty cool) openMind conference in Tampere, Finland, it came up that a big advantage of Tumbleweed is that it always has the latest hardware support. Thanks to the rolling release, Tumbleweed comes with the latest Linux kernel which plays a big part of the hardware support of a Linux distro.

If your hardware does not work properly with the ‘stable’ release of openSUSE (or other distro’s) trying the latest kernel can solve that. But that’s hard to get on your system, even with stuff like the openSUSE Kernel repositories because it usually requires you to first install something. (…)

”

“

Bryen Yunashko: The Video BoF

So, one of the Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions at the Conference that I organized was a Video BoF. Specifically, the BoF was meant to start coming up with storyboarding to create some cool openSUSE promotional videos (ala commercials.) There’s a number of us with some great creative ideas and varying levels of exertise in this area and we just haven’t gotten off the ground yet on how to approach some of these ideas. For me, (relying on “old school” classes I took from when I was a film major) storyboarding would have helped to define exactly the steps we needed in order to complete and execute the ideas many of us have.

However, the general discussion quickly went in another direction, and one that I think is equally as important and I’m glad that conversation took place as well… (…)

”

“

Jos Poortvliet: MeeGo and openSUSE - an invitation

Yesterday a big announcement was made by Intel and Samsung. It entails another big change of directions for Moblin/Maemo/MeeGo.

Where to go Next

Many people in your community wonder where to go now. Yesterday, at a MeeGo meet in Tampere, many wondered if Intel will let the community contribute to Tizen. Will Samsung work in the open? Intel and Linux Foundation didn’t build a great track record with MeeGo and some said they simply didn’t believe in it anymore. Many clearly care about the great community which was build over the last years and are afraid it will break up.

Aaron Seigo spoke some wise words. He said: “don’t rely on what big companies might or might not do. Find out what YOU want and how to get there!” And indeed, community is about making your choices together. Not depending on corporate players acting as ADHD kids in a candy store, tasting every candy then dropping it. (…)

”

“

Andrew Wafaa: Target ARM Hardware

I just sent this into the -arm mailing list.

This is a hot topic, and one that seems to generate the most noise.

I’ve had a discussion with several people about target hardware, and I’ve also looked at what our peers are doing and saying. At the same time I’ve been trying to see what options we have for getting some sponsorship for hardware. (…)

”

“

Klaas Freitag: Where do you put your data?

This week is openSUSE hackweek, as you might know, and we do fun stuff. A couple of people, I was one of them, were investigating in the very promising project called ownCloud. We were working on a better integration in the openSUSE desktop in upcoming releases.

Why do we like ownCloud so much?

Well, thats easy: ownCloud is a solution that is under the full control of the user and as a result very transparent. The server, were you push your data to is owned by you. You start, stop, erase or open it how ever you want. (…)

”

On the Web▲▼

Call for participation

“

Pascal Bleser: FOSDEM 2012: call for devrooms

So here we go again, FOSDEM, the largest and coolest open source contributor event in Europe is prepping up for its 2012 edition.

I’ve just opened the Call for Developer Rooms, the deadline for submissions is 2011-10-27.

Other call-for-stuffs will open very soon (lightning talks, stands, main tracks).

”

Reports

“

h-online: Eclipse 3.7.1 supports Java 7

The Eclipse Foundation has issued the first service release to version 3.7 of its development environment. The most noticeable change in Eclipse 3.7.1 is the addition of support for Java 7. When the developers released version 3.7 of Eclipse at the end of June as part of the official Indigo release train, the final version of Java 7 wasn’t available. Shortly after Oracle released the new version of Java – long awaited by the Java community – on 28 July, the Eclipse developers announced their support of the new version. To implement this support, the organisation released a “Feature Pack”. (…)

”

“

h-online: Tizen: the latest mobile Linux announced

Intel and Samsung are now confirmed to be working under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation, and with the cooperation of the Limo Foundation, on “Tizen”, a new mobile operating system based on Linux. Various rumours about the parties’ future plans for MeeGo and merging of plans have been in circulation, but the announcement of a new operating system was unexpected. The Tizen operating system will combine components of MeeGo and Limo with an emphasis on supporting HTML5-based applications and WAC (Wholesale Applications Community) distribution and APIs. WAC is the product of a number of mobile companies who have developed a uniform platform for mobile widgets and applications based on W3C standards. (…)

”

“

Datamation: Will Windows 8 ‘Secure Boot’ Lessen Linux Adoption?

As most PC users know by now, Microsoft has given us a glimpse into what will one day be the Windows 8 operating system. Leaving aside the many changes in the new OS – it’s a major shift from what we’ve previously seen from Microsoft – there’s an extra feature included with Windows 8 that has some of us concerned.

The new feature in question is called Secure Boot. It’s designed to act as a security tool for PC users. However, there’s some concern as to whether this function will be enabled without a clear way of disabling it should someone wish to do so.

In other words, with Secure Boot enabled, you wouldn’t be able to install your favorite Linux distro on that machine.

”

“

h-online: Firefox 8 Beta arrives with Twitter search

As expected following the arrival of the stable version of Firefox 7, Mozilla has announced the release of version 8.0 of Firefox into the web browser’s Beta Channel. Available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, Firefox 8 Beta is based on the Gecko 8 engine. According to the Releases wiki, it is scheduled to arrive in a stable production-ready form on 8 November.

Control of add-ons has been improved – when Firefox launches and detects that a new third-party add-on has been installed, the add-on will be disabled until approved by the user. Additionally, when users upgrade to Firefox 8 they will be presented with a one-time dialog for approving previously installed add-ons. (…)

”

“

h-online: FSF relaunches its free software directory

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced the relaunch of its Free Software Directory. Available at directory.fsf.org, the Directory was first launched almost ten years ago and has been one of the FSF’s “most popular and important resources”. (…)

”

Reviews and Essays

“

Linux-BG: Linus Torvalds speaks about kernel fun, gadgets

LBG (Linux-BG): 20 ago when you started creating the Linux kernel was there another project of yours that could jeopardize the Linux kernel success and make it obsolete? Like for example trying to win the Pes pallo championship, trying to be the best sled dog racer or … create a clone of Mine Sweeper. (…)

”

“

Input Output/Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Linus Torvalds’s Lessons on Software Development Management

If anyone knows the joys and sorrows of managing software development projects, it would be Linus Torvalds, creator of the world’s most popular open-source software program: the Linux operating system. For more than 20 years, Torvalds has been directing thousands of developers to improve the open source OS. He and I sat down to talk about effective techniques in running large-scale distributed programming teams – and the things that don’t work, too. (…)

”

“

seopher.com100+ awesome free and open source applications

It has always amazed me quite how many incredible, varied and useful applications are available for free on the Internet. Be it free, open source, web-based or merely passive trials - the number of top quality items on offer is huge.

The purpose of this list is to help people realise that the free and open source software communities are expansive and generous. In these tense economic times, raising awareness of such projects is something I’m more than happy to do. If you feel that I’ve missed something good off the list, please leave a comment at the bottom - I read absolutely every one.(…)

”

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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
Thomas Schraitle, DocBook-Consultant

Acknowledgements▲▼