Archive:Weekly news 82

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Welcome to issue # 82 of openSUSE Weekly News

In this Week:

  • Milestone 4 released
  • Hackweek IV Results
  • Vincent Danen: System monitoring with Conky
  • Joe Brockmeier: Does openSUSE need a default desktop?
  • openSUSE Forums: Firefox and _64 Java Issue

Announcements

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Ready to Rumble: openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 4 Released
"Looking for some summer fun? Try the latest milestone release for openSUSE 11.2! Milestone 4 is hot off the openSUSE Build Service and ready for your testing pleasure.This release includes updates to KDE, GNOME, NetworkManager, Samba, YaST, and many other updated packages.
This is a Milestone Release, one of several that lead up to the 11.2 final release in November. It may not be suitable for production systems, but is ready for contributors who want to help with testing and development for 11.2."
SUSE Studio Launch!
"Its not every day something this cool is announced and released: SUSE Studio is finally ready to go live. For those of you that don’t know what SUSE Studio is, it is a web based appliance builder. It allows you to take either Novell’s SLE11 (Enterprise Server or Desktop) or openSUSE 11.1 as your base OS and customize it however you want. With any image base, one could completely build a custom appliance from the bootsplash to software to the last character in a file."
openSUSE Conference Keynote Announcement - Register Today to Attend!
"The openSUSE Project is proud to announce the first confirmed keynote for the first-ever openSUSE Conference. The openSUSE Conference is an opportunity for openSUSE contributors to attend talks, workshops, Birds of a Feather sessions, and collaborate together face to face. The conference will be held from September 17 through September 20 in Nürnberg, Germany. Register today to reserve your spot!"
Michael Löffler: Welcome new openSUSE members
"The openSUSE Board is pleased to announce a number of new openSUSE members and we reached currently 330 openSUSE members. See the list below or just browse the membership list for more details. We’re happy that we accomplished another round of approvals and want encourage everybody who shows continued and substantial contribution to the openSUSE project to apply for membership. ..."


In the Community

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Pavol Rusnak: Hackweek: Game Store
"This week we had Hack Week event when everyone was welcome to use Innovation time on FOSS projects or even start the new one! I spent most of the time on hacking the Game Store, which I introduced in my previous blogpost. The package is now ready for you in the Build Service. Simply use the following One Click Install files: ..."
Mario Carrion: Hackweek IV: Gwibber + Sharing
"I decided to try something different this Hackweek to learn a programming language and get involved into another exciting software libre project. There were too many options, too many good projects to work on. I selected gwibber because of three reasons:..."
Kohei Yoshida: HackWeek - Minor polish
"First, I wanted to implement animated border to outline pasted ranges. Currently, pasted ranges are outlined with static solid borders, but it was not always obvious to the users what those borders were for. Excel and Gnumeric, for instance, use animated dashed borders, which look more intuitive than static borders to depict pasted ranges. Long story short, we now have animated dashed borders in Calc as well. ..."
Brent McConnell: iFolder Bug Fixing Contest
A contest is getting underway within the iFolder project. From now till 8/14/2009 you can collect points for closing and/or fixing bugs in iFolder. If you are able to verify a bug is fixed and close it you are entitled to 1 point, fix a WARNING 2pts, and if you actually provide a patch to a bug you get 3 points. As things get going I will publish a leaderboard on the community website. I also have acquired a few computer bags for giveaways. Community members with the most points will receive the bags. Rules and how to play are here


Status Updates

Board


Distribution

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Stephan Kulow: factory live cds
"Hi, The factory live isos (as of d.o.o/factory/iso) are now also hybrid ISOs to be deployed on USB - and on the bright side this also means that the 422K isos are history :)"


Tips and Tricks

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TechRepublic/Vincent Danen: System monitoring with Conky
"My number one favorite system monitor used to be Gkrellm, a small GUI tool that displays system information such as CPU usage, memory and hard drive usage, network throughput, and so forth. Recently, I discovered Conky, which is another system monitoring tool that works extremely well. One of the nice advantages to Conky is that it can operate in a window-less mode, so it persistently anchors to the desktop, preventing it from being moved or closed."
Domnic Mendes: Check MySQL Database Size Using SQL Query
"Don't have access to the command prompt? Here's how you can find the database size in MySQL. Become a power MySQL user without access to the power of command line."


New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE

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Petr Mladek: OpenOffice_org 3.1.1 beta1 available for openSUSE
"I’m happy to announce OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 beta1 packages for openSUSE. They are available in the Build Service OpenOffice:org:UNSTABLE project and include many upstream and Go-oo fixes. Please, look for more details about the openSUSE OOo build on the wiki page. ..."
Association Subscribers Manager 3.0
"Association Subscribers Manager is software designed to manage members of associations. An "association" can be a club sport, a music club, etc.; it is highly customizable. It can manage groups of several thousand members. It is written in C++ with Qt 4 as a GUI framework. All generated files are in an XML-based format to guarantee interoperability. Download via: http://packages.opensuse-community.org/index.jsp?searchTerm=assuma"
OBS openSUSE:Factory/anjuta
"Updated to anjuta-2.27.5.0. available in: http://packages.opensuse-community.org/index.jsp?searchTerm=anjuta"


Planet SUSE


Joe Brockmeier: Does openSUSE need a default desktop?
"The most popular feature in openFATE (at least of this writing) is a proposal from KDE e.V. member Frank Karlitschek to make KDE the “default” in openSUSE. Michael Loeffler has also blogged about this and put it on the opensuse-project mailing list."
James Ogley: Summer of Code: Sync with Mobile Devices?
"One of the openSUSE projects for this year's Google Summer of Code was Sync with Mobile Devices."
Andreas Jaeger: Small openSUSE Build Service Tips
"I talked yesterday with Coolo about the openSUSE Build Service and mentioned that I have now a lot of branched projects in my home project since I looked at many different packages that have different devel packages. He showed me his script and also gave another hint that I wanted to share (thanks Coolo for sharing this with me!)."


openSUSE Forums

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Security Matters - openSUSE, super secured.
"An interesting question with some good responses from forum members. Possibly most of us are reasonably content with the default and just an odd tweak here and there: Like switching ssh to some random port."
Grub Error - Installing Second openSUSE on HD
"@oldcpu run in to an intriguing Grub issue as he prepares to test the latest Milestone release. As I write this a solution is pending but this promises to be a very interesting and informative thread."
Firefox and _64 Java Issue
"Patience on this one. But we made it in the end. Just goes to show, never give up. The OP deserves a pat on the back too."
Amarok 1.4 v Amarok 2 Difference?
"What starts as an enquiry as to the difference between the two, from a user unfamiliar with the subject, develops in to a bit of a debate on the Pro's and Con's of either. Feelings can run high when big changes are made. Is it (v2) progression or regression? Check it out and you decide."


On the Web

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Linux Foundation Introduces Linux-Branded Affinity Visa Platinum® Credit Card
"SAN FRANCISCO, July 28, 2009 — The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced it will offer an affinity Visa Platinum credit card for people who want to contribute to advancing the Linux operating system through Linux Foundation initiatives."
Free Software Magazine/Gary Richmond: Yes Linus, Microsoft hating is a disease. And it's a pandemic
"The submission by Microsoft of twenty thousand lines of code to the Kernel has, predictably, caused many an eyebrow to arch. The phrase “beware Greeks bearing gifts” comes swiftly to mind. I checked the press release. I also checked the calendar just to make sure I hadn’t fallen into a wormhole and emerged back on April Fools Day. I hadn’t. That reaction was probably replicated right across the free software community. Given Microsoft’s track record it’s hardly surprising. Perhaps what was more interesting was Linus Torvalds’ reaction. After all, this is not an inconsequential flame war about using Gnome or KDE."
GNU Generation: Calling all pre-university students
"GNU Generation is a new project sponsored by the Free Software Foundation to involve high school age pre-university students (approximately ages 13-18) in free software. By Max Shinn, Campaigns Intern 2009.
Participants will have the opportunity to get involved with the free software community, and win some prizes! If you have never considered contributing to a free software project before, or if you wanted to but had no idea where to start -- this is your chance!"
The Register/Timothy Prickett Morgan: IBM, Novell to slash Linux prices for mainframes
"With System z mainframe revenues down 39 per cent - and MIPS mainframe capacity shipments off 20 percent in the second quarter - IBM is keen on boosting mainframe sales. And it wants to use Linux as a lever.
Commercial Linux distributor Novell has a more than 80 per cent share of Linux revenues on IBM's mainframe platform. The company has been shipping its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 since the end of March, and it wants to get more mainframe shops to add SLES 11 to Integrated Facility for Linux engines."
LinuxTECH.NET: Linux Laptops Bestsellers in Germany
"A look at the current (23rd July 2009) Amazon.de (Germany) Laptop/Notebook bestsellers list will be a nice surprise for any desktop Linux advocate and possibly a worry for Microsoft and Apple sales executives. At the time of writing there are two laptops with pre-installed Linux in the top ten bestsellers, both in front of the first best selling Apple laptop. ..."
Nat Friedman: Running Linux in the browser
"This post is part of a series of articles I am writing about SUSE Studio and software appliances.
Most people are quite surprised to see an operating system boot up in their web browser. But for SUSE Studio, this is an essential part of the user experience. In this post, I’m going to tell you about my favorite feature in SUSE Studio: Testdrive. Why did we build it, and how does it work?"
Linux.com/J.A. Watson: openSuSE 11.2 Milestone 4 - X Display Server Quirk
"I have been loading openSuSE 11.2 Milestone 4 on various computers around here, and I have come across an odd problem. The good news is, it is relatively easy to work around."


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.


Statistics

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

opensuse.org

Communication
lists.opensuse.org has 36980 (+14) non-unique subscribers to all mailing lists.
The openSUSE Forums have 31560 (+294) registered users - Most users ever online was 3270, 22-Jul-2009 at 20:00.

Contributors
3247 (+45) of 8202 (+286) registered contributors in the User Directory have signed the Guiding Principles. The board has acknowledged 330 (+0) members.

Build Service
The Build Service now hosts 7273 (+86) projects, 72336 (+259) packages, 13499 (+126) repositories by 16344 (+150) confirmed users.


openFATE

Feature statistics for openSUSE 11.2:

  • total: 367 (+18)
  • unconfirmed: 55 (+17)
  • new: 9 (+0)
  • evaluation: 126 (-7)
  • candidate: 19 (-1)
  • done: 32 (+4)
  • rejected: 108 (+5)
  • duplicate: 18 (+0)
More information on openFATE


Bugzilla

The numbers for all openSUSE project products are this week:


Localization


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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