Archive:Weekly news 8
Welcome to the eighth issue of openSUSE Weekly News! For the week starting the 28-01-2008.
In this week:
- KDE News: KDE 4.0.1, openSUSE Live CD, New KDE Repo Layout
- openSUSE Welcomes Zonker - The New Community Manager
- Applications for openSUSE Membership Now Open
- Alpha 2 Released this Week
Announcements
KDE Quickies: KDE 4.0.1, openSUSE Live CD, New KDE Repository Layout
- "Just in time for the KDE 4.0.1 release, the openSUSE KDE team has updated the KDE 4 packages in the Build Service to the KDE 4.0.1 state, featuring several improvements over the plain KDE 4.0.1 release and including further integration fixes. KDE Four Live, the openSUSE KDE4 Installable Live CD, has also been updated to contain these packages and changes."
After a long discussion and feedback period, the openSUSE BuildService repository layout for KDE packages has finally been overhauled.
There are: latest, stable and regularly updated KDE 4.0.x packages as well as experimental KDE 4.1 packages available. The repositories are kept in a modular state so you can choose how much of your system you want to be possibly affected by selecting one of the stable or unstable Desktop, Extra or Community repositories. As a result, the current KDE:KDE4 repository has now been frozen and will be removed in the future, so please update your repositories accordingly.
openSUSE Welcomes Zonker - The New Community Manager
- "Iād like to give a warm welcome to Joe āZonkerā Brockmeier who joins the openSUSE project as āopenSUSE community managerā. You can reach him directly at zonker@opensuse.org. He has his own openSUSE blog at http://zonker.opensuse.org, I advise to go over and see what he has to say himself!"
openSUSE Mailinglist: Check for Accidental Unsubscribtions
- "Last week we had a small problem at lists.opensuse.org which unsubscribed a couple of mailing list members by accident. Weāre really sorry about this and hope that everybody subscribes again manually."
In the Community
openSUSE Membership
- "One of the first things that the openSUSE board have been working on is getting some clear acknowledgment through for all good openSUSE contributors. The result of this can be seen through what we think of as "openSUSE Members".
We are glad to announce that the process for becoming a member has just been approved by the board, and that we are now happy to take any applications. Please have a look at the wiki page for instructions on doing so."
Status Updates
Distribution
It's alpha week again - that's when Factory is the most broken :)
- Installation was reworked even more - alpha2 will be a big test case.
- there was heavy work on updating GNOME towards 2.20 and KDE4 towards 4.01
- sax2 is still flacky on live images - we hope to get that ironed out before alpha2, so we have live CDs too (that might only fit on DVDs for now though)
- the x86_64 CDs of both KDE and GNOME will no longer carry 32bit packages supporting 32bit plugins. It was just no longer possible to support 700MB.
- I reworked the patterns (once more) for 11.0, which will have two pretty dramatic consequences:
- KDE4 will be the default KDE (with an option to revert that back to KDE3 when it turns out to be just too much pain)
- the DVD5 does not have any non-oss software on it - this will allow for a simplified EULA - the non-oss medium will continue to have the old EULA then
Planet SUSE
Covering just a few posts from Planet SUSE, an aggregation of all SUSE contributors' blogs:
Benjamin Weber: Software Portal Progress
- "Some people have commented on the lack of public progress on the Software Portal Project so I suppose I should blog about it...The software portal combines automatic detection of applications from package repository metadata, with user generated content. So it can import metadata from the main distribution repositories, buildservice repositories, packman, etc, and then detect applications which will then be browsable by the users. Users can submit new applications, and edit existing ones where the autodetection was not perfect. Users can attach screenshots, tags, comments etc to existing applications. Users will be able to install applications using a one click install link."
Read on for screenshots.
Joe Brockmeier: Hello world!
- "As you may have already read on news.opensuse.org (thanks, AJ, for the warm welcome!) or elsewhere, Iāve just joined Novell as the openSUSE community manager. Iām really jazzed about joining Novell and the openSUSE team, and excited to be getting started. Iād like to start off by saying a big thanks to AJ, Martin Lasarsch, Michael Loeffler, and Justin Steinman and other openSUSE and Novell folks for the information and help theyāve provided leading up to today. Itās already a group I feel comfortable with and look forward to working with."
Scott Morris: Viewing all the gory details of an RPM
- "One thing I really like about YAST (and others) is that you can browse and search through the description, and view other package details. You can see the author, version, vendor, build date, build host, size, etc. You can also see a list of what files will be installed, and where they will be placed.... So how do we view all that info from the command line?"
Klaus KƤmpf: Open Source Meets Business - Day 3 (final)
- "The last day of open source meets business had presentations in the morning and put a spotlight on Microsoft in the afternoon."
Martin Schlander: Oxygen for YaST2
- "openSUSE 10.3 uses Tango icons by default in the YaST2 setup tool. A poorly maintained Crystal theme is also available. Neither solution is really acceptable for me, especially not since migration to KDE4.x.x is slowly starting. So Iāve done something that Iāve been contemplating for a while - that is making a selection of Oxygen icons as a replacement for the Tango icons. Itās called yast2-theme-openSUSE-oxygen."
Joe Brockmeier: Thanks for the welcome!
- "If I needed any affirmation that Iād made the right choice in joining Novell and the openSUSE team, I got it yesterday, in bulk. I got a ton of āwelcome aboardā notes via IRC, IM, email, blog posts, and blog comments from Novell employees and openSUSE contributors and users wishing me good luck on the job ā and, in many cases, asking when Iād be in [insert location here] so that we could meet face to face. I find it interesting, and reassuring, that even in a āvirtualā community thereās a strong preference for meeting face to face."
Past Meetings
GNOME Meeting 2008-01-31
- "This meeting is meant to discuss the latest developments in and around GNOME in openSUSE."
KDE Meeting 2008-01-30
Action Items:
- announce next packaging day for two weeks before beta1 (dirk)
- improve kde building guide (bille)
- announce kde bug day for day after beta 1, suggestion 19-20 April (beineri)
- script for watching homes for kde apps (dirk)
- ask Duncan about qtjambi packaging (beineri) DONE: Duncan has no time/interest anymore
- participate in Plasma IRC meeting on 9th February and request intermediate release (everyone)
- anyone who wants to work on KDE related topics during hackweek, mail opensuse-kde
- discuss content of FOSDEM KDE talk before submission deadline (bille & dirk)
- add packaging guideline for kde4 packages
- realize new structure for build service repositories we agreed on (dirk)
- announce and document new structure of build service repositories (dirk)
- ask for addition of new Bugzilla categories for KDE4 (beineri)
- discuss with mls what to do with the nsplugins package on x86_64 problem
Upcoming Events/Meetings
Project Meeting 2008-02-06
- "This meeting is meant to discuss the latest developments in and around openSUSE."
GNOME Meeting 2008-02-07
- User Topics
- Introduction (jpr)
- Factory testing (news, issues, concerns) (sreeves, maw)
- Task Review (suseRocks)
- Q&A - Non Developer
- Developer Topics
- 10.3 Update (sreeves)
- 11.0 Development Update (hpj)
- Patch Upstreaming (rodrigo)
- Q&A - Developer
Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE)
- "To be held Friday, Saturday and Sunday, February 8-10, 2008 at the Westin Los Angeles Airport...Whatever your interest in Open Source, SCALE 6x has something for you! "
In the Press
CIO.com: Interview: OpenSUSE's New Tech Evangelist
- "Linux advocate Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier signs on as Novell's community manager and new voice of openSUSE users and developers. Hear his thoughts on Linux love, the challenges he expects from his new role, and why techies choose one distribution over another."
DownloadSquad: Interview: openSUSEās new Community Manager, Joe Brockmeier
- "Today, Novell announced that Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier is taking the reins as openSUSE's Community Manager. Those familiar with the open source world might recognize Joe from his work with various Linux and free software publications."
ComputerWorldUK: OpenSUSEās new tech evangelist spells it out
- "As a journalist, Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier had a job he loved. Since 1999 he brought passion to his coverage of Linux and open source. Now, he's taking his advocacy to a whole new level. His new role as community manager at Novell will enable him to further the cause of openSUSE, the Novell-sponsored community project to develop and maintain a general purpose Linux distribution."
Statistics
Numbers in brackets show the changes compared to the previous week.
Contributors
443 (+42) of 810 (+67) registered contributors in the User Directory have signed the Guiding Principles.
Build Service
The Build Service now hosts 1867 (+50) projects, 33741 (+264) packages, 4402 (+90) repositories by 4070 (+144) confirmed users.
Bugzilla
The numbers for all openSUSE project products are this week:
- All Open Reports: 3487 (+13)
- Blocker: 17 (-5)
- Critical: 156 (-8)
- Major: 500 (-3)
- Normal: 1977 (-5)
- Minor: 279 (+10)
- Enhancements: 558 (+14)
Detailed Bugzilla Report – Submitting Bug Reports – Bug Reporting FAQ
Translations
The top 10 translation teams with the most translated strings of trunk:
- Japanese (ja): 30837 / 100%
- Portuguese Brazilian (pt_BR): 30556 / 99%
- Hungarian (hu): 30428 / 98%
- German (de): 29893 / 96%
- Portuguese (pt): 29864 / 96%
- Italian (it): 29826 / 96%
- French (fr): 29808 / 96%
- Finnish (fi): 29793 / 96%
- Dutch (nl): 29762 / 96%
- Russian (ru): 29736 / 96%
Complete Top-List –Localization Portal – Localization Guide
Feedback / Communicate / Get Involved
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