Archive:Weekly news 83
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Welcome to issue # 83 of openSUSE Weekly News
In this Week:
- KDE 4.3 review
- Marek Stopka: YaST Education module is no more GSoC project
- Linux.com/Rob Day: The Kernel Newbie Corner: What's in That Loadable Module, Anyway?
- Jeff Jaffe: Cloud Security
- Nat Friedman: Running Linux in the browser
Announcements
- openSUSE Spotlight: Nice openSUSE / KDE 4.3 Review
- "Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols takes a look at KDE 4.3 RC 2 on top of openSUSE 11.1, and has a lot of nice things to say: To check out this new version, I used openSUSE 11.1. SUSE and KDE developers have long worked hand in glove with each other. So, whenever you want to try out the latest versions of KDE, the easiest way to is to use one of the openSUSE KDE builds."
In the Community
- Cornelius Schumacher: KDE SDK status after hackweek IV
- "My goal for the fourth openSUSE Hack Week was to create a KDE SDK. When I started I thought this was mostly a technical challenge. I coded, packaged, built appliances. But while doing all this I found something much more interesting. In this post I will tell the story, and where it lead me.
- I will start with the end, the technical end, the resulting product. Here is a screenshot of the KDE SDK appliance, running in SUSE Studio test drive. It shows my variant of Qt Creator, running the KDE SDK plugin."
- James Tremblay: With GSOC almost over….
- "The openSIS team is proud to announce that the conversion from Postgres to MySQL is nearly complete. Check it out at http://opensis.sourceforge.net We have a few small bugs in the SQL left in some of the less used features. For the most part the project is on track and we have started to divide the team in two with one half working on bugs, the other working on Moodle integration. By mid fall we hope to have a “push” mode of integration with Moodle version 1.9.5 and hope to have work begun using Moodles new 2.0 version with SIS API."
- Marek Stopka: YaST Education module is no more GSoC project
- "Today I got e-mail from Jeff Shantz regarding his project, where he told me, that he is resigning from GSoC due some personal issues I should not probably write in this blog about, so, just for openSUSE community to know, there is not going to be YaST education module completed by Jeff at the end of the GSOC program."
Status Updates
Distribution
- Jakub Steiner: SUSE Studio
- "Last week we launched our SUSE Studio service announcing its 1.0 status. It’s been an honor to be part of the team behind it. I mean what other project uses javascript, flash, java, ruby, perl, mysql and git and at the same time qemu, kvm, libext2fs or fontforge, inkscape and blender?"
- Jigish Gohil: Li-f-e and KIWI-LTSP updates
- "openSUSE Li-f-e: Linux for Education DVD and the KIWI-LTSP has been updated."
- OStatic/Lisa Hoover: Go Back to School With Linux: Part Two
- "The openSUSE Education Project is an effort to support schools using Linux and to provide an openSUSE-based Live DVD that can be used to set up a quick educational environment without installing any software. The KIWI-LTSP server supports up to five users from the Live DVD. The Live DVD is also installable, so classrooms that are switching to Linux on a full-time basis can use the "Life" (Linux for Education) DVD to do a permanent install."
- Cornelius Schumacher: How to build a KDE 4.3 distro with SUSE Studio
- "Last week SUSE Studio was launched, and this week KDE 4.3 was released. They make a great combination. With SUSE Studio you can build a KDE 4.3 distro in just a few minutes. Here are the instructions how to do it."
Build Service
- Adrian Schröter: Source Services 0.0.1, no more writing SPEC files ?
- "Okay, my first example of the build service source services did something usefull on my notebook. I submitted a very short file and I got installable packages in return. The file is actually that simple that it can easy get created by any IDE, website or desktop shortcut."
- Michal Vyskocil: Smarter osc commit
- "Some hours ago I have worked on fix of eclipse build. But two parallel builds of eclipse (there are eclipse.spec and eclipse-archdep.spec) eats almost all resources of my computer, which was unusable. Fortunately vim needs a little of CPU time, so I decided to improve smarter osc commit, I implemented on Friday."
- openSUSE BuildService Meeting Minutes
- "Minutes from the Meeting"
Wiki / Communication / Events
- openSUSE Twitter tracker
- Here we can get some interesting tweets of the week.
Tips and Tricks
- Linux.com/Rob Day: The Kernel Newbie Corner: What's in That Loadable Module, Anyway?
- "In the very near future, we're going to attack the problem of debugging both the kernel and our loadable modules in real time. But in order to do that, we need to take a slight detour and dig further into the actual structure of both of those types of objects to see how they're put together. Yes, this is going to be a bit dry but you'll thank me for it some day."
- Linux Journal/Mike Diehl: Accessing PostgreSQL in C/C++
- "For some, databases can be pretty intimidating. I remember some of the convoluted code I wrote years ago in order to avoid having to learn how to access a database from my programs. But it's actually not that hard to access a database, even in C/C++."
- Linux Today/Carla Schroder: Painless Linux Multi-boot Setup
- "Virtualization, especially with nice virtualizers like VirtualBox and KVM, makes it easy to run multiple guest operating systems and not have to hassle with rebooting, like you do with a multi-boot setup. But I still favor multi-booting for testing new Linux distributions. There are fewer hassles with networking and file-sharing, and when there are problems I don't have to figure out if it's something weird with the VM."
- MakeUseOf/Varun Kashyap: 5 Excellent Downloadable eBooks To Teach Yourself Linux
- "So you have heard of all the advantages and geeky babble about how Linux is better and you have finally decided to try it? Just one thing, you don’t know an awful lot about Linux to get you started. How about some free downloadable ebooks to teach yourself Linux, that you can download today? Would that help?"
- IBM developerWorks/Teodor Zlatanov: Git for Subversion users, Part 1: Getting started
- "For anyone unfamiliar with free and open source version control systems (VCSs), Subversion has become the standard non-commercial VCS, replacing the old champ, Concurrent Versions System (CVS). CVS is still just fine for limited use, but Subversion's allure is that it requires only a little bit of setup on a Web server and not much beyond that. Subversion does have some issues, which I'll discuss here, but for the most part, it just works."
New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE
- abby 0.4.2-0.pm.1
- "abby is a front-end for cclive, allowing users unfamiliar with command-line interfaces to make most of cclive using a graphical user-interface. Available in Packman."
- kde4-kmess 2.0-0.pm.stable1
- "KMess is a MSN Messenger client for Linux. It enables Linux users to chat with friends online who are using MSN Messenger in Windows or Mac OS. The strength of KMess is it's integration with the KDE desktop environment, focus on MSN Messenger specific features and an easy-to-use interface. Available in Packman."
- Duncan Mac-Vicar Prett: Kopete Facebook plugin 0.1.3 released
- "Available for openSUSE Factory in my home project. I also submitted to the KDE:KDE4:Factory:Desktop project where you may find it built for older releases using a newer KDE. ..."
- Petr Mladek: OpenOffice_org 3.1.1 beta2 available for openSUSE
- "I’m happy to announce OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 beta2 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."
Planet SUSE
- Cornelius Schumacher: Will code for XML
- "When working on my hackweek project, the KDE SDK, I had to deal with some XML parsing for operating REST web services. To make this easier I made use of my old project to automatically generate XML parsing code from a schema. Yesterday Tobias blogged about the new XML Schema features in Qt 4.6, and wrote about the need to generate code from schemas. Having this thought come up twice in only a few weeks can't be an accident. So I brushed up the Kode Home Page today, which has a solution for this problem. ..."
- Rajko Matovic: Smolt
- "Smolt got changes that makes it more user friendly, ie. GUI is improved and it's on a way to be enhanced with more very useful features. Carlos, openSUSE member, rewrote the Smolt GUI in Qt, and removed serious usability bug - not reporting user password that allows user to access his report web page on http://www.smolts.org/. Password was available only trough command line client. ..."
- Jeff Jaffe: Cloud Security
- "Recent Events - The summer has seen numerous announcements with the proof points of our cloud infrastructure contributions. These announcements are transformative. They are not merely new products. They address issues that the industry has not totally addressed, with innovative solutions."
- Jordi Massaguer: proxying opensuse repositories
- "When building a custom distribution or an appliance, you must create a custom repository where to store the updates. Actually you should create a set of repositories, so you can test the updates before delivering to your users.
- Proxyrepo is a tool we've created for managing such repositories. We are using it on at least one custom linux distribution. It works quite well for us and is a good tool for managing the updates based on our current methodology."
- Greg Kroah-Hartman: VME buss support for Linux
- "Today another nice thing for the Linux kernel happened, we got working VME bus drivers and infrastructure submitted to the kernel tree. Now, I don't expect it to generate as much press as the Microsoft kernel driver thing did, but it should, as I feel it's more important in a way.
- The VME bus code has lived outside of the kernel for many years, and there was at least three different implementations at the same time floating around. Martyn Welch from GE Faunc took the time, merged all of them together, and rounded up the different copyright holders of the code and got legal approval from all of them to properly release the code under the GPLv2."
- Duncan Mac-Vicar Prett: osc-plugin-overview 0.3 released
- "Packager’s favorite dashboard got a new version. Most patches were contributed by Michael Andres ..."
- Miguel de Icaza: C# Sqlite
- "Noah Hart did a line-by-line port of Sqlite to C# and has uploaded the code to code.google.com/p/csharp-sqlite."
- Preview: New User Interface for OpenOffice.org
- This is an Preview for OpenOffice.org's new UI. If you have installed JAVA, the Link brings you to the Preview.
openSUSE Forums
- Mission Critical openSUSE Server?
- "We don't get a great many questions like this and for sure it has produced some informative responses from our forum members."
- The Best Backup Solution?
- "Users share their experience and knowledge on this subject. The value of a good backup should not be overlooked, yet it often is. It's not as difficult as some may imagine and there are plenty of options as this thread reveals."
- Azureus/Vuze Does not Start
- "We don't do much on torrent clients in here usually, yet many of us use them regularly for downloading our next openSUSE cd or dvd. Actually, this turns out to be more about Java by way of the solution. Not the first time recently where I have seen users need to switch their Java to Sun version."
- July Forum User Statistics.
- "We don't usually have this in here. But nevertheless it's interesting and relevant information."
On the Web
- freesoftwaremagazine.com/Tony Mobily: Skype shutdown: where are free software and free protocols?
- "Free software is definitely going strong in some areas, especially in the server market. However, there are other areas where free software and free protocols have failed. Internet based voice and video communication is one of those areas. The market is basically fully owned by Skype, a piece of proprietary software based on a proprietary (and abusive) protocol in the hands the same company that runs eBay. Free software advocates have been saying “what if Skype was discontinued?” for years. Then I read about eBay considering shutting Skype down. Pardon?"
- Nat Friedman: Running Linux in the browser
- "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? ..."
- Nat Friedman: playnice: make your iPhone work with Google Latitude
- "This weekend I wrote a script to automatically update Google Latitude with the location of my iPhone. I call it playnice. Run it in cron to keep Latitude apprised of your iPhone’s location. It works by scraping the iPhone location from MobileMe’s Find My iPhone feature, using the code from Tyler Hall’s sosumi project. ..."
- Linux.com/Gianluca Masone: Moblin4Children: release 0.1.0
- "After some days of work I can release a First Release of Moblin4Children. It's nothing of special at the moment. It's just a package that copy a precompiled GCompris under /usr/local and overwrites the default /etc/xdg configuration (be careful). You can download the package from the SourceForge area of the Moblin4Children Project."
- Computerworld.com/Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: KDE 4.3 is here
- "That was fast. Yesterday, I reviewed the new KDE 4.3, and today it's out for everyone to use. You can download the freshest code now.
- If sheer numbers impress you, KDE would like you to know that, "The KDE community has fixed over 10,000 bugs and implemented almost 2,000 feature requests in the last 6 months. Close to 63,000 changes were checked in by a little under 700 contributors. Read on for an overview of the changes in the KDE 4.3 Desktop Workspace, Application Suites and the KDE 4.3 Development Platform." Me, I'm not impressed by the numbers so much as I am by the overall improvement in its stability, speed, and flexibility. "
- Troy Unrau: Ongoing Oxygen Icons Usability Survey: KDevelop
- "Every few weeks Nuno Pinheiro and the KDE Oxygen Icons team are publishing a new usability survey online to get feedback from users on the look and feel of icons. In particular, the Oxygen team is looking for feedback from individuals that have had no exposure to KDE, so if you are at home or at work, poke your friends and family and have them complete the survey, or simply take the survey yourself. The current survey is on icons for KDevelop 4 which is a major rewrite of KDevelop for KDE 4. So if you have a moment, grab someone and complete the KDevelop Icons Survey now."
- LinuxJournal.com/Justin Ryan: GNOME Decides to Ditch Drawings
- "One of the most striking features of any desktop environment is its selection of icons. While wallpapers and window decorations hold a larger stage, it is the bright, colorful icons that draw ones attention and speed up the process of finding what one is looking for. The myriad of available icon themes may find themselves feeling a bit lonely in the near future, however, as the GNOME Art Team has decided that — at least some of them — will face the firing squad."
- ZDNet.co.uk/J.A. Watson: Good Things on the Horizon - But Use Caution!
- "We're getting far enough along in the development cycles of several of the major Linux distributions that you can just about see the releases coming over the horizon. I've been trying out several of them, and they look very good already. But, first and foremost, remember that these are test releases, and are likely to still have significant bugs, omissions and various quirks in them. They are not intended for use on production systems!"
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 Announcement: flash-player (SUSE-SA:2009:041)
- Package: flash-player
- Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2009:041
- Date: Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:55:37 +0200
- SUSE Security Announcement: Mozilla Firefox 3.0 (SUSE-SA:2009:042)
- Package: Mozilla Firefox 3.0
- Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2009:042
- Date: Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:30:16 +0200
- SUSE Security Announcement: Sun Java (SUSE-SA:2009:043)
- Packages: Sun Java
- Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2009:043
- Date: Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:00:00 +0000
Statistics
Numbers in brackets show the changes compared to the previous week.
opensuse.org
Communication
lists.opensuse.org has 36998 (+18) non-unique subscribers to all mailing lists.
The openSUSE Forums have 31835 (+275) registered users - Most users ever online was 3270, 22-Jul-2009 at 20:00.
Contributors
3304 (+57) of 8488 (+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 7404 (+131) projects, 73430 (+1094) packages, 13754 (+255) repositories by 16559 (+215) confirmed users.
openFATE
Feature statistics for openSUSE 11.2:
- total: 391 (+24)
- unconfirmed: 72 (+17)
- new: 10 (+1)
- evaluation: 124 (-2)
- candidate: 16 (-3)
- done: 37 (+5)
- rejected: 110 (+2)
- duplicate: 22 (+4)
Bugzilla
The numbers for all openSUSE project products are this week:
- All Open Reports: 4766 (-13)
- Blocker: 5 (+1)
- Critical: 234 (+3)
- Major: 839 (-6)
- Normal: 2702 (+2)
- Minor: 381 (-3)
- Enhancements: 605 (-10)
- 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
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
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.
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Credits
- Jan-Simon Möller (Chief-Editor)
- Sascha Manns (Second Chief-Editor, Main-Newsletter)
- Carl Fletcher (Main-Newsletter, Forums Sec.)
- Динар Валеев (GNOME Section in New/updated Applications @ openSUSE)
- Sebastian Schöbinger (Tips/Tricks)
