Archive:Weekly news 93

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Welcome to issue # 93 of openSUSE Weekly News

In this Week:

Announcements

openSUSE 11.2 on its way to become final – Release candidate available!: "We’re well on the way to openSUSE 11.2! Today we’re happy to announce the first release candidate for openSUSE 11.2. This release includes quite a few bugfixes and several updates, including GNOME 2.28 final, Linux 2.6.31.3, and many others.; As the first release candidate for openSUSE 11.2, it should be almost ready for final release. However, there still are a few remaining known issues and the purpose of the release candidate is to discover any major issues before 11.2 final. It may not be suitable for production systems, but is ready for contributors who want to help with testing and development for 11.2."
Joe Brockmeier: Open Source marketing: Lead with Free or benefits?: "Spent most of last week in Boston, Massachusetts. Actually, I spent most of the week in Waltham for Novell’s FY10 Interlock meetings. Since I’m the “community guy” most of the stuff wasn’t directly related to my job, but it is good to know what’s going on with the rest of the company and have a chance to see what the marketing priorities are for FY1"

In the Community

Katarina Machalkova: openSUSE Conference 2009 Impressions: "Yes, it's been a month since openSUSE Conference 2009 took place. And yes, I've been buried in other work to write my account of it any sooner. So - here it finally is. As there has already been a lot of posts like this, I'll just cherry-pick the things that were the most interesting for me. I gave "Libyui - three interfaces for the price of one code" talk and received some valuable feedback (on the conference and later too, as I reiterated the talk for SUSE Prague employees) on making the library even better - how to improve packaging (from Pavol and Martin) and how to modify event handling (from Reinhard). As evaluating myself and the things I do objectively has never been my strength (which means, in other words, that I really suck at it), I'll deliberately not say anything more on topic :) ;) Enjoy libyui slides""
Pavol Rusnak: RPM Summit at the openSUSE Conference 2009: "I’m sure you all heard about the openSUSE Conference 2009 that took place in September in Nuremberg. Not so many know about the RPM Summit that was a part of the conference during its first two days. Idea to create something like this started at LinuxTag 2009 when Zonker invited Florian to Nuremberg. One thing lead to another and in the end we managed to get several important people into one room (or to join us via conf call) and we kept them there until all problems with RPM and package management in general were solved. Well, not really, there was a lot to discuss and there still is, but you got the point. :-)"

Status Updates

Distribution

Status Update: Status Update
KDE Team Meeting: Minutes from the Meeting

Build Service

Build Team Meeting: Minutes of the meeting
Andreas Jaeger: Speeding up openSUSE Build Service: "The last two weeks saw two improvements on speeding up the building of packages in the openSUSE Build Service: An ultra-fast scheduler and a binary cache for the worker. Both changes on its own should speed up the server that allocates jobs to the client – and the binary cache improves also the clients since they don’t have to download every package for every build."

Tips and Tricks

For Desktop Users

Linux.com/Jonas Jacek: The GIMP Part 1 Tutorial Websites: "I recently tried to sell my old Photoshop 6 copy on Ebay, after buying Photoshop CS2 on Amazon. I wanted to turn my old investment into some money. Photoshop is not cheap as you may or may not know... Both versions have far more features than I need for a regular Web design job but as some clients of mine required me to upgrade, I did so."

linuxgravity.com: Manipulating, converting and editing audio and video: "FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. It is a very fast video and audio converter and includes libavcodec which is the leading audio/video codec library. It can also grab from a live audio/video source."

Make Tech Easier/Tavis J. Hampton: The Many Ways to Copy, Move, Rename, and Archive in KDE 4: "In my last post, I covered some of the features in Dolphin that I find particularly useful. In this post, you will learn about some very basic features that everyone uses, but you may not know all of the various easy methods of accomplishing them. In KDE, there are several ways to copy, move, rename, and archive files. Let’s take a look at a few them."

Worldlabel.com/Nathan Willis: Designing Labels and Cards with Scribus (Open Source): "Scribus is free software page-layout tool applicable to designing all sort of documents: from newspaper ads to fliers to whole books. Because it can precisely position both images and text, it is also the preferred type of tool for designing mailing labels and business cards. A word processor has weaker features for working with pictures and other graphical elements, while a Photoshop-like image editor makes changing text an unnecessary pain. ..."

For Developers and Programmers

Friedrich Kossebau: Tutorial: Add a Checksum/Hashsum Algorithm to Okteta: "Since KDE 4.3 (resp. Okteta 0.3) Okteta features a tool to calculate a checksum/hashsum from the bytes in the current selection. It comes with some built-in checksum algorithms (Modular sum (8/16/32/64 bit), Adler-32, CRC-32), but for hashsums relies on the QCA lib (Qt Cryptographic Architecture) (can be SHA-0/1/224/256/384/512, MD2/4/5, RIPEMD-160, Whirlpool, depending on the installed QCA plugins)."

New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE

DVDStyler: "DVDStyler is a gui frontend for using dvdauthor and dvd-slideshow scripts to easily build DVD menus and assemble the DVD VOB files. "
k3b 1.0.5: Available in Packman
Pavol Rusnak: Chromium package in Contrib: "Thanks to unceasing endeavors of David Buck and Raymond Wooninck we now have Chromium built fully from the source code! It is available from our Contrib repository (package chromium). I recommend using this one instead of various other RPMs that repack Google Chrome/Chromium binaries or are kept in users home repositories. Big thanks also goes to Tom ’spot’ Callaway for much of the original patchwork, Justin Haygood for helping with the icu patch and Malcolm Lewis."
Duncan Mac-Vicar Prett: kopete-facebook 0.1.4: "I have released kopete-facebook 0.1.4 which fixes idle status of contacts and message sending. I still have some important bugs, which I hope I can fix before the openSUSE 11.2 release. From those known bugs, one is the inability to reconnect (go offline and offline), which is due to the “myself” contact using the email as userid, which is in turn due to a Kopete limitation of needing to know an id, but facebook sends it after login. I have tried so many hacks (like switching the myself contact at runtime), but all have other side effects."
Will Stephenson: Qt 4.6 preview packages available for openSUSE: "Since today is the big day when KDE trunk starts to depend on Qt 4.6, Raymond Wooninck (tittiatcoke), community packaging hero, has worked to provide packages of the unreleased Qt 4.6 in the openSUSE Build Service. If you want to develop KDE trunk without the hassle of compiling Qt, you can use these packages (openSUSE 11.1). We'll be updating them every week to stay current as Qt 4.6 nears release. Please keep in mind that we're not responsible if you install them and your system KDE packages and anything else that depends on Qt stops working (although we will help you put things right, and the trolls will probably want to know about binary-incompatibility problmems) and when 4.6 is released, it will move into the KDE:Qt repo."

Planet SUSE

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Joe Brockmeier: Selling vs. shaming: "Having a conversation today with Bradley Kuhn on Identi.ca. (In as much as one can in 140 characters…) Bradley takes issue with several FOSS folks talking about the release of Hulu Desktop for Linux. He says, “some denouncing’s needed when otherwise pro-FLOSS ppl jump excitedly to new proprietary stuff.” I disagree — denouncing is never needed in this context. You can’t shame people into embracing your ethics, Bradley — what you can do is lead, teach, and encourage people to embrace your ethics, but people (at least the vast majority) are going to turn a deaf ear to people denouncing them."
Cornelius Schumacher: 4,273,291 lines of code: "4,273,291 lines of code, that's the size of the KDE core modules, which are released as the official KDE software distribution, as of today, the numbers generated using David A. Wheeler's SLOCCount. Of course we all know about the problems with counting lines of code, but I still find it interesting to run these statistics from time to time. I was doing so tonight, and thought, when I do so, I can just as well share the data with the world. ..."
Michal Hrušecký: Junior Jobs: First contributions!: "We have announced Junior Jobs in the Monday and we already have the contributions! People are interested! It's not in factory yet but it's on its way there. Let's be more specific. Currently I'm speaking about bug 546020. David Binderman reported missing free in barcode package. As this is easy to fix, it was marked as a Junior Job. And here comes our community member, Marek Belisko, fixes the bug and sends us submit request. It was accepted by package maintainer and resend to the Factory. He also fixed bug 432596 in libunwind. And again, his fix was approved and it is on its way to the Factory. Once these two fixes (and some more) will be accepted in Factory, his name will be in changelog of these packages forever!"
Lubos Lunak (llunak): KDE 4.3.2 and openSUSE 11.2: "Since it seems it will turn up quite often, I would like to answer the question 'Will openSUSE 11.2 include KDE 4.3.2?'. The short answer is no and yes Smiling. The 4.3.2 release of KDE came too late to be included in openSUSE 11.2. As the distribution release gets closer, there is a certain point after which only reviewed changes should be allowed in, in order to reduce the possibility of these changes causing unexpected breakages that might go unnoticed within the relatively short time until the release. This can happen and it wouldn't be very good to fix something small and break something bigger for the release because of some unnoticed mistake. So openSUSE 11.2 will not officially include KDE 4.3.2."

openSUSE Forums

No KDE4.3.2 In Factory: "With the release of kde4.3.3 users were looking for the upgrade in Factory. It's not there as Factory has been frozen. A kde43 repo has been formed to supply the latest release from kde."
Entries in /etc/fstab?: "Not an unfamiliar question this. But always useful to see the solutions. Some interesting mount point suggestions are made, rather than accepting default values."
Wireless works in Gnome Not in KDE!: "Ongoing issues with the Network Manager in KDE4 are at issue here. 'oldcpu' to the rescue and we have another happy camper and a useful reference for others."
Nvidia settings - LCD in KDE?: "It's still not a simple as click and install with Video drivers. Maybe one day?! - Fortunately this one worked out well, quite quickly."

On the Web

Announcements

Game Editor becomes open source: "Game Editor is the open source game design software that gives you the power to create the games of your dreams, and, unlike other game creation tools, gives you the chance to get and change the source code of the game creator and design and develop 2D games for personal computers as well as mobile devices."

Reports

kernelpodcast.org/Jon Masters: Kernel Podcast (Daily Summary): "Welcome to kernelpodcast.org. This site provides a semi-daily summary of email traffic on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) in the form of a podcast and audio transcripts. It was started by Jon Masters as a means to force himself to keep up with the LKML."
LinuxSecurity.com/Bill Keys: Security Features of Firefox 3.0: "Lets take a look at the security features of the newly released Firefox 3.0. Since it's release on Tuesday I have been testing it out to see how the new security enhancements work and help in increase user browsing security. One of the exciting improvements for me was how Firefox handles SSL secured web sites while browsing the Internet. There are also many other security features that this article will look at. For example, improved plugin and addon security. Read on for more security features of Firefox 3.0."
Datamation/Bruce Byfield: KDE Social Desktop Contest: Freeing the Web: "Imagine being able to search for help online without leaving your desktop application. An About dialog you could use to contact the developer. A site where you could post works in progress directly from your desktop for criticism. These are a few of the entries in KDE's recent social desktop contest.; They are also some of the first examples of what Aaron Seigo of the KDE project calls "freedom services" -- applications that bring cloud computing directly to your computer and seamlessly integrate the desktop and online services."
tuxmachines.org/srlinuxx: TM's Top 10 Linux Distributions of 2009: "Daniweb published their list of Top 10 Linux Distributions for 2009 and unfortunately I and not-just-I didn't agree with his list. I don't want to detract from the hard working folks on those projects, but some won't even run on modern hardware too well. One has turned into a specialty distro, although much of world keeps ignoring that fact. Another needs a Windows install to use. Anyway, so here's our Top 10 List: ..."
hacks.mozilla.org/Christopher Blizzard: new device API for Firefox 3.6: orientation: "One new feature that we’re including as part of Firefox 3.6 is support for web pages to access machine orientation information if it’s available. As you can see from the demo above you can use it to figure out if the machine is moving and what direction it’s facing."
KDE.NEWS/Jos Poortvliet: Nokia Sponsors KOffice Development for Mobile Devices: "At the Maemo Conference in Amsterdam Suresh Chande announced that Nokia has contracted KO GmbH to write a mobile office viewer using the KOffice libraries. The presentation by Suresh was given with the Nokia N900 smartphone, using the new Office Viewer."

Reviews and Essays

LinuxSecurity/Bill Keys: Hacking Exposed Linux, Third Edition: "“Hacking Exposed Linux” by ISECOM (Institute for Security and Open Methodologies) is a guide to help you secure your Linux environment. This book does not only help improve your security it looks at why you should. It does this by showing examples of real attacks and rates the importance of protecting yourself from being a victim of each type of attack."
LinuxSecurity/Bill Keys: The Book of Wireless: ""The Book of Wireless" by John Ross is an answer to the problem of learning about wireless networking. With the wide spread use of Wireless networks today anyone with a computer should at least know the basics of wireless. Also, with the wireless networking, users need to know how to protect themselves from wireless networking attacks."
mindby/Brent McConnell: Community Building Success Factors: "Recently I've been thinking a lot about what forms the foundation for communities? What matters most? Which things are the building blocks for all other activities that go on? I've identified what I believe to be the four most important building blocks for community. Tell me if you agree or not."

Warning

Security Updates Available for Adobe Reader and Acrobat: "Critical vulnerabilities have been identified in Adobe Reader 9.1.3 and Acrobat 9.1.3, Adobe Reader 8.1.6 and Acrobat 8.1.6 for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX, and Adobe Reader 7.1.3 and Acrobat 7.1.3 for Windows and Macintosh. These vulnerabilities could cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. This update represents the second quarterly security update for Adobe Reader and Acrobat."

Past Events & Meetings

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Upcoming Events & Meetings

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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
Package: silc-toolkit, open-iscsi, strongswan,freeswan,openswan, mutt, openldap2, cyrus-imapd, java-1_6_0-openjdk, postgresql, IBMJava2-JRE/java-1_4_2-ibm, wireshark, freeradius, dovecot
Announcement ID: SUSE-SR:2009:016

Statistics

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

opensuse.org

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Communication
lists.opensuse.org has 37286 (+0) non-unique subscribers to all mailing lists.
The openSUSE Forums have 35456 (+297) registered users - Most users ever online was 10409, 24-Sep-2009 at 21:15.

Contributors
3642 (+27) of 9659 (+61) registered contributors in the User Directory have signed the Guiding Principles. The board has acknowledged 351 (+0) members.

openFATE

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Feature statistics for openSUSE 11.2:

total: 411 (+0)
unconfirmed: 26 (+0)
new: 3 (+0)
evaluation: 37 (-2)
candidate: 15 (+0)
done: 65 (+0)
rejected: 239 (+2)
duplicate: 26 (+0)

More information on openFATE

Bugzilla

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The numbers for all openSUSE project products are this week:

All Open Reports: 5024 (+139)
Blocker: 5 (+0)
Critical: 244 (+7)
Major: 826 (+7)
Normal: 2882 (+81)
Minor: 438 (+28)
Enhancements: 629 (+16)
Detailed Bugzilla Report – Submitting Bug Reports – Bug Reporting FAQ

Localization

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Daily updated translation statistics are available on the openSUSE Localization Portal.
Trunk Top-List – Localization Guide

openSUSE for your ears

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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 .

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Jan-Simon Möller (Chief-Editor)
Sascha Manns (Second Chief-Editor, Main-Newsletter)
Sebastian Schöbinger (Tips/Tricks)
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Thomas Hofstätter (Events & Meetings)
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