Archive:Weekly news 95
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Welcome to issue # 95 of openSUSE Weekly News
In this Week:
- openSUSE News: Announcing the Second openSUSE Board Election
- Sneak Peeks (Preview 11.2)
- nixCraft/Vivek Gite: 20 Linux Server Hardening Security Tips
- Joe Brockmeier: openSUSE 11.2 final release candidate ready!
- openSUSE Forums: openSUSE 11.2 the Perfect KDE Distribution
Announcements
- openSUSE News: Announcing the Second openSUSE Board Election
- "The time has come again for openSUSE Members to vote for new members to the Board. Stephen Shaw (decriptor) and Bryen Yunashko (suseROCKS) have completed their tenure on the Board, and their seats are up for election. There is also a new seat available to be occupied by a non-Novell member. Henne Vogelsang (henne) and Pascal Bleser (yaloki) have another year to complete and will remain, Michael Löffler (michl) as chairman will remain as well. This means that as of this year’s election the openSUSE Board will be made up of equal numbers of Novell and non-Novell employees, 2 seats+Chairperson and 3 seats respectively. Candidates for this election will be voted in for a two (2) year term, ensuring that there is continuity within the Board."
- Call for Participation: openSUSE-Medical
- "Abstract: I’m pleased to announce an new Subproject from openSUSE: openSUSE_Medical. This new Project tries to package more Software for doctors’s practice or clinical needs. With our work we try to bridge a gap in the market."
- openSUSE Spotlight: openSUSE Board Elections Coming
- "The openSUSE Board elections are right around the corner.We’re in “phase 0″ right now, so you have four weeks from October 26th to declare candidacy if you’re running, and four weeks to get those membership applications in to vote. (If you’re already a member, you’re good, of course.) Phase 0 closes on November 23rd, then we have a two-week campaign period for candidates, followed by a voting period from December 8 through December 22nd."
- openSUSE News: Final openSUSE 11.2 Release Candidate Available
- "This is it folks! We’re almost there for openSUSE 11.2. Time to grab the final 11.2 release candidate and shake out any remaining bugs to get the lizard ready for release. This release includes an updated kernel, Samba, Firefox, and more."
In the Community
- Network World/Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier: From the iPhone to the Cloud: What's new with the Mono Project
- "Zonker talks with Mono founder Miguel de Icaza about what's new with the Mono Project and what's coming soon. The two also discuss the many iPhone apps brought to you by Mono, what's next for Moonlight (the Linux implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight), and why Windows developers should really check out Mono. (20:20)"
Status Updates
Distribution
- opensuse-boosters Standup Meeting 2009-10-27
- Meeting Minutes of Boosters Team
Sneak Peeks (Preview 11.2)
- Linuxcrunch.com/Zayed: openSUSE 11.2 - Perfect KDE Distribution
- "While openSUSE community are preparing to release openSUSE 11.2 in the next month, I decided to discover what's new in openSUSE 11.2. I downloaded the RC1 image and started playing with it. In short, it is fast, stable and beautiful. I think the decision to move to 8 months release is a wise decision. It gives more time to build and test the software. But the most exciting decision is putting KDE as default desktop environment. OpenSUSE 11.2 is the best KDE distribution (IMHO). In this post I will review the most 10 important features in the default openSUSE 11.2 desktop: ..."
- Sneak Peeks at openSUSE 11.2: KDE 4.3 Experience, with Luboš Luňák
- "The KDE 4 experience in openSUSE has been enhanced daily, and while the desktop environment itself has matured significantly since the last release, there has been a constant focus to provide an outstanding delivery of it in openSUSE 11.2. The highlights include: the openSUSE DVD preselected to KDE 4.3; new Firefox KDE integration; OpenOffice.org KDE 4 integration; consistent KDE artwork; all other standard applications fully ported to KDE 4, including KNetworkManager, Amarok, DigiKam, K3b, Konversation and more."
Build Service
- Build Team Meeting
- Minutes from the Meeting
Wiki / Communication / Events
- Michael Löffler: Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften is over
- "Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften (Long Night of Sciences) is an event to show all kinds of science in a simple way to the public. Many education facilities and companies in the Nuernberg area participated. It took place last Saturday and we had a rather long but very successful night. Our room at Georg-Simon Ohm Hochschule (technical university) was pretty well visited over the whole evening. We could welcome visitors with all kind of technology level – from pure beginners, long time Linux users to developers with deep technical knowledge. We served them 4 different dishes: ..."
Tips and Tricks
For Desktop Users
- OStatic/Lisa Hoover: Five Power Tools for Pidgin
- "Pidgin is a great GTK2-based instant messenger application that supports a bevy of protocols, including ICQ, Yahoo!, MSN, Jabber, and AIM. It's a terrific app in its own right, but when you add some of these power tools, Pidgin is even better."
- Tux Radar: Make Linux faster and lighter
- "With just a few tweaks, your Linux box can be lighter, sprightlier and quicker than ever before. Read on for the best ways to speed up your boot sequence, optimise KDE and Gnome, and get better performance from your favourite apps. We've also got some top tips from our favourite free software gurus..."
- Linux for You/Arjun Pakrashi: Learn image manipulation and create a glassy wallpaper on Gimp
- "Playing with GIMP is never boring, every time you do some experiment you come to know of some cool effect. The best part are the filters, which if applied properly, can produce jaw dropping effects. While experimenting with GIMP I came to know that how easily I could create a glassy text with gimp."
For Commandline/Script Newbies
- The Geek Stuff/Sasikala: Unix Sed Tutorial: Advanced Sed Substitution Examples
- "In our previous sed articles we learned — sed printing, sed deletion, sed substitute, sed file write, and sed multiple commands.
- In this article, let us review some interesting workarounds with the “s” substitute command in sed with several practical examples."
- Linux.com/Scott Nesbitt: Putting together PDF files
- "Ghostscript is a package that enables you to view or print PostScript and PDF files to other formats, or to convert those files to other formats. It's a popular tool among Linux users, but what many people don't know is that Ghostscript is also a powerful tool for combining PDF files."
For Developers and Programmers
- DevX.com/Octavia Andreea Anghel: Using Iterators in PHP
- "This article shows you how to use the most important iterator classes: ArrayIterator, DirectoryIterator, FilterIterator, and so forth, found in the Standard PHP Library (SPL), and how to integrate SPL with PHP Data Objects (PDO)."
- LinuxPlanet/Rob Gravelle: Using Temporary Tables to Speed Up MySQL
- "Knowing how to use temporary tables in your stored procedures is a great way to save time and effort, particularly when dealing with multiple queries that return very large and/or similar resultsets. If you're fetching several resultsets that contain a lot of common data, it can make sense to obtain a single resultset that has all the data that's required, store it in a temporary table, and then select from this temporary table as needed. Similarly, when repeatedly referring to the same subset of table data, it's often faster and more economical to store results in a temporary table, rather than repeating a complex join several times. In today's article, we'll review just how easily temporary tables can be utilized to make your stored procedures more efficient."
For System Administrators
- Duncan Mac-Vicar Prett: On upgrading openSUSE with 3rd party repositories
- "With the availability of up to date software for openSUSE, thanks to the amazing build service, our users have started managing the software in ways we did not imagined some years ago."
- nixCraft/Vivek Gite: 20 Linux Server Hardening Security Tips
- "Securing your Linux server is important to protect your data, intellectual property, and time, from the hands of crackers (hackers). The system administrator is responsible for security Linux box. In this first part of a Linux server security series, I will provide 20 hardening tips for default installation of Linux system."
New/Updated Applications @ openSUSE
- Skrooge 0.5.3 Packaged for openSUSE
- "I’m pleased to announce the new Version 0.5.3 from Skrooge. In this Packageversion i’ve fixed three Bugzilla Bugs. The first Bug #545103 and the second Bug #549803 depends on my bad old using from the Requires Tag in the Package. The third Bug #543994 is official fixed. If you can’t see the Components Chooser on the left Side from Skrooge, just close skrooge, type “kbuildsycoca4″ in the Console and restart." Available in KDE:KDE4:Community Repo.
- Cmake 2.6.1 published
- "Available in Packman Repo."
Projects Corner
Weekly overview about the big Projects.
KDE Project
- Alvaro Soliverez: This month in KMyMoney
- "The last month has seen the release of KMyMoney 1.0.2, still for KDE3, plus a few fixes here and there, nothing really big, though. On the KDE4 front, however, there has been a lot of work. And Pallavi, our usability designer is back. Cristian has merged his plugins into the main code, so the reconciliation report and calendar plugins are now in there. As usual, he has been all over the place, cleaning up here and there (specially after me, lol). He has also continued to work hard on the transaction ledger. There are still some problems there, but if we solve the remaining crashes, I hope we can open KMM4 for beta testing. If we can squeeze the last crashes out, we can then focus on a full port of the remaining Qt3support code."
- Dominik Haumann: Extending Kate with Scripts
- "As mentioned in one of my last blogs, there has been quite some work for JavaScript scripting support in trunk recently. So what will Kate 3.4 (KDE 4.4) will bring? This is explained in detail in the sections:..."
GNOME Project
- Luis Medinas: openSUSE 11.2
- "Because of my thesis i've been away from development. But i'm still involved with openSUSE-GNOME since it's my natural environment for work. GNOME on openSUSE 11.2 is very stable it's was build around 2.28.0 with upstream fixes, there's so many cool features for 11.2 that it feels like a new openSUSE and it's really fast compared to 11.1. Now i found zypper much more user friendly, fast (i feel that it's faster than apt) and support live upgrades just like other distros. Of course openSUSE 11.2 become faster on boot mostly because of the new kernel and ext4 (i'm not sure if some tweaks from goblin team went to the initscripts)."
Planet SUSE
- Pavel Machek: umount: /mnt2: device is busy.
- "I hate this part of unix behaviour. I'm root, yet some forgotten bash in some xterm somewhere prevents me from unmounting device. Yes, lsof exists, and it often works, but... I hope we can get revoke support soon and introduce working unmount -f..."
- Wolfgang Rosenauer: Mozilla in openSUSE 11.2
- "As you most likely know openSUSE 11.2 is about to be released really soon now. I want to give a short overview what will be in there from the Mozilla side of things:..."
- Joe Brockmeier: openSUSE 11.2 final release candidate ready!
- "How are you spending your Thursday evening? Me, I’ll be slapping the openSUSE 11.2 final release candidate on my work machines and testing like crazy. The last release candidate hit the mirrors on schedule today, with lots of goodies for Linux enthusiasts and new Linux users alike. You have your choice of desktop: KDE 4.3 or GNOME 2.28, a rock-solid Linux kernel (2.6.31.5), a technology preview of WebYaST, and much, much more."
openSUSE Forums
- Guest Users, Who are they?
- "The often seen Guest user is a puzzle to many, who are they. Read and find out. If you don't know what NNTP is either then read and learn."
- I Downgraded my SUSE Installation.
- "Like Fiddling? Trying to fix something that is working quite well? Let this be a lesson to you. Fortunately, all was well with some help from some forum Gurus."
- openSUSE 11.2 a Perfect KDE Distro!
- "With a link to a Personal page, one of our forum members offers some early praise for 11.2. That's a good thing and I personally can here offer similar praise. Read past some of the unnecessary argument posted by some and you are sure to feel like you already want to give 11.2 a go, if you haven't already."
- Installing 11.2 RC1?
- "This is more or less a should I, shouldn't I? Which is interesting because users respond with their early experience of 11.2 - A; How it's working for them, or Not as the case may be."
On the Web
Call for participation
- Free Software Foundation: Why is free software important to you? Submit your response to our new video campaign!
- "At the Women in Free Software Summit and the Boston celebration of Software Freedom Day 2009, FSF kicked off a new video testimonial campaign. See how it went, and help support the campaign by submitting a video response to these questions!"
Reports
- Embedded.com/Bernard Cole: Linux and Security: Mission Impossible?
- "The use of Linux in systems requiring high levels of security has been a frequent topic of controversy. Supporters have claimed that Linux's open source approach improves security due to exposure to an enormous, worldwide community of developers and users. Detractors have maintained that the complexity and architecture of Linux make it unsuitable for high criticality applications. With a lifetime of over 15 years, there are now plenty of public statistics with which to analyze Linux security. "
- Jakarta Globe/Ismira Lutfia: Indonesian Government Urged to Move to Open Source Software
- "Minister of Communication and Information Technology Tifatul Sembiring said open source software offered unlimited opportunities for local businesses and human resources in the information and communications industry."
- LinuxCrunch/Fahad: A sneak preview of new OpenOffice 3.2 part 2
- "In the First part of the OpenOffice preview, I talked about the new general features in OpenOffice.org 3.2 like being: easier, more secure, aOpen Office 3.2nd more international.
- In this second part, I will explore with you the new features of Chart, Calc and Base (applications within Oo package). "
Reviews and Essays
- LWN.net/Jake Edge: Papers from the Real Time Linux Workshop
- "There are far too many interesting Linux and free software conferences these days, so it would be difficult—really, impossible—to attend them all. Slides and videos of the talks can help fill in the gaps, but, for conferences with a more academic bent, the papers that are the basis of the presentations can give an even more detailed look. The papers from the recently concluded Real Time Linux Workshop are a good example; this article will briefly look at a few of them."
- LenZ Grimmer: Some friendly advice for bootstrapping your OSS project
- "So you're a small startup company, ready to go live with your product, which you intend to distribute under an Open Source License. Congratulations, you made a wise decision! Your developers have been hacking away frantically, getting the code in good shape for the initial launch. Now it's time to look into what else needs to be built and setup, so you're ready to welcome the first members of your new community and to ensure they are coming back!"
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: Apache and libapr (SUSE-SA:2009:050)
- Package: apache2,libapr1
- Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2009:050
- Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000
- SUSE Security Announcement: acroread, acroread_ja (SUSE-SA:2009:049)
- Package: acroread, acroread_ja
- Announcement ID: SUSE-SA:2009:049
- Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000
Statistics
Numbers in brackets show the changes compared to the previous week.
opensuse.org
Communication
lists.opensuse.org has 37330 (+25) non-unique subscribers to all mailing lists.
The openSUSE Forums have 36042 (+286) registered users - Most users ever online was 11116, 27-Oct-2009 at 21:01.
Contributors
3717 (+39) of 9824 (+92) registered contributors in the User Directory have signed the Guiding Principles. The board has acknowledged 360 (+0) members.
openFATE
Feature statistics for openSUSE 11.2:
- total: 411 (+0)
- unconfirmed: 26 (+0)
- new: 3 (+0)
- evaluation: 20 (-17)
- candidate: 12 (-3)
- done: 71 (+6)
- rejected: 253 (+14)
- duplicate: 26 (+0)
Bugzilla
The numbers for all openSUSE project products are this week:
- All Open Reports: 5114 (+43)
- Blocker: 7 (+3)
- Critical: 261 (+1)
- Major: 852 (+10)
- Normal: 2923 (+31)
- Minor: 451 (+8)
- Enhancements: 620 (-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.
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)
- Sebastian Schöbinger (Tips/Tricks)
- Satoru Matsumoto (Editorial Office)
- Carl Fletcher (Main-Newsletter, Forums Sec.)
- Thomas Hofstätter (Events & Meetings)
- add translators
