Archive:Weekly news 56
Welcome to issue # 56 of openSUSE Weekly News
In this Week:
- FOSDEM 2009
- Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
- Novell’s 2009 Technical Strategy and Process
- NTFS-3g - writing to windows partition
- Preview/Fix broken AVI files in openSUSE
Editors Note
We are pleased to announce our new layout. The template was initiated by our hungarian translator. We hope you enjoy reading issue 56.
In the Community
- Martin Lasarsch: FOSDEM 2009
"One of our favorite shows for sure, and again we will be there with a lot of people. I’m also happy that Novell sponsors the event, because we think it’s quite important and we like the guys :-)" - opensuse-web: 2009-web-ToDos
"I would like to discuss possible www.opensuse.org-todos for 2009 with you."
Status Updates
Distribution
- Transcript from KDE-Team Meeting
"KDE-Team Meeting 21 Jan 2009"
Build Service
- Minutes from Build Service Team Meeting
"Minutes from the Meeting"
Wiki / Communication / Events
- Minutes from openSUSE Weekly News Team Meeting
"Minutes from 17. January 2009"
Tips and Tricks
- susegeek.com: Kdenlive - Free opensource video editor in openSUSE
"Kdenlive free open-source non-linear video editor for KDE. Kdenlive is an intuitive and powerful multi-track video editor, including most recent video technologies. It relies on a separate renderer, piave, to handle it’s rendering. Kdenlive is easy to use for all levels of users from novice to advanced video editors. Kdenlive is built upon MLT and ffmpeg frameworks, which provide unique features to mix virtually any kind of media." - Masim Sugianto: Tutorial : openSUSE Network Install over PXE-Boot Part I
"Masim Sugianto wrote a nice tutorial about PXE-Boot Installation." - CWE/SANS: Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
"The 2009 CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors is a list of the most significant programming errors that can lead to serious software vulnerabilities. They occur frequently, are often easy to find, and easy to exploit. They are dangerous because they will frequently allow attackers to completely take over the software, steal data, or prevent the software from working at all. ..." - Nikesh Jauhari: How to restrict features of the KDE desktop for users on OpenSuse 11.x
"KIOSK Admin Tool is a KDE administration tool that offers system administrators an easy way to predefine desktop configurations for groups of users, lock down settings or otherwise restrict features of the KDE desktop environment." - Sascha Manns: Howto-Importing the news.opensuse.org Calendar with autoupdate
"I’m very happy. Regularly i’m checkin the Calendar from news.opensuse.org for my work in OpenSUSE Weekly News. It is possible to Download the actual Calendar as *.ics File. But as i understand this, this is a Snapshot. The Calendar not updated himself regularly. So i tried this:..."
New/Updated Applications @ OpenSUSE
- OpenOffice_org 3.0.1 rc1 available
" OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 rc1 packages are available in the Build Service OpenOffice:org:UNSTABLE project." - Qps Visual Process manager (X11 ps) in openSUSE
"Qps Visual Process Manager is an X11 version of “top” or “ps” that displays processes in a window and lets you sort and manipulate them. It displays some general system information, and many details about current processes (such as the TCP/UDP sockets in use by a process). Qps runs on Linux and Solaris. 1-Click-Installation available. Otherwise use Packman Repository" - Banshee 1.4.2 Released
" Banshee 1.4.2 is a stable release with many bug fixes and minor improvements. Fixed and improved are RSS feed parsing, library rescanning, occasional startup freezes, launching on device insertion, several crashers, and improved playback on OS X (still a technology preview/alpha release). Get it now!"
Planet SUSE
- Arvin Schnell: Graph of Storage Devices
"With openSUSE 11.1 on the road we developers can use some time for new ideas. One idea on my mind for month was to show the dependencies of storage devices in a graph. Using graphviz and QGraphicsScene a first version was running within few days." - Andrew Wafaa: The big belgian meetup
"Yes people I'm going to FOSDEM (again) :-) I've booked my ferry crossing from Blighty to France and hope to have a pleasant drive over to Brussels. As I mentioned previously I am planning on doing a bit more "Marketing" type pieces; mainly getting my camcorder out for "Face 2 Face @ FOSDEM", this will basically entail me shoving my camcorder in people's faces, asking a few questions etc." - Andreas Schneider: Geocaching, Garmin and Linux
"I’m a Geocacher and I’ve bought a new toy, the Garmin Vista HCx. This device has a special function for Geocaching. You have to upload these files directly to the device. It isn’t possible to store them on the microSD." - Klaus Kämpf: About memory ownership in SWIG and Python
"Today, a long-standing bug in libyui-bindings was finally fixed. libyui-bindings provides SWIG based bindings for Ruby, Python and Perl to access libyui functionality. libyui is the YaST user interface library, allowing to write dialogs in a generic way so they can be displayed in text (ncurses) or graphical (Qt) environments." - Jeff Jaffe: Novell’s 2009 Technical Strategy and Process
"In my last blog, I began to outline four aspects of how we achieve our strategy and long-term roadmap. The four areas were: 1.) Leadership. Why our products lead the industry. 2.) Delivery. In the “engine room”—how we build those products, what processes result in leadership, and our commitment to interoperability as a design point in every product. 3.) Incubation. How we take breakout ideas and make them into businesses. 4.) Strategy and Vision. Fossa, our overarching technical strategy. Novell is an industry leader in next generation technologies and standards." - Katarina Machalkova: YaST partitioner tip and bright future ahead :)
"Recently Jozef approached my desk and asked for help with "unsolvable" partitioner problem: during installation, he opened a console and created custom partitioning setup using fdisk. Then, not suprisingly, he wanted the partitioner to discard proposed setup and pick up the one he made. I must have had a blackout at that time (too little coffee, maybe :) ), but I was simply unable to help. We ended up clicking just about everywhere, mostly on "Back" buttons in installation workflow, without much success." - Stefan Hundhammer: Tabbed Browsing for Packages"
"There are many approaches to managing software packages. Some users like to use command line tools like zypper. Others prefer a GUI tool like the YaST2 package selector. And even within such a GUI tool, there are many ways to deal with the packages you’d like to install, update or remove: Install a bunch of packages that make up a functionality like “KDE desktop” or “web development”, find one specific package with a known name, or just look through packages that are available. That’s why there are different filter views for those different approaches."
openSUSE Forums
- Lee Matheson: Convert PAL DVD title track to NTSC DVD
"Forum moderator oldcpu explains how to convert PAL DVD to NTSC DVD utilizing several CLI and GUI tools available via Packman for all supported openSUSE versions." - NTFS-3g - writing to windows partition
"openSUSE 11.1 ships with NTFS-3G by default, while writable access to NTFS partitions is initially disabled. To change this behaviour some manual adjustments to your /etc/fstab are required. This forums thread links to a comprehensive howto of our forums moderator swerdna, you should be aware of if you have to deal with this task."
On the Web
- linuxpoison.blogspot.com: Linux terminal server (RDP) on OpenSuse 11.1
"Based on the work of rdesktop, xrdp uses the remote desktop protocol to present a GUI to the user." - Susegeek: DivFix++ - Preview/Fix broken AVI files in openSUSE
"DivFix++ is a free opensource GUI utility to repair/fix broken AVI files. DivFix++ is designed to repair broken AVI file streams by rebuilding index part of file. This is very useful when trying to preview movies which has no index part." - KDE.news: KBasic Brings BASIC to Qt World
"KBasic is a new programming language similar to Visual Basic. It combines the best features of those tools and comes with built-in backward support for those tools as it is 100% syntax compatible to VB and QBasic. It is written with Qt making it entirely cross platform. The Full Version Professional Edition is available to download for KDE now. It follows the old Qt licencing of being GPL licenced for Free Software and commercially sold for proprietary software." - Sascha Manns: Flashrom Utility for Linux (part1)
"This blog entry is a little bit OffTopic. I’m writing not about an openSUSE Theme, but about Linux. Last week i’ve chatted with the guys in #coreboot @ freenode and it was very interesting. This article based on an collaborative PR Project from Carl-Daniel Hailfinger. This first Part of the Article presents Flashrom. The next Article presents Coreboot...."
Past Events & Meetings
Upcoming Events & Meetings
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 Summary Report
- Package: imlib2, valgrind, kvm, cups, lynx, xterm
- Announcement ID: SUSE-SR:2009:002
- Date: Jan 19, 2009
- SUSE Security Announcement: Linux kernel (SUSE-SA:2009:003)
- Package: kernel-debug
- Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2009:003
- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:00:00 +0000
- SUSE Security Announcement: Linux kernel (SUSE:2009:004)
- Package: kernel
- Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2009:004
- Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:00:00 +0000
- SUSE Security Announcement: bind (SUSE-SA:2009:005)
- Package: bind
- Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2009:005
- Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 12:00:00 +0000
- SUSE Security Announcement: OpenSSL certificate verification problem (SUSE-SA:2009:006)
- Package: openssl
- Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2009:006
- Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:00:00 +0000
Statistics
Numbers in brackets show the changes compared to the previous week.
opensuse.org
Communication
lists.opensuse.org has 36466 (-17) non-unique subscribers to all mailing lists.
The openSUSE Forums have 20663 (+521) registered users - most users including guests ever online was 7771, 02-Dec-2008 at 17:31.
Contributors
2222 (+50) of 4402 (+360) registered contributors in the User Directory have signed the Guiding Principles. The board has acknowledged 260 members.
Build Service
The Build Service now hosts 5059 (+45) projects, 60486 (+338) packages, 9883 (+108) repositories by 11768 (+128) confirmed users.
Bugzilla
The numbers for all openSUSE project products are this week:
- All Open Reports: 4729 (-106)
- Blocker: 6 (+1)
- Critical: 259 (-9)
- Major: 767 (-37)
- Normal: 2524 (-38)
- Minor: 493 (-5)
- Enhancements: 680 (-18)
- 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
Feedback / Communicate / Get Involved
Do you have comments on any of the things mentioned in this article? Then head right over to the news.opensuse.org story comment section and let us know! Communicate with or get help from the wider openSUSE community -- via IRC, forums, or mailing lists -- see Communicate.
If you would like to be a part of the openSUSE Weekly news, then please send an email over to opensuse-marketing@opensuse.org (you need to subscribe first). Or you can go to the channel #opensuse-newsletter on irc.freenode.net.
Credits
- Jan-Simon Möller (Chief-Editor)
- Sascha Manns (Second Chief-Editor, Main-Newsletter)
- Stephan Binner (Main-Newsletter and Statistics)
- Rupert Horstkötter (Main-Newsletter, openSUSE-Forums)
- Dinar Valeev (GNOME Section in New/updated Applications @ OpenSUSE)
