Archive:Weekly news 91
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Welcome to issue # 91 of openSUSE Weekly News
In this Week:
- openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 8 Released
- Federico Mena-Quintero: The openSUSE Boost Team
- Linux.com/Rob Day: The Kernel Newbie Corner: "initrd" and "initramfs"--What's Up With That?
- Amarok 2.2 "Sunjammer" released
- Linux Weekly News/rebecca Sobol: An interview with Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
Announcements
- openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 8 Released
- "The openSUSE Project is happy to announce that the last openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 8 (M8) is available for download. Test now and give feedback via our bugzilla since this is the last milestone before the first release candidate."
In the Community
- Ricardo Varas Santana: openSUSE Ambassadors…numbers?
- "Alright. Just out of curiosity, I felt like finding out what the numbers show for South America compared to other regions in the Ambassadors Program of openSUSE."
- Brent McConnell: Finding the Value in Twitter
- "I recently saw survey results from a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll that stated only 15 percent of Americans believe Twitter to be an important new tool for communication and I believe it. Not because it's true but because Twitter can be hard to understand and get the hang of at first."
- Federico Mena-Quintero: The openSUSE Boosters Team
- "Last week, after the openSUSE Conference, the gentlemen in the following picture hiked through the forests and fields of Franconian Switzerland (don't be deceived, that's actually in Germany), with two purposes:
- * Enjoy the local beer and farm food.
- * Kickstart a team to grow the openSUSE community.
- Allow me to introduce you to the members of the openSUSE Boosters team. All of them have Mexican names."
Tips and Tricks
For Desktop Users
- Ghacks/Jack Wallen: Use OpenOffice Impress for flash card learning
- "If you are currently taking classes, or are in any situation where you need to learn a large amount of facts you may have taken it upon yourself (or are wanting) to create flash cards to help you with the learning process. Usually this requires getting flash cards, writing all of your information on them, and then going through the pile over and over again. There is a better, more modern way, to do this. The OpenOffice Impress OpenCards extension allows you to take a bare-bones presentation and use each slide as a flash card. Not only is a great tool for learning, it’s not killing trees AND a stack of files on your PC is going to take up less room than a stack of paper flash cards."
- HowtoForge/Falko Timme: Boot Linux Over HTTP With netboot.me
- "This tutorial shows how you can boot Linux over HTTP with netboot.me. All that users need is Internet connectivity and a small program (gpxe) to boot the machine. This gpxe program provides network booting facility. netboot.me allows you to boot into the following distributions: Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu. netboot.me provides gpxe images for USB sticks, CDs, and also for floppies, i.e., you can boot from a USB sticks, a CD, or a floppy."
- Linux Journal/Bruce Byfield: 7 Steps to Better Tables of Contents in OpenOffice.org Writer
- "Like other word processes, OpenOffice.org Writer makes creating tables of contents (ToCs) quick and easy. Unfortunately, it also works with unaesthetic defaults and allows you to make choices that complicate your work flow rather than improving it."
For Commandline/Script Newbies
- Jean-Christophe Baptiste: Automatic Backup when inserting a drive
- "I bought a 500 GB 2.5″ external disk drive to backup the data of my laptop. It is small, quiet, easy to move and far enough for the important data I want to backup, mostly documents, e-mails or script from work. Being lazy, it happened that I did not backup my data. Yes, it is a shame, but inserting a drive and launching the commands to rsync the discs was preventing me from this best practice. So, I decided to make it automatic. The goal was that the only thing I would have to do would be to insert the drive, and then remove it when it is done."
- LinuxPlanet/Juliet Kemp: Advanced Tips for Search-and-Replace in Linux
- "In my previous article about regular expressions, I gave some examples of ways in which you can use them on the command line, with various utilities. Regexps can also be used within many text editors (sometimes with a slightly different syntax, but the gist is the same). I'll use Vim and Emacs as examples; for different editors you may need to check the manual for the syntax details."
- TuxRadar: Make a Python game in minutes
- "While Electronic Arts has done a good job of convincing the world that it takes 100 squibillion dollars to make a modern computer game, the indie scene continues to thrive in a world where people like to try out ideas just for fun, learn for learning's sake and are happy if a finished piece of software comes out at the end of the day."
For Developers and Programmers
- Linux.com/Ben Martin: C++, the GPU, and Thrust: Sorting Numbers on the GPU
- "Version 1.0 of Thrust was released in May 2009 and is available under the Apache License version 2.0. There is a NOTICE file which also contains the Boost license and a small paragraph by Hewlett-Packard Company. So it appears there is really a mixture of open source licenses applied to the Thrust library. Thrust is completely implemented in header files, so installation for development consists of downloading the zip file and expanding it somewhere."
- Friedrich Kossebau: Add a binary filter to okteta
- "Welcome to the first in hopefully a row of little tutorials showing how you can yourself add the features you need to Okteta, the KDE 4 hex editor.Although, after writing this one, which took way too much time, I will see how I can make this more economic for me."
- Linux.com/Rob Day: The Kernel Newbie Corner: "initrd" and "initramfs"--What's Up With That?
- "This week, I'm not going to write a formal column so much as just free associate a bit regarding an exchange we had recently on the Kernel Newbies mailing list regarding the ideas of initrd and initramfs, and what they're for and, most importantly, how they differ. And that's where we might get deliberately vague since different people use the terminology differently, so I'll present my view of the terms and the way I use them, whereupon you're free to disagree vehemently."
For System Administrators
- IBM developerWorks/Jenifer Hopper: Reduce Linux power consumption, Part 2: General and governor-specific settings
- "This three-part series is your starting point for tuning your system for power efficiency. In Part 2, follow a step-by-step guide on the general settings of the Linux CPUfreq subsystem and get more details on the five in-kernel governors -- performance, powersave, userspace, ondemand, and conservative -- and their settings."
- TechRepublic/Vincent Danen: Get network versatility with SSH tunneling and netcat
- "SSH is a versatile protocol and OpenSSH, a versatile tool — so much so, that it can be used for a lot of extremely cool things. Throw in netcat, another Swiss Army Knife networking tool that is even more all-purpose than SSH (in terms of networking capabilities), and you get the network versatility of netcat with the strong encryption and authentication of SSH."
New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE
- Sascha Manns: bleachbit 0.6.5: Packaged for openSUSE
- "I’m pleased to announce, that i’ve released the openSUSE Version for bleachbit 0.6.5." The Changes since 0.6.4 are written in the Link.
- Ben Kevan: Chromium Browser Build Service by DBUCK
- "Build Service User DBUCK has built a chromium build service repository:
- http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/dbuck/ ..."
- MPlayer 1.0rc2_r29116-2.pm.29.6
- Updated Version in Packman.
- Amarok 2.2 "Sunjammer" released
- "Few things in life can influence us quite the way music can. Music can set a mood, make us relax or feel energized, and for many people there is that special song that is forever connected with a significant moment in their life. And great music needs a great player! With Amarok 2.2, codenamed "Sunjammer", the Amarok team is very proud to present the next step towards the ultimate music player!" Available in KDE:KDE4:Playground Repository.
Planet SUSE
- Sebastian Schöbinger: QT4.6 Betatester
- "Qt searches for beta tester of Qt 4.6."
- Andreas Schneider: kio_sftp updates
- "openSUSE has backported the new kio_sftp implementation based on libssh to their KDE 4.3 packages. This increased the users and helped to find some bugs in kio_sftp and KDE. The current implementation is working fairly well."
- Sandy Armstrong: Tomboy Hits 1.0
- "It's been just over five years since Alex Graveley made the first commit to Tomboy CVS, unleashing a brilliantly simple note-taking application for people who just wanted to Get Stuff Done."
- Andreas Jaeger: Updating in Place From openSUSE 11.1 to 11.2
- "After running my laptop for some time already on openSUSE Factory, I decided to update my workstation now as well to openSUSE Factory – thus upgrading it to openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 8. Instead of the “old” but still working way of burning a media, booting from it and upgrading my system, I did the “new” way of openSUSE 11.2: Updating in place with “zypper dup”.
- Nat Friedman: Outsourcing and design
- "If you’ve had lunch with me recently, then you’ve probably heard me rave about my experiences using elance.com to outsource various tasks. Here’s how it works: you describe your job, and providers from around the world bid for your business. You can see each bid amount and read reviews from previous employers before awarding the contract. Elance provides an escrow service and some nice tools for managing the workflow and communication with your provider, or you can just email or IM with them if you prefer."
openSUSE Forums
- Can't login to root GUI
- "Not a good idea at the best of times! Parent Penguin Confuseling shares a tip on how to gracefully reset your system with a new user"
- Arghhh! Install Help
- "A cry for help comes in many forms, forum members help a new user to install openSUSE"
- Wireless connection freezes the computer
- "Resident wireless gurus lwfinger and Akoellh impress a new user and fix a buggy driver"
- Firestarter Firewall
- "What is wrong with SUSEfirewall2?? forum member help to enlighten a new user"
On the Web
Announcements
- KDE.NEWS/Luca Beltrame/First KDialogue Is Now Open
- "Today, the KDE Community Forums, in collaboration with "People Behind KDE", have launched a new initiative to give the community an opportunity to get to know each other a bit closer: KDialogue."
- The Linux Foundation Announces Second Annual End User Summit
- "SAN FRANCISCO – October 1, 2009 — The Linux Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the speaker lineup and details for its second annual End User Summit. The Summit is a unique opportunity for corporate end users to learn and interact with leaders from within the Linux community, including the highest-level maintainers and developers."
Call for participation
- MonitoringForge/John Mark: WTFMM: Write the Flippin’ Monitoring Manual
- "Greetings, MonitoringForge community! As was mentioned in today’s press release, we have started a project to WTFMM: Write the Flippin’ Monitoring Manual. We are inviting you to participate in the world’s largest documentation project focused on open source monitoring tools. This project is located within the MonitoringForge wiki."
Reports
- h-online.com/Thorsten Leemhuis: Kernel Log - Main development phase of Linux 2.6.32 completed
- "With the first release candidate of Linux 2.6.32, last night, Linus Torvalds completed the main development phase of the next version of Linux on the main development branch. As the kernel hackers already integrate most of a new kernel version's major changes into the source code management system during this phase, called the merge window, 2.6.32-rc1 is already a good indicator of the most important new features due for release with Linux 2.6.32 in early December."
- Linux Weekly News/rebecca Sobol: An interview with Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
- "The openSUSE Conference was held September 17 - 20, 2009 in Nürnberg, Germany. There was full schedule with talks, workshops, Birds of a Feather sessions, an RPM summit, and more. We talked with openSUSE community manager Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier about the conference."
- InternetNews.com/Sean Michael Kerner: Yahoo's Open Source Zimbra Gets Social
- "Social media services like Twitter are becoming increasingly ingrained into our everyday computing experience. The latest push is coming from Yahoo's new Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) 6.0 release, which includes direct integration of a Twitter client together with enterprise e-mail and collaboration capabilities."
- Raiden's Realm/Steve Lake: Ohio Linux Fest 2009 Report
- "This year was the first time ever that I've had the wonderful opportunity to visit Ohio Linux Fest, sometimes referred to as Ohio Linux Con. This year's theme was "40 Years of Unix" and there was a lot there that focused on that theme."
- Phoronix/Michael Larabel: New X.Org Release Process Has Been Reached
- "Last week we talked about a new X.Org release process proposal for improving the consistency and quality of X Server releases through taking a number of relatively simple steps. Well, this week from XDS2009, a revised proposal has been agreed upon now making it policy for X Server 1.8 / X.Org 7.6 and later."
- Linux Magazine/Bruce Byfield: A belated report on the mini-summit on women in free software
- "According to Stormy Peters, executive director of the GNOME Foundation, the subject of women's lack of involvement in FOSS is not new. "It was just time again to have the conversation," she says. Deobrah Nicholson, FSF membership coordinator, sees things differently, suggesting that reactions to incidences of sexism brought attention to the problem and that "this year, a lot of people saw it for the first time." But, whatever the background, the FSF's mini-summit on women in free software on September 19th may mark the point where the problem of women's low involvement in free software started to be addressed."
- Sascha Manns: Kernel Prominence at LinuxConf
- "I’ve just found an interesting Video from the LinuxConf. We’re watching an Interview with Linus Torvalds, Greg Kroah-Hartmann, Chris Wright, Jonathan Corbet, J.E.J. Bottomley and Ted T’so."
Reviews and Essays
- KDE.NEWS/Lydia Pintscher: What I Did On My Summer Holiday
- "Google Summer of Code has again been a huge success for KDE this year. 37 out of 38 projects were finished successfully. Much of the work done during these projects is already merged into trunk and will be available for the users with the KDE 4.4 release in January 2010. Thanks to all students and mentors for their great work! Below you will find a short interview with each of the students, asking them about the cool things they have been working on for the past few months."
- CertCities.com/Emmett Dulaney: Linux and the Licensing Two-Step
- "When you write applications for Linux, there are two licenses you should be aware of:
- * The GNU General Public License (GPL), which governs many Linux programs including the Linux kernel and the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC).
- * The GNU Library General Public License (LGPL), which covers many Linux libraries."
- DesktopLinux.com/Eric Brown: OpenSUSE 11.2 poised for release
- "The OpenSUSE Project has released the last milestone of OpenSUSE Linux before an anticipated final release in November. OpenSUSE 11.2 Milestone 8 (M8) features numerous bug fixes, Linux kernel 2.6.31, improved partioning, social networking clients, and new versions of packages including GNOME 2.28, says the project."
- Linux Weekly News/Valerie Aurora: Log-structured file systems: There's one in every SSD
- "When you say "log-structured file system," most storage developers will immediately think of Ousterhout and Rosenblum's classic paper, The Design and Implementation of a Log-structured File System - and the nearly two decades of subsequent work attempting to solve the nasty segment cleaner problem (see below) that came with it. ..."
- Moblin™ Zone: OSV speeds Moblin tech evaluations
- "I recently had a chance to take Novell's implementation of Moblin Linux technology for a spin. I found it offered quicker time-to-evaluation than other Moblin-ized distros I've tried."
Warning!
- Unixmen/M. Zinoune (Zinovsky): Pidgin store passwords in clear text!!!!
- "For pidgin users , there is a security issue regarding storing passwords in pidgin, so this program stores the passwords in archives .xml in clear text without any encryption. So any one can easily boot into recovery mode while you are away and find all your passwords in plain text. Then he can just copy the password files and opps he will got all the passwords easy way."
- h-online.com: SSL trick certificate published
- "On the Noisebridge hacker mailing list, security specialist Jacob Appelbaum has published an SSL certificate and pertinent private key that together allow web servers to avoid triggering an alert in vulnerable browsers - irrespective of the domain for which the certificate is submitted. Phishers, for example, could use the certificate to disguise their servers as legitimate banking servers – which would only be detectable by subjecting the certificate to closer scrutiny."
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: TCP Denial of Service
- Package: kernel
- Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2009:047
- Date: Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:00:00 +0000
Statistics
Numbers in brackets show the changes compared to the previous week.
opensuse.org
Communication
lists.opensuse.org has 37287 (+23) non-unique subscribers to all mailing lists.
The openSUSE Forums have 34859 (+269) registered users - Most users ever online was 10409, 24-Sep-2009 at 21:15.
Contributors
3578 (+30) of 9525 (+125) registered contributors in the User Directory have signed the Guiding Principles. The board has acknowledged 351 (+0) members.
openFATE
Feature statistics for openSUSE 11.2:
- total: 410 (+0)
- unconfirmed: 27 (+0)
- new: 3 (+0)
- evaluation: 39 (+0)
- candidate: 14 (-3)
- done: 63 (+3)
- rejected: 238 (+0)
- duplicate: 26 (+0)
Bugzilla
The numbers for all openSUSE project products are this week:
- All Open Reports: 4859 (-44)
- Blocker: 5 (+0)
- Critical: 237 (+1)
- Major: 815 (-8)
- Normal: 2778 (-40)
- Minor: 409 (-2)
- Enhancements: 615 (+5)
- 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
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Credits
- Jan-Simon Möller (Chief-Editor)
- Sascha Manns (Second Chief-Editor, Main-Newsletter)
- Sebastian Schöbinger (Tips/Tricks)
- Satoru Matsumoto (Editorial Office)
- Carl Fletcher (Main-Newsletter, Forums Sec.)
- Thomas Hofstätter (Events & Meetings)
- add translators
