Archive:weekly news 104
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Welcome to issue # 104 of openSUSE Weekly News
In this Week:
- TooManyTabs - Saves Your Memory 1.1.0
- Alcaro Soliverez/kde.news: First KMyMoney Beta Version Available for KDE 4 Platform
- Joe Brockmeier: Put some meat on it: Writing release announcements
- Sharing a /home Directory between Linux and Windows
- kde.news/Dario Freddi: KDE Extends Polkit Support to polkit-1
Editors Note
- The openSUSE Weekly News Team wishes all of our Readers a happy new year! We hope you have a lot of joy in it.
- This issue is a little bit shorter as other issues. Through holidays and vacation we have a little bit lesser Authors. But we think, this will be better in the next week.
- So we wish you many joy by reading this issue.
Tips and Tricks
For Desktop Users
- TooManyTabs - Saves Your Memory 1.1.0
- "TooManyTabs allows you to store as many tabs as you like by adding extra rows in the Firefox! It saves your browser's space and memory as idle tabs are put aside. The extra rows also help to better prioritize and visualize your tabs."
- Hacking Truths: 8 Hidden Firefox Secrets Revealed
- "The best thing about Firefox is that just when you think you know everything there is to know about the browser, something new comes along and surprises you. Here are few hidden tips and tricks. Maybe these are old hat and you know them already. Or maybe you had no idea these could be done. Lets see how many of these you know already."
For Commandline/Script Newbies
- The Geek Stuff/Ramesh Natarajan: How To Send an Email With Attachment and Body from Linux
- "Question: How do I send an email with attachment from Linux command-line (or shell script)? Also, can I send both attachment and body text together in an email from Linux command-line?
- Answer: You can send both attachment and body text (or just the attachment with a subject line) from Linux command line as explained below."
For Developers and Programmers
- WebReference/Rob Gravelle: Globalize your Web Applications: PHP's Locale Formatting Classes
- "In programming, a locale is a set of parameters that define attributes for a user's specific geographic location, including the user's language, country and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in his/her user interface. In Part 1 of the Globalize your Web Applications series, we examined what the locale entails, how they are supported by different operating systems, and we looked at some specific implementations in PHP. The Part 2 article continued with the PHP language as we explored how to make your dates locale aware, using both the native datetime functions as well as the I18N_DateTime class. Today, we'll be covering PHP's two remaining I18N Libraries, the I18N_Number and I18N_Currency classes, both of which are subclasses of the I18N_DateTime function."
For System Administrators
- Packt Publishing/Markus Feilner: Networking with OpenVPN
- "In this article by Markus Feilner, we will discuss the basic networking concepts of OpenVPN, and also have a brief look at the configuration. At the end of the article, OpenVPN is compared to IPsec, the quasi-standard in VPN technology. This article will cover the following: ..."
- Masim Sugianto: Implementing Software Raid on openSUSE 11.2
- "RAID stand for a redundant array of inexpensive disks, a way of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity to improve performance and/or reliability. There are a variety of different types and implementations of RAID, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Hardware RAID use the hardware feature while the software RAID using software capability. These are pros & cons about hardware RAID and software RAID, with an advantage and disadvantage for each approach. Click here for more information about RAID.
New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE
- Packman: kmymoney4 3.95.0-142.pm.142.1
- "KMyMoney is the Personal Finance Manager for KDE4. It operates similar to Quicken, supports various account types, categorization of expenses, multiple currencies, online banking support via QIF, OFX and HBCI, budgeting and a rich set of reports." Packages are available in Packman.
- Packman: kaffeine 0.8.8-1.pm.5.14
- "Kaffeine plays all files and devices supported by xine. For example: MPEG files, AVI (if the codec being used is supported by xine), MP3, and Ogg Vorbis. It also handles Video CDs, DVD, and DVB cards." Packages are available in Packman.
Projects Corner
The corner for introducing activities of sub project *inside* openSUSE.
KDE Project
- Craciun Dan: digiKam 1.1 Planned for the End of January 2010
- "Only a few days have passed since digiKam 1.0 was released to the delight of its users, and the developers already announced that version 1.1 will be available by the end of January 2010. According to the official announcement, digiKam 1.1 will be a bugfix release to the stable 1.x series."
- kde.news/Alcaro Soliverez: First KMyMoney Beta Version Available for KDE 4 Platform
- "The KMyMoney team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 3.95. After 8 months of hard work, this release is the first version developed upon the KDE 4 Platform. We are confident that it is stable enough for use by early adopters. We would like to get much needed feedback from the community in order to make the new KMyMoney as rock-solid as previous releases."
GNOME Project
- Ben Kevan: GNOME 2.29.4 Release – Development
- "The next development release of GNOME has been released as per it’s snapshot schedule. Here’s an excert from their release: And here comes 2.29.4, just in time for the holiday season. It’s a fewhours late, but there were several build issues this time. But if you take all the right tarballs, this should now be okay :-) And you’ll enjoy some cool stuff, like an updated nautilus with its changed focus (see discussion on nautilus-list), or various modules like gnome-control-center with tons of bug fixes. You can also take a look at gnome-keyring which has changed quite a bit internally… There are definitely many changes in there, so it’s a good time to do some deep testing!"
Planet SUSE
- Ostatic/Joe Brockmeier: Release Early, Release Often, Adopt Slowly
- "Things move pretty fast in the open source development world. A new kernel release comes out around every three months. Projects like GNOME, KDE, and PostgreSQL pop out releases every six months, as well as some major Linux distros. Open source development moves at a rapid and relentless pace. It's refreshing, then, to see an open source developer reminding people to have a little patience."
- Rajko Matovic: The Wiki!
- "The openSUSE wiki is on the way to be renewed. There was a lot of work done, but the pile that is waiting is much bigger.
- The list of articles that have to be checked is huge and that is one of tasks that has to be accomplished before we actually can start with transition."
- Joe Brockmeier: Put some meat on it: Writing release announcements
- "I've been spending a fair amount of time away from the computer while on vacation, which has been nice, but I took some time yesterday to catch up on my RSS feeds. Even thought it's pretty quiet out there right now, I found several posts and announcements about beta releases, project releases, and so on.
- Two things kept catching my eye. One -- I'm surprised by the number of projects that do release announcements without any packages for users. I guess if you only care about catching the small percentage of users who are willing and able to compile their own packages -- or if you think your only audience is developers for downstream projects like openSUSE -- then this strategy makes sense."
openSUSE Forums
- Sharing a /home Directory between Linux and Windows
- "A completely legitimate question. One which has more than one answer and may depend what the user really means by 'Share'. A good example of the community at work."
- Connecting to the Internet?
- "A fundamentally essential part of what it's all about. No internet! It would be like having your arms chopped off. Sometimes the solution is much easier than it seems. Check it out."
- What to do when no .rpm is available but a .deb is?
- "Good question. One which will generate a variety of replies, simply because there are really quite a number of options open to you. If you are looking for software don't forget: http://packages.opensuse-community.org/"
- Why openSUSE doesn't have LTS like Ubuntu?
- "I seem to recall this question before and judging by the response and comments so far, I do think there would ba an interest in this, but probably only limited. I would certainly consider it for some machines. How about you?"
On the Web
Announcements
- kde.news/Dario Freddi: KDE Extends Polkit Support to polkit-1
- "Today, the first version of polkit-qt-1 and polkit-kde-1 have been released to the public. Thanks to these tools, KDE applications now integrate nicely with the new polkit-1 with a native authentication dialog. An authorization manager, the equivalent of the Polkit Authorization System Settings module, will be included in future releases. Find out more about PolicyKit on Freedesktop.org."
Call for participation
- DaniWeb/Ken Hess: The Linux Commercial Contest
- "As promised yesterday, this is my potential solution to the Linux survival question: A Linux Commercial--created by you--and it's a contest. Sound exciting? You creative types will now have a chance to create your own short film/video/commercial for Linux. Give Linux a face, a voice, a rap, a song, a cool theme--whatever! The sky's the limit and I want to see your best work on this project. Create a short video, upload it to YouTube and let's see what happens."
Reports
- OStatic/Joe Brockmeier: Mozilla Jetpack Gets an Update
- "Mozilla Labs released Jetpack 0.7 just before Christmas with a special gift for add-on developers. The latest release comes with a brand-new API so add-on authors can give users some tips and info the first time that they run a new Jetpack. It also includes a number of enhancements, updates, and bugfixes. This release also re-enables Jetpack debugging with Firebug, making Jetpack development much easier."
- Groklaw: SUSE's Reply in Support of Motion to Lift Stay, as text
- "Here, as promised, is the SUSE Reply (PDF) about lifting the bankruptcy stay, more properly titled SUSE's Reply in Support of its Motion for Relief from the Automatic Stay to Complete International Arbitration. This document is in response to SCO Chapter 11 Trustee Edward Cahn's Objection to SUSE's motion, and they do not hold back. Most interestingly, they highlight the GPL and what it means for SCO's copyright claims. The theme is simple: it's not fair for SCO to get to go forward on its copyright claims without letting SUSE go forward too on its related claims: ..."
Reviews and Essays
- LinuxCrunch/Zayed: My experience with Google Chrome
- "I would like to share with you my short experience with Google Chrome on openSUSE 11.2. Although it is in a beta stage, it is stable and fast. I like many things in it and I even tried to emulate them in Firefox (thanks to Firefox add-on). In this post, I will state my personal thoughts about Google Chrome and I will refer to Firefox in any comparison. I am using version 4.0.249.43."
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.
Statistics
Numbers in brackets show the changes compared to the previous week.
opensuse.org
Communication
lists.opensuse.org has 37369 (+20) non-unique subscribers to all mailing lists.
The openSUSE Forums have 39833 (+308) registered users - Most users ever online was 15292, 16-Nov-2009 at 21:20.
Contributors
4108 (+25) of 10656 (+73) registered contributors in the User Directory have signed the Guiding Principles. The board has acknowledged 395 (+0) members.
Build Service
The Build Service now hosts 9821 (+90) projects, 90706 (+312) packages, 17910 (+204) repositories by 20163 (+94) confirmed users.
openFATE
Feature statistics for openSUSE 11.3:
- total: 418 (+4)
- unconfirmed: 271 (+4)
- new: 42 (+0)
- evaluation: 71 (+0)
- candidate: 1 (+0)
- done: 10 (+0)
- rejected: 14 (+0)
- duplicate: 9 (+0)
Bugzilla
The numbers for all openSUSE project products are this week:
- All Open Reports: 5242 (+33)
- Blocker: 4 (+0)
- Critical: 271 (+4)
- Major: 891 (+3)
- Normal: 3031 (+21)
- Minor: 444 (+2)
- Enhancements: 601 (+3)
- Detailed Bugzilla Report – Submitting Bug Reports – Bug Reporting FAQ
Localization
- Daily updated translation statistics are available on the openSUSE Localization Portal.
- Trunk Top-List – Localization Guide
openSUSE for your ears
- The openSUSE Weekly News are available as Livestream or Podcast in the German Language. You can hear it or download it on http://blog.radiotux.de/podcast .
Feedback / Communicate / Get Involved
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Credits
- Dl9pf Talk - Contributions Jan-Simon Möller (Chief-Editor)
- saigkill Talk - Contributions Sascha Manns (Second Chief-Editor, Main-Newsletter)
- STS301 Talk - Contributions Sebastian Schöbinger (Tips/Tricks)
- HeliosReds Talk - Contributions Satoru Matsumoto (Editorial Office)
- Caf4926 Talk - Contributions Carl Fletcher (Main-Newsletter, Forums Sec.)
- Okuro Talk - Contributions Thomas Hofstätter (Events & Meetings)
- add translators
