Archive:Weekly news 47

Welcome to issue #47 of openSUSE Weekly News!

In this week:

• openSUSE 11.1 Beta 5.1 for PowerPC Released
• Fresh Factory Live-CDs
• People of openSUSE: Vincent Untz
• ARM Support for openSUSE Buildservice and openSUSE
• First SUSE Studio Production

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Announcements

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openSUSE 11.1 Beta 5.1 for PowerPC Released

• "The Beta5 DVD and NET ISO images for PowerPC have just been replaced by Beta5.1 ISO images. The only change is the way the ISOs are created - now they are bootable media. There is a Delta-ISO from Beta5 DVD to Beta5.1 available in case you have Beta5 downloaded."

In the Community

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People of openSUSE: Vincent Untz

• "Continuing the last ‘People of openSUSE” interviews with people involved in the openSUSE Board Elections Committee, today we introduce you another member - Vincent Untz. Vincent is a Novell employee working 101% of his time for the openSUSE and GNOME projects, non-stop! ;-) ..."

Opensuse 11.1 Launch Party

• "There has been this site for the last couple releases. People that want to organize one or list one in their area, I've asked that they list it here so that people will know about it. ..."

Status Updates

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Build Service

• Build Service Team Meeting - Minutes from the meeting.
• Martin Mohring: ARM support for openSUSE Buildservice and openSUSE "ARM architecture going more to desktop style applications had been in press frequently during the last weeks. On top of were press releases of ARM and canonical officially announcing an ubuntu port in one of the next releases for the ARM architecture. Applications are more of type nettop or advanced PDA like the nokia n810, than what is currently known as traditional embedded applications (just to name a few examples).[...]But now to the delicate question to you, the openSUSE and openSUSE Buildservice user. You might have noticed that two things are missing in what I am writing: ARM support in the official OBS and an ARM port of the openSUSE Distribution. The latter can now be implemented with the OBS, since OBS is already capable of building the complete openSUSE distribution. When openSUSE 11.1 is released, there is a good time to lean back and consider what we should do next."

Distribution

• Stephan Kulow: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/FactoryLiveCDs: "I guess you missed them - I have put a new set of live cds online. Fresh as of 8am CEST this morning."
• Status openSUSE Factory: "We split out openSUSE:11.1 in the build service to generate the RC1 isos out of the official tree (with correct rpm headers and the like). Due to this openSUSE:Factory gets less build power and factory updates will happen less frequently till after 11.1 release."

Tips and Tricks

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Ciaran Farell: Updated python-turbogears to 1.0.7

"Last weekend I spent some time on getting python-turbogears to build for Factory. In the process, I came across a spec file error which was causing not only python-turbogears to fail on Factory, but also dozens of other python packages. The problem was the spec file line..."

Solomon Asare: Speed up your Internet access using Squid's refresh patterns

"Bandwidth limitation is still a problem for a lot of people who connect to the Internet. You can improve your available bandwidth by installing Squid caching proxy server on your network with configuration parameters that will increase your byte hit rate, giving you about 30-60% more bandwidth. Squid can be fine-tuned to satisfy a host of needs. The stable version has at least 249 configurable parameters. The heavily commented configuration file, usually found in /etc/squid.conf, is more than 4,600 lines long. This can be intimidating to even experienced administrators. All settings are to be modified in this file. ..."

New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE

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• "Griffith 0-10.beta1 Griffith is a film collection manager application written in python/pygtk. Adding items to the film collection is as quick and easy as typing the film title and selecting a supported source. Griffith will then try to fetch all the related information from the Web."

• "LyX 1.5.7/1.6.0 updated LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. LyX is for people that write and want their writing to look great, right out of the box. No more endless tinkering with formatting details, 'finger painting' font attributes or fuzzing around with page boundaries. You just write. In the background, Prof. Knuth's legendary TeX typesetting engine makes you look good. Read full Article: here."

Planet SUSE

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Covering just a few posts from Planet SUSE, an aggregation of all SUSE contributors' blogs:

Jan Kupec: Zypper 1.0.0

• "We're closing to the release of openSUSE 11.1 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 11. Since zypper's releases are tightly tied to those of openSUSE, this is also an important milestone for zypper. Thus, the next release of zypper will have version 1.0.0. This marks more than two years of zypper's development and the outset of implementation of new nice features. ..."

Josef Reidinger: New Software in Build Service

• "I try testing xfce4 desktop and find some bugs. But I also find that some really interesting missing in opensuse build service, so I add two new applications to build service (gnome community repository…but now gaupol is available only in my personal repository, because in gnome pygtk wait for python 1.6) - osmo and gaupol. ..."

Stephan Binner: openSUSE 11.1-Introduction to KDE4

• "Another small idea we realized for openSUSE 11.1 is a link in the first-login greeter to a "Introduction to KDE4" page. Originally written for the greeter (hence the current layout and shortness) the text ended in the wiki because we were past openSUSE translation freeze. The wiki solution also allows extension anytime (feedback and translations welcome). Its purpose is to give new KDE users and KDE3 switchers some (openSUSE-specific) explanations and hints for a good KDE4 start."

Aaron Bockover: A couple of ideas for contributing to Banshee

• "Jono’s blog post about Banshee Kickin’ it has some interesting comments that I’d like to address, specifically regarding the new track editor and Internet Radio in the recently released Banshee 1.4."

Cameron Seader: About Time… Linux 64-bit Flash Player

• "This has been a long time in the waiting. I have been using a 64-bit Workstation for a few years now and finally i don’t have to wait much longer to run a 64-bit Browser with a 64-bit Flash Player. Woohoo! Prior to this release 32-bit Flash Player on 64-bit Linux has required the use of a plugin wrapper, which prevents full compatibility with 64-bit browsers. Some would just run all 32-bit browser and plugins to get the best support on their 64-bit Linux. ..."

Andrew Wafaa: FIRST STUDIO PRODUCTION

• "After my post, Follow The Netbook Road, I was granted access to SUSE Studio to try and help out with the creation of my proposal - Thanks Nat, Cornelius and team. There was a bit of grumbling about Studio and why was it invitation only etc etc, but to be honest I think the invitation method was the best way to gradually stress test the service. Any way that's not what I'm here to talk about, not yet at least :-) ..."

Duncan Mac-Vicar P.: ZYpp and SAT solver documentation now available

• "We have cleaned up the main pages of libzypp and satsolver, mainly to introduce a new feature. Since today, there is developer documentation generated on every svn build from our cruise control system (continuous build), available for trunk and branches."

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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 Summary Report: SUSE-SR:2008:025

• Announcement ID: SUSE-SR:2008:025
• Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:00:00 +0000
• Cross-References: CVE-2007-4324, CVE-2007-6243, CVE-2007-6716
• CVE-2008-1673, CVE-2008-2812, CVE-2008-2931
• CVE-2008-3272, CVE-2008-3525, CVE-2008-3527
• CVE-2008-3528, CVE-2008-3651, CVE-2008-3652
• CVE-2008-3833, CVE-2008-3873, CVE-2008-3963
• CVE-2008-4097, CVE-2008-4098, CVE-2008-4210

On the Web

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Dedoimedo: openSUSE 11 - Review & Tutorial

• "openSUSE 11 is a very nice, well rounded distribution. It is a significant improvement from previous versions. Compared to version 10.1, which I tested more than two years ago, it is much easier for new users - and more beautiful. The blue-green scheme is absolutely lovely."

Nikesh Jauhari: Adobe Flash Player 10 installation on OpenSuSe

• "With Flash Player 10, Adobe is focusing on building "expressive" applications for the Web, said Tom Barclay, Adobe senior product marketing manager for Flash Player. Applications can be deployed including online video, rich Internet applications, online games, and other interactive experiences. Built-in support for 3D is featured, as opposed to the third-party support previously offered. Developers can work in 2D and transform 2D objects into the 3D space. ..."

Nikesh Jauhari: Webmin installation and configuration on OpenSuSe

• "Webmin, developed by Jamie Cameron, acts as a comprehensive interface to the underlying applications on servers, including support for configuring applications like ftp, ssh, mail, Web, databases and more. Differing from other control panels, the core Webmin interface is intended for system administrators with root access to their servers, and includes a user-based package to enable your users (or clients) to access their own domains, email, and more, within a limited scope. Webmin supports running under SSL. ..."

Editors Note

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The openSUSE Weekly Newsletter Team always welcomes participators. We need especially:

• Editors for parts of the main weekly newsletter
• Translators
• People from different sections of the openSUSE project to post news from the subprojects

If you want to join the team, please visit the "OpenSUSE Weekly News/Team" page on the Wiki or contact to dl9pf/at/opensuse.org.

Statistics

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Numbers in brackets show the changes compared to last week.

Communication

lists.opensuse.org has 36160 (+12) non-unique subscribers to all mailing lists. The openSUSE Forums have 15687 (+397) registered users - most users including guests ever online was 1642, 07-Oct-2008 at 21:24.

Contributors

1807 (+24) of 3152 (+38) registered contributors in the User Directory have signed the Guiding Principles. The board has acknowledged 212 members.

Build Service

The Build Service now hosts 4483 (+62) projects, 55792 (+4176) packages, 8900 (+167) repositories by 10379 (+144) confirmed users.

Bugzilla

The numbers for all openSUSE project products are this week:

• All Open Reports: 4387 (-16)
• Blocker: 13 (-1)
• Critical: 238 (-8)
• Major: 715 (-6)
• Normal: 2337 (-37)
• Minor: 468 (+23)
• Enhancements: 616 (+13)

Detailed Bugzilla Report – Submitting Bug Reports – Bug Reporting FAQ

Translations

Daily updated translation statistics are available on the openSUSE Localization Portal.

Trunk Top-List – Localization Guide

Feedback / Communicate / Get Involved

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Credits

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• Jan-Simon Möller
• Stephan Binner
• Sascha Manns

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