Archive:weekly news 108

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Welcome to issue # 108 of openSUSE Weekly News

In this Week:

Announcements

openSUSE Art Team Meeting - Saturday 30th January 2010, 16:00 UTC: "Hello everybody,The openSUSE Art Team Meeting will take place on Saturday, the 30th of January, 2010 at 16:00 UTC in #opensuse-artwork IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.; This will be the first openSUSE Art Team Meeting. We'll get to know the people interested on contributing artwork and we'll discuss how the Art Team can help the openSUSE Project. Feel free to join and participate. If you are not able to join our meeting, "
Joe Brockmeier: So long and thanks for all the Geekos!: "January 31st will be my last day with Novell. I've given it a great deal of thought, and decided that it's time to move on.; With the openSUSE Conference wrapped up, 11.2 launched, the major projects I've been working on are completed and I feel like this is a good parting point. It wasn't an easy decision, but I had some time to refocus over the holidays and I know that it is time to move on. One of the most important responsibilities any employee has -- especially a community manager -- is to know when to move on, and not remain in a role just for the sake of having a job."
Joe Brockmeier: One more day...: "This week has flown by. Tomorrow will be my last "on duty" day with Novell. I've spent much of this week handing off tasks or information to co-workers and saying goodbyes.; Well, "goodbyes" is overselling it a bit -- I hope. Since I telecommute, I'll be just as close to everyone I've worked with on Monday as I have been the past two years, and hope to remain in touch with all of the friends I've made at Novell and in the openSUSE community long after I stop having an @novell.com address."
openSUSE News: Wanted: Linux Community Manager: "At the end of this month Zonker, our openSUSE community manager for the last two years, will be leaving Novell. On behalf of the whole openSUSE community I would like to take a moment to thank Zonker for all the great work he’s done. openSUSE is a larger, more open and more engaged community than ever before – one where experienced hackers and new Linux users can all find a home. Zonker has been at the forefront of our community outreach, and has been a great steward for SUSE. As he now moves to start the next chapter in his career, I want to thank him for all his hard work and wish him the very best for the future.; The openSUSE community is more vibrant than ever and we want to sustain the momentum. We are looking for the next great community leader who can help SUSE reach even more people and make an even bigger impact on the world. If you’re passionate about Linux, love to work with people around the world, have some ideas about marketing, and think you can make an impact, we want to hear from you! Please contact Joe Goss (jgoss at novell dot com) if you would like to be considered.; In the meantime, I will be working with Andreas Jaeger and other Novell colleagues in marketing and engineering to cover openSUSE community relations activities. Thanks everyone for your inquiries and support."

In the Community

Sirko Kemter: Art-Team meeting: "A little status update whats going on with openSUSE Art-Team. Its a few days ago since we had the idea to build such a team and announed that. We found enough people to begin to build an team. I would not say the 10 people are enough there is always place for more. But enough for forming a team. So when you have skills in Inkscape, Gimp, Blender or Scribus and interested to do some artwork for openSUSE join us. We had last week a little doodle vote to find a date when we can have a meeting. In the meeting we ry to find out how we can help the openSUSE project with graphics and artwork. On our wiki page we collect since days ideas what and how we can do that. When you have an idea what we can do or interested to help us to build the Art-Team, then post the ideas there or join our meeting."
Sirko Kemter: Geeko wants you Pt.2: "After my last posting came some people to me and said I should do more such comics. Ok, I will do that but not to often and not periodic. For doing that I need time and inspiration. And now to the new comic, its simple Geeko wants you!"

Status Updates

Distribution

openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 1 and KDE 4.4 RC2 Announcements: "It's nice to announce to (local) community what is happening of their Linux distribution's development and finally get more contributors to help it. Now I'm just curious why there were no announcements of the openSUSE 11.3 M1[0] and KDE SC 4.4 RC2 on net?"
Will update PackageKit to 0.6.1 in Factory next week: "Looking at the git log from PackageKit, it looks like Scott managed to fix the build of the zypp backend -- which was the reason we were stuck with an old PackageKit (0.5.1)."
Katharina Machalkova: News from libstorage/YaST partitioner insectarium: "After ext4 and btrfs in openSUSE 11.2, nfs4 is the next filesystem to be fully supported by libstorage (libstorage is the engine that makes YaST partitioner moving). In the upcoming first milestone of openSUSE 11.3, you can already try mounting nfs4 shares from partitioner during installation and later too (*cough* it has been possible to opt for mounting the share as nfs4 already in 11.1, but GUI option was just dummy, you ended up with regular nfs3 anyway *cough* ;-) ). Big thanks to Arvin and Thomas for implementing it (if you want to help with libstorage hacking, read here how, if you are not into hacking, you can contribute your ideas).

And slightly off-topic (as this post tends to be storage-related): you can also give nfs4-based software repositories a try - openSUSE 11.3 libzypp (hence also zypper and YaST repo manager) is now nfs4-enabled, too."

Boosters Team

Petr Utzel: Work report puzel kw 3
Stephan Kulow: Week 04 report
Pavol Rusnak: work report kw3 prusnak
Thomas Schmidt: week report #3
Henne Vogelsang: Work Report Henne
Will Stephenson: work report kw2+3 wstephenson
Klaas Freitag: workreport kw 3

Henne Vogelsang: What are the Boosters up to?: "These posts are here to keep you informed about what the openSUSE Boosters team is up to. The openSUSE Boosters are a team of dedicated people helping parts of the project to take of. It consists of 13 people (BTW: widely known as the thirsty thirteen) with skills ranging from low level C hackery over Ruby on Rails mastering to Graphical Design or Project Management. The team picks its own milestones and works on them in a agile fashion. You can learn more about them and what they do on their home page in the openSUSE wiki."

Build Service

Michal Hrušecký: Updates in unstable repo (not only) for openSUSE: "I already mentioned this repository several times on my blog. It is the repository where I'm trying to keep bleeding edge stuff for MySQL. I've been updating it recently and we've got new package there and some interesting updates I want to mention."
Build Team Meeting: Minutes from the Meeting.

Tips and Tricks

For Desktop Users

My GNU/Linux: Embed the Konsole (Terminal) to the Desktop in KDE 4.3: "Konsole is the X terminal emulator of KDE. I find having the terminal out of my way, but always open and easy to reach out to, very convenient. It also looks cool. ;) With KDE SC 4.3 you can easily achieve this with a few clicks without the need of any additional software."

Unixmen/Zinovsky: Tips to reduce memory usage on Firefox and Linux: "For most users, Firefox doesn't use an abnormally large amount of memory. For others, however, Firefox's memory consumption is a major problem (Especilaly for people using old computers with limited memory resources), in same cases memory usage in Firefox is due some to other sources, like number of plug-ins, themes and extensions. Keeping firefox updated is always a good solution, because all newer versions use less memory than the older ones. In this article i will try to show you some tips to use if you want to reduce memory usage on Firefox."

Worldlabel.com/Dmitri Popov: OpenOffice.org Extensions for Business Users: "OpenOffice.org is an excellent all-around productivity suite as it is, but you can add a few useful features using extensions to make it better suited for use in a business environment. Here are a handful of extensions worth considering if you are using OpenOffice.org as a business tool."

For Commandline/Script Newbies

Linux User & Developer/Kunal Deo: Ten essential Python tips for beginners: "Python is a programming language that lets you work more quickly and integrate your systems more effectively and is one of the most popular programming languages in the open source space. Look around and you will find it running everywhere, from various configuration tools to XML parsing. We’ve compiled ten essential Python tips especially for the new user, so without further ado, let’s get started…"

Jakub Steiner: How to get your clips on the web: "H264 has it all. Buy-in from the big content providers, compression ratio superiority, mobile device support, and support in all major video editing tools and operating systems. Many people seem to criticize Mozilla for being idealistic and not providing its users what “they want”.; Chris Blizzard wrote a great summary of why Mozilla isn’t endorsing h264 and herding its users into the patent holder’s stall with historic examples of GIF and mp3."

For System Administrators

Jonathan Ellis: Linux performance basics: "I want to write about Cassandra performance tuning, but first I need to cover some basics: how to use vmstat, iostat, and top to understand what part of your system is the bottleneck -- not just for Cassandra but for any system."

Masim Sugianto: Tutorial : Samba PDC + OpenLDAP on openSUSE 11.1 – Part 5: "TESTING SAMBA CONFIGURATION..."
Masim Sugianto: Tutorial : Samba PDC + OpenLDAP on openSUSE 11.1 – Part 6: "Samba PDC+OpenLDAP is one of the longest tutorial. These are maybe a typo or incomplete configuration, although I’ve checked and proof read for the typo. Please let me know if you found something problem while trying the tutorial. I’ll be really appreciate to the suggestion to make it as usable as it should be. Following are some error messages that might be found when doing the configuration. The collection came from my notes while installing and configuring Samba PDC+OpenLDAP for the first time. ..."

New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE

Masim Sugianto: Openshot Video Editor on openSUSE: "OpenShot Video Editor is an open-source, non-linear video editor for Linux, built with Python, GTK, and the MLT Framework. The project was started in August 2008 by Jonathan Thomas, with the objective to provide a stable, free, and friendly to use video editor.The function much similar with Kdenlive and Kino, both are a video editor for Linux."
Carlos Gonçalves: Stable versions of PySide packaged: "Heads up! I'm glad to inform you all that now stable/released versions of PySide are also available for Mandriva and Fedora besides for openSUSE and snapshots as previously announced. I've updated the download page to reflect this change."
Ben Kevan: Installing Wine Development 1.1.37 on openSUSE Linux: "Recently the Wine HQ team announced that Wine Development Branch 1.1.37 has been released. You can read more about the release here.; This tutorial will show you how to install the said version of Wine on openSUSE Linux, 11.0 – 11.2)."
Packman: Performous 0.5.1-0.pm.1.5: "Performous - new Sing Screen using themed lyrics. Performous is a free cross-platform clone of the Playstation 2 game Singstar. While Performous might be classified as a karaoke program, it is actually much more than that. Instead of just displaying the lyrics, notes are also displayed and the performance is scored based on how well you actually hit the notes. Unlike in many other games in this genre, you will also see the pitch that you are singing, so that you can see what you are doing wrong and easily (well, everything is relative) correct your pitch. Most of the songs available also contain the original vocals and actual karaoke versions are rare."

Projects Corner

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The corner for introducing activities of sub project *inside* openSUSE.

KDE Project

Ben Kevan: Installing KDE 4.4 RC2 on openSUSE and Kubuntu Linux: "Today was the announcement of the release of KDE 4.4 RC2 which provides you, the user, with the ability to try out this great release candidate on some of your favorite distributions. Today, we’ll show you how to setup the repositories to upgrade to KDE 4.4 RC2 on openSUSE and Kubuntu."
Joe Brockmeier: KDE 4.4 Kreeps Kloser to Komplete: "The KDE team is getting very close to a final release of KDE 4.4. The second release candidate came out yesterday as a testing platform for users and developers to find and squash bugs before the final release date of February 9th.; The 4.4 release brings quite a few changes over 4.3, new applications, enhancements, and much more. Bloggers will find a new blogging tool, Konqueror has been beefed up with a history sidebar, KDE's groupware has received several improvements including POP3 support in Akonadi and other changes."

GNOME Project

Miguel de Icaza: Release-o-Rama: "Nice new releases of software that I use in the last few days."

Mono Project

Miguel de Icaza: iPad Support for MonoTouch!: "24 hours after we got the iPad SDK we completed the support for the iPad for MonoTouch! To get started with iPad development, go to http://monotouch.net/iPad and follow the instructions."

Planet SUSE

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Sirko Kemter: More german postings plz: "I use from time to time pictures to speak for me, thats for me in easier as write a long english entry. I hope you understand what I mean. For me it is not really productiv to think about translate tweets from english to spanish and the article there linked in the tweet is english. It is the best way to announce the Launch Party for 11.2 in Nuremberg in English on the Planet? I dont know was a good blogpost about 11.2 on the german planet, I think not really it was such an entry there. I am sure we have more german native speakers as aggregated on the german planet. I post more stories on the german planet as here, I have an additional feed for the english planet. Maybe other openSUSE member think now to do the same (I hope so). And I am not more so alone on the german planet ;)"
Sebastian Schöbinger: Installing airpwn on openSUSE 11.2: "airpwn is a nice tool to play with, but sometimes hard to install. First you have to get airpwn from here. Then install the following things: ..."

openSUSE Forums

Question About KDE Updates: "A newbie question, common place you might think. But not so much. It's more likely for a user to try installing everything, including the kitchen sink and come bleating about a borked system."
Can't mount vFAT file system.: "Where there is one problem there are usually others, this was no exception. Do this, do that, do the other and Hey Presto, it's all working."
Grub 2 in openSUSE?: "I think NOT. Well not yet anyway. There has been a bit of interest in the Forum about it, especially since the release of Ubuntu 9.10"
Firefox 3.6 release: "See what forum users have to say about it. It's a real mix of information but it proves interesting to read and may even help you troubleshoot your own install in this area."

On the Web

Announcements

LinuxFoundation: Sign Up for the Free Linux Training Webinar Series: "Starting in March, The Linux Foundation will be offering free Linux Training webinars taught by well-known Linux developers directly building on their own experience. This is an excellent opportunity to learn directly from key developers and to experience a sample of the type of courses offered through our Linux Training program."

Reports

Gabriel Burt: Banshee Release Schedule: "We are aligning Banshee's release schedule with GNOME's, at least for the next few months. Banshee 1.6 will be released the same day as GNOME 2.30, and we'll have three beta releases before then."
h-online/Thorsten Leemhuis: Kernel Log: Coming in 2.6.33 (Part 2) - Storage: "Extended discard support means that Linux 2.6.33 will support ATA TRIM, which can increase SSD lifespan and throughput. New additions to the Linux kernel include HA solution DRBD and drivers for HP, LSI and VMware storage hardware. There are numerous minor improvements to the code for the Btrfs, Ext4 and ReiserFS file systems"
Miguel de Icaza: iPad - Inspirational Hardware: "As a software developer, I find the iPad inspirational. Apple's iPad is not a new idea. They are not the first ones to think of a tablet and as many blogs have pointed out the Apple iPad is not everyone's dream machine, the hardware is lacking gadgets and the software is not that amazing."
Datamation/ Sean Michael Kerner: First Internationalized Domain Names Near Completion: "The move towards a fully Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) system took a step forward today. ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has announced the first four countries that have completed a key milestone in the IDN process -- an effort to expand domain names to support non-Latin alphabets."
Pingdom: Internet 2009 in numbers: "What happened with the Internet in 2009?; How many websites were added? How many emails were sent? How many Internet users were there? This post will answer all of those questions and many more. Prepare for information overload, but in a good way. ;)"
Datamation/Sean Michael Kerner: Novell Updates SUSE Appliance Toolkit For ISVs: "To date, Novell has had strong usage of its online SUSE Studio Linux appliance development service, with over 250,000 software appliances built. Even with that success, Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL) sees a need to expand the effort with a new SUSE Appliance Toolkit providing an on-premises version of SUSE Studio, as well as a new Lifecycle Management Server to manage appliance updates."

Reviews and Essays

Datamation/Bruce Byfield: KDE vs. GNOME: Configuration and Admin Tools: "Linux has a strong do-it-yourself tradition. Although new users are transitioning rapidly to the desktop, that tradition remains. Even on the desktop, users expect to be able to administer their systems directly, and to work in an environment customized to their tastes and needs.; As the leading desktops for the operating system, GNOME and KDE reflect this tradition. Both are more adjustable and flexible than any version of Windows."
LinuxPlanet/Paul Ferrill: openSUSE Brings New Li-F-E To Schools: "It's a safe bet that the majority of K through 12 students in this country have access to a computer either at home or school. With education budget trends resembling a ski slope (downhill) it only makes sense to look to open source for help. With the 11.2 release of openSUSE comes a separate project targeted at schools and school children."
TechCrunch/Robin Wauters: NASA Astronaut Tweets From Space – For Real This Time: "Astronauts aboard the ISS received a special software upgrade earlier this week, according to a NASA statement released moments ago: personal access to the Internet and the World Wide Web via the “ultimate wireless connection”."

Warning!

Datamation/James Maguire: Is Your Password among the 20 Most Popular (and Hackable)?: "Having spoken with many security experts over the years, I've been amazed by tales of security carelessness. One common practice among the cubicle class: writing their password on little sticky notes pasted to their monitor.; But that's downright encrypted compared with the passwords people create. Researchers from Imperva analyzed 32 million hacked passwords from the recent breach at RockYou.com. They found the most common password is -- drum roll, please -- "123456"."

Upcoming Events & Meetings

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Security Updates

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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: acoread (SUSE-SA:2010:008)

Package: acroread
Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2010:008
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:00:00 +0000
Affected Products: openSUSE 11.0
openSUSE 11.1
openSUSE 11.2
SLE10-SP2
SLE10-SP3
SLED11

SUSE Security Announcement: Linux kernel (SUSE-SA:2010:007)

Package: kernel
Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2010:007
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0000
Affected Products: SLE SDK 10 SP3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 SP3
SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP3 DEBUGINFO
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP3
Vulnerability Type: remote denial of service

Statistics

Numbers in brackets show the changes compared to the previous week.

opensuse.org

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Communication
lists.opensuse.org has 37353 (-11) non-unique subscribers to all mailing lists.
The openSUSE Forums have 41224 (+294) registered users - Most users ever online was 30559, 08-Jan-2010 at 14:06.

Contributors
4208 (+28) of 10925 (+67) 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 10376 (+174) projects, 89914 (+736) packages, 18937 (+314) repositories by 20706 (+159) confirmed users.

openFATE

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Feature statistics for openSUSE 11.3:

total: 471 (+12)
unconfirmed: 302 (+11)
new: 44 (+0)
evaluation: 74 (-1)
candidate: 1 (+0)
done: 16 (+1)
rejected: 20 (+1)
duplicate: 14 (+0)

More information on openFATE

Bugzilla

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The numbers for all openSUSE project products are this week:

All Open Reports: 5078 (-3)
Blocker: 3 (+0)
Critical: 259 (+0)
Major: 855 (-6)
Normal: 2919 (+12)
Minor: 449 (-5)
Enhancements: 593 (-4)
Detailed Bugzilla Report – Submitting Bug Reports – Bug Reporting FAQ

Localization

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Daily updated translation statistics are available on the openSUSE Localization Portal.
Trunk Top-List – Localization Guide

openSUSE for your ears

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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 .

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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

Translations

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