Archive:Weekly news 148
Editors Note
We are pleased to announce our 148 issue of the openSUSE Weekly News.
We hope that you will enjoy reading.
Announcements
Run…Or Help Run!
"Election season in the openSUSE Project is just around the corner. And this means the firsts step is to organize the Election Officials committee. The openSUSE Board is inviting members to submit their name to join the Election Officials committee:
Who may join?:
- Members of the openSUSE Project
How and When?:
- Send an email to board at openSUSE dot org, with the subject line: “Election Officials Committee”. Deadline to apply for the committee is November 16. The Board will review and determine the formation of the committee by November 19. We would like to see at least one past Election Official participate for consistency. (...)"
Status Updates
Distribution
Status: Milestone3
"The most annoying M2 bug is still not fixed (Xorg crashes) and I don't consider releasing Milestone3 in this state useful ;(
So I will cancel Milestone3 and move it to hopefully next week. If we can't get to the core of it, we may need to disable compositing use in KDE."
Bugzilla
Important links:
Team Reports
Build Service Team
Build Service Statistics
Statistics can be found at http://build.opensuse.org
openFATE Team
#310773: differentiated cores performing optimal
"A goal to boost openSUSE as a service to the world:
Deliver many optimal compiled openSUSE cores aiming to outperform any individualy (gentoo) compiled system!"
#310775: Bring back sax2 for next openSUSE versions
"There are not any good solution for non-experienced users to set up X. Please bring sax2 back again."
#310778: Project Bretzn app-store to be integrated into opensuse 11.4
"http://news.opensuse.org/?p=5267
Purpose:
- Make it easy for developers to release an application
- Make it easy for developers to market and for users to learn about that application
- Make it easy for users to install the application (...)"
#310779: gtk2: cups printbackend does not provide a commandline
"gtk2's lpr printerbackend provides a commandline useful for testing, using uncommon options or printing to available but unconfigured printers.
e.g. user configured printers close to his office, but needs to print once to a printer in a different building. lpr -PFar_away_printer could do this, but this is not available in e.g. Firefox printing dialog when the cups printbackend is active. The cups printerbackend lacks this functionality and the lpr backend is said to go away."
#310780: Provide python 3 bindings when supported
"The new version of python, python 3, has been out for several years now. A lot of python bindings now support python 3. However, although openSUSE has provided python 3 for a while, it provides few, if any, python 3 versions of packages.
My suggestion is that python 2 be kept the default, but for python packages and bindings that support it, python 3 versions should be made available as well. I think the python in the name would be replaced by python3, so in additiona to python-numpy there would be python3-numpy, for example."
#310787: Intel(R) Trusted Execution Technology (Intel(R) TXT) Support
"Intel(R) Trusted Execution Technology (Intel(R) TXT) provides a hardware dynamic root of trust for measurement (D-RTM). Intel TXT can be used to reduce the trusted computing base (TCB) of system SW such as an OS kernel or hypervisor/VMM. TXT provides platform configuration protection such as memory aliasing checks, register locking, etc. It also provides reset protection via a hardware memory lock and memory scrubbing. In multi-processor systems, Intel TXT strengthens the RAS capability through CPU-rooted measurement of the BIOS and hardware-enforced protections of RAS events. Finally, TXT provides for a platform owner -controlled launch control policy. (...)"
Statistics
Feature statistics for openSUSE 11.4
More information on openFATE
Translation Team
Localization
- Daily updated translation statistics are available on the openSUSE Localization Portal.
- Trunk Top-List – Localization Guide
In the Community
Events & Meetings
Past:
- November 2, 2010: openSUSE Marketing Team Meeting
- November 3, 2010: openSUSE Board Meeting
- November 6, 2010: Brandenburger Linuxinfotag (Germany)
Upcoming:
- November 10, 2010: German Wiki Team Meeting
- November 10-12, 2010: Latinoware 2010 (Brazil)
- November 13-14, 2010: OpenRheinRuhr (Germany)
- November 16, 2010: openSUSE Marketing Team Meeting
- November 17, 2010: openSUSE Board Meeting
- November 24, 2010: German Wiki Team Meeting
- You can find more informations on other events at:
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.
From Ambassadors
Kostas Koudaras: 11.3 Late Launch Party
"Yesterday we had the party done finally.We know we were late but it turned out that it worth-ed the waiting.
What we had:
- -We had openSUSE dvd's
- -We had balloons
- -We had stickers we made
- -We had fliers we made
- -We had a Cake
- -We had party gear (horns-whistles etc.)
- -We had a Rock bar for us
- -We had me as a DJ-VJ
- -We had Stathis welcoming people
- -We had beer's (not free unfortunately ;-) )
- -We had about 25 openSUSE people
(...)
Here are the first photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/warlordfff
more photos and videos are about to be released soon."
openSUSE in $COUNTRY
"Details"
Communication
Contributors
New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE
Packman: aegisub 2.1.8-0
"Aegisub is an advanced subtitle editor that assists in the creation of subtitles, translations, and complex overlays using audio or video. Developed by enthusiasts it builds on workflows created and perfected through professional, hobby, and everyday use."
Packman: gpac 0.4.5-1
"GPAC is a multimedia framework for MPEG-4, VRML/X3D and SVG/SMIL.
GPAC is built upon an implementation of the MPEG-4 Systems standard (ISO/IEC 14496-1) developed from scratch in C.
The main development goal is to provide a clean (a.k.a. readable by as many people as possible), small and flexible alternative to the MPEG-4 Systems reference software (known as IM1 and distributed in ISO/IEC 14496-5). (...)"
Packman: mkvtoolnix 4.2.0-1
"Tools to create and manipulate Matroska files (extensions .mkv and .mka), a new container format for audio and video files. Includes command line tools mkvextract, mkvinfo, mkvmerge, and a graphical front-end for them, mkvmerge-gui."
Packman: OpenSceneGraph 2.8.3-0
"The OpenSceneGraph is an OpenSource, cross platform graphics toolkit for the development of high performance graphics applications such as flight simulators, games, virtual reality and scientific visualization. Based around the concept of a SceneGraph, it provides an object oriented framework on top of OpenGL freeing the developer from implementing and optimizing low level graphics calls, and provides many additional utilities for rapid development of graphics applications."
Packman: FrostWire 4.20.6_svn1467-0
"FrostWire is a gnutella client written in Java. It supports a number of advanced features like ultrapeers (like FastTrack's supernodes), automatic download retries, freeloader punishment, etc. (...)"
Packman: gxine 0.5.905-1
"This is a GTK+ based GUI for the libxine video player library.
It provides gxine, a media player that can play all the audio/video formats
that libxine supports. Currently, this includes MPEG1/2, some AVI and
Quicktime files, some network streaming methods and disc based media (VCD,
SVCD, DVD). (...)"
OBS openSUSE:11.3:Update/flash-player r4 commited
"Updated to install_flash_player_10_r102.64"
OBS openSUSE:11.3:Update/seamonkey r4 commited
"Updated to seamonkey-2.0.10"
OBS openSUSE:11.3:Update/MozillaThunderbird r4 commited
"Updated to thunderbird-3.0.10"
OBS openSUSE:11.3:Update/mozilla-xulrunner191 r3 commited
"Updated to xulrunner-source-1.9.1.15"
OBS openSUSE:11.3:Update/MozillaFirefox r3 commited
"Updated to firefox-3.6.12"
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: Linux kernel (SUSE-SA:2010:054)
- Package: kernel
- Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2010:052
- Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2010 12:00:00 +0000
- Affected Products: openSUSE 11.1
- SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability
- Extension 11
- SLE 11 SERVER Unsupported Extras
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
SUSE Security Announcement: flash-player (SUSE-SA:2010:055)
- Package: flash-player
- Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2010:055
- Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2010 10:00:00 +0000
- Affected Products: openSUSE 11.1
- openSUSE 11.2
- openSUSE 11.3
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 SP1
SUSE Security Summary Report: SUSE-SR:2010:020
- Announcement ID: SUSE-SR:2010:020
- Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2010 12:00:00 +0000
- Cross-References: CVE-2009-4023, CVE-2009-4111, CVE-2010-0213
- CVE-2010-1172, CVE-2010-2547, CVE-2010-3170
- CVE-2010-3433, CVE-2010-3434, CVE-2010-3706
- CVE-2010-3707, CVE-2010-3996
Kernel Review
Rares Aioanei: kernel weekly news – 06.11.2010
"Hi everyone and welcome to this week’s edition of fresh kernel news!"
Tips and Tricks
For Desktop Users
Linux.com/Joe Brockmeier: Get Your Music Fix From Amazon MP3 on Linux with Clamz
"Music loving Linux users take note: Though Amazon hasn't updated its Linux downloader for Amazon MP3 in ages, you can still get your MP3 fix off Amazon using clamz.
Amazon MP3 offers a really good selection of DRM-free music, including a fairly hefty selection of free songs and sampler albums. But Linux users have been getting the short end of the stick from Amazon lately, because the retail giant rarely updates the MP3 download client for Linux. That's not a big deal if you're just buying a single song, but it's a prerequisite for downloading Amazon albums. (...)"
Tech Drive-in/rationalbeing: 13 Beautiful Inkscape Tutorials for Creating Stunning Vector Graphics
"Inkscape is an open source SVG graphics editor released under GNU General Public License. Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. Here are some useful tutorials for creating amazing vector graphics using Inkscape. Also see beautiful wallpapers made using Inkscape. (...)"
For System Administrators
Brandon Philips: ghar: managing your $HOME in git
"For awhile I have struggled with rsyncing dotfiles between my development machines, laptop and workstation. As a Kernel developer I usually have one or more machines in a half broken state so being able to continue work in a familiar environment on one of the working ones is important.
A year ago Gavin, Graham and I worked up a plan to manage and sync home directory dotfiles with git. But, unlike other solutions we didn't want everything in one big git repo. Why? For example on a remote build machine I don't want my abook synced over but I do want my git and vimrc. Our original implementation didn't work out, as I explain below, but my new rewrite of our idea is working great. (...)"
nixCraft/Vivek Gite: Linux: Find Out Which Process Is Listening Upon a Port
"How do I find out running processes were associated with each open port? How do I find out what process has open tcp port 111 or udp port 7000 under Linux?
You can the following programs to find out about port numbers and its associated process: (...)"
HowtoForge/Falko Timme: OpenSUSE 11.3 Samba Standalone Server With tdbsam Backend
"This tutorial explains the installation of a Samba fileserver on OpenSUSE 11.3 and how to configure it to share files over the SMB protocol as well as how to add users. Samba is configured as a standalone server, not as a domain controller. In the resulting setup, every user has his own home directory accessible via the SMB protocol and all users have a shared directory with read-/write access. (...)"
Linux.com/Robert Haas: Using Replication in PostgreSQL 9.0
"The recent PostgreSQL 9.0 release offers several significant improvements to PostgreSQL's built-in replication solution. Ready to add replication to your PostgreSQL install? It's easier than you might think.
Planet SUSE
Thomas Schraitle: Merging SVN Repositories Explained
"Adding files to a SVN server is usually a task done in seconds. However, having several independent SVN repositories and wanting to “combine” them, this is not trivial—especially if you want to preserve the history.
The doc team had had three different, independent repositories on BerliOS (opensuse-ha-doc, opensuse-docmaker, and opensuse-lfl) all holding separate information. This was a bit silly, so my task was to consolidate them into opensuse-doc by keeping all history. (...)"
Rajko Matovic: DKMS in openSUSE
"AJ requested DKMS which is the good news.
What is not so good are some comments that oppose need for DKMS.
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) ideals are nice, and very special word in that name is Free, like freedom. Creating obstacles that will limit users ability to use what works for them will not help us, nor FOSS. We can recommend opensource software and install it by default, but we can't make sure that it works for everyone, in which case giving that as the only choice is forcing users to give up on Linux, or go elsewhere. Does that help to build user base? (...)"
Jos Poortvliet: talk about openSUSE
"Yes, this will be all about me. Sometimes I need to whine a bit.
openSUSE Forums
Java Problem
"I guess we shouldn't enjoy issues like this, but there is something satisfying about working through them. Java isn't 100% in Linux by any means."
libdvdcss in Packman
"This proved to be a highlight of the week. Causing some raised eyebrows anyway, soon to be followed by glum looks."
Flash Exploit - How does it Effect me?
"Should I/we be worried about this in Linux? Good question, followed by a interesting discussion."
What Happened to My Zypper?
"An intriguingly titled question. The answer is much less so. Have a look at the quick fix."
On the Web
Announcements
Download the Free Linux Foundation Publication 'Self-Assessment Checklist'
"The Linux Foundation has compiled this extensive checklist of compliance practices found in industry-leading compliance programs. Companies can use this checklist as a confidential internal tool to assess their progress in implementing a rigorous compliance process and to help them prioritize their process improvement efforts.
The Self-Assessment Checklist is constructed using at least two concepts from well-established models of process maturity such as the Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model: (...)"
KDE Ships November Updates: 4.5.3
"November 3rd, 2010. Today, KDE has released a series of updates to the Plasma Desktop and Netbook workspaces, the KDE Applications and the KDE Platform. This update is the third in a series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.5 series. 4.5.3 brings bugfixes and translation updates on top of KDE SC 4.5 series and is a recommended update for everyone running 4.5.2 or earlier versions. As the release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone. KDE SC 4 is already translated into more than 55 languages, with more to come. (...)"
Linuxfoundation: China Mobile Joins Linux Foundation as Gold Member
"SAN FRANCISCO, November 2, 2010 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that China Mobile Communications Corporation (”China Mobile”), whose holding company is majority shareholder of China Mobile Ltd. (NYSE: CHL), has become a Gold member, marking the first time a Chinese enterprise has joined The Linux Foundation.
China Mobile is the world’s largest telecom operator by market value. It also ranks as the largest carrier in the world in terms of customer base and the scale of its network, through which it provides mobile services including voice data, IP telephony and multimedia. China Mobile has recently been investing in Linux, in its OPhone mobile operating system, and has developed a cloud computing system based on open source software. Its membership in The Linux Foundation shows its further commitment to the Linux platform. (...)"
Call for participation
LenZ Grimmer: Call for Papers: "MySQL and Friends" Developer Room at FOSDEM 2011 (Feb. 5th, Brussels, BE)
"FOSDEM bannerIt's that time of the year again — the nice folks at FOSDEM have granted us a developer room at their upcoming conference (February 5+6 2011 in Brussels, Belgium)!
As usual there were more applications than they were able to accommodate, so we are very grateful for this opportunity for collaboration. Titled "MySQL and Friends", our room next year will be H.2213 with a capacity of 100 seats. It will be at our disposal on Saturday 5th, from 13:00 till 19:00. Like last year, we would like to set up a schedule of talks related to the MySQL server and the various projects that surround it. Each talk will last 20 minutes, plus 5 minutes of Q&A and a 5 minute break for switching speakers, giving us 12 slots in total to fill with excellent tech talks. Take a look at this year's schedule for some examples! I hope we can assemble an even more exciting and interesting schedule for next year. (...)"
Reports
Phoronix/Michael Larabel: KDE Developers Discuss Merging Libraries With Qt
"Well, here's some interesting weekend news: there's a polarized discussion taking place right now among core KDE developers about merging the KDE libraries into upstream Qt. Cornelius Schumacher, a long-time German KDE developer and currently the KDE e.V. president, has come out yesterday saying, "Let's merge Qt and the KDE development platform. Let's put all KDE libraries, support libraries, platform modules into Qt, remove the redundancies in Qt, and polish it into one nice consistent set of APIs, providing both, the wonderful KDE integration, consistency and convenience, as well as the simplicity and portability of the Qt platform." (...)"
Tech Drive-in/rationalbeing: Making of Sintel Open Movie - Documentary Video
"Sintel Open Movie was released last month and it was an instant hit among developers and movie lovers alike. Now it's time for some real learning. If those awesome blender tutorials were not enough for you, may be you should watch this making of Sintel Open Movie documentary video as a first step. (...)"
Reviews and Essays
Datamation/Matt Hartley: Improving The Linux Desktop: 20 Needed Fixes
"I love using Linux. I enjoy the control over the computing experience it affords me and how I can choose exactly how my desktop is to be run.
I'm not some guy writing Linux articles on a Windows box or a Mac. I "live Linux" exclusively, every-single-day. And I have done this for years.
That said, I’ve put myself into the position of those who are new to desktop Linux or simply overwhelmed by something within the platform. With this article, I hope to address new ideas alongside some challenges that I believe, if dealt with realistically, would make using Linux more accessible for everyone. (...)"
VoxEU.org/Sebastian v. Engelhardt, Andreas Freytag, Stephen M Maurer: Open vs closed source software: The quest for balance
"Governments are increasingly interested in promoting open source software. Yet policymakers have seldom laid out any clear theoretical or empirical justification for these policies. This column explores recent studies suggesting that open source and proprietary software strengthen each other and should co-exist – too much open source could actually be a bad thing. (...)"
Warning!
Digitizor/Ricky: Koobface Can Infect Linux Systems Too – But That is An Accident
"Koobface is a trojan that has been going around in social networking sites like – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc. It originally started as a Windows only trojan. But a few days ago, a new variant emerged which can infect both Mac OS X and Linux.
Feedback / Communicate / Get Involved
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Credits
- saigkill Talk - Contributions Sascha Manns (Editor in Chief)
- 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
