openSUSE Linux

Back to work, started reading the mail mountain backwards, slowly; apparently no fires started during the vacation: nice.

openSUSE Conference 2011 is getting closer and closer. Everybody is getting excited and looking forward to it. So what will be my contribution to the many interesting talks and sessions at openSUSE Conference? I would like to discuss, promote and ... [More] improve collaboration with universities. But let’s start with what, why and how Why? There is plenty of great students on universities. These students needs to write semestral works, thesis and much more. Usually the toughest task is to choose some interesting topic. Teachers don’t care that much. They have many students and they are happy if student comes with his own topic. But not all students have some strong interests that would help them with topic. These students need some inspiration. Many of them ends up doing yet another chess implementation, mine sweepers or tic-tac-toe. One time projects that nobody will use afterwards. Many hours of students productive time gets wasted. Many hours that could be used so much better. But in opensource world, we have wide variety of tasks from simple ones to hard ones. And we can always use some extra help. If we would just join forces, we would get more contributions to the open source projects, raise awareness of open source and students would get interesting topic, their work wouldn’t go in vain and they can show it to their future employers to get a better job. Whats there for teachers? They don’t have to think about yet another topic and students will seek out help in the community first as it is easier accessible and provides better help. So overall, it is win-win-win scenario How? How can we help this happen? That’s the topic of suggested BoF session. It’s not going to be talk, I hope it to be a discussion. Everybody can bring up some ideas. I already have some ideas that I want to present, but generally, I want to discuss, what can we do. Generally I think we want to work together with universities towards the greater good and I know that universities likes this idea. Well, as a matter of fact I know, that Red Hat is already working closely with some universities on this. I think we should start doing the same. Maybe join forces. What we should do is to raise awareness on universities. Do talks on your local university. Invite your fellow hackers to do the talks. Propose some thesis topics and act as a mentor. In GSoC we had many interesting topics and many people volunteering as a mentors. Working with student on his/her thesis should be much less work than GSoC. I think that the biggest problem is that students don’t know that there are many interesting topics out there. People at universities don’t know, that there is a lot of skilled people eager to promote open source and teach students. So my idea is basically to try to create a process how to make list of mentors, topics and talks we can provide and make it easily available to the universities around the world. We can either start putting it all on wiki or create some simple web application specially for this. Essential part is to make it easy both for us and for universities. But with actual realization, I would like to wait till the discussion on the conference Looking forward to meeting all of you and I hope we will have really productive discussions and many interesting projects will get started on this years openSUSE Conference! [Less]

Bernhard Wiedemann approached me a few days ago to host his YMP generator CGI script on opensu.se. I wrote it from scratch (it's just a few lines of Perl code really ;)), and it's now up and running on i.opensu.se (follow that link for details and ... [More] explanation). In a similar fashion to r.opensu.se, it is meant to be helpful to give support to users, as it is much simpler to hand them a short URL like http://i.opensu.se/utilities/atool than going through the hassle of guiding them through YaST2. It is especially well suited for twitter, IRC, etc... The source code is in my git repo at gitorious. [Less]

Yet another funky IRC helper: http://r.opensu.se/i/name:of:the:repo/name_of_the_packageThat simple URL will create a YMP (One-Click-Install) file on the fly, effectively adding the repository and installing the package.Example: ... [More] http://r.opensu.se/i/utilities/atoolFor "deep" repositories with ":"s in it, don't use slashes: http://r.opensu.se/i/devel:tools:scm:svn/rsvndumpIt'll move to an even shorter URL soon (http://i.opensu.se/... instead of http://r.opensu.se/i/).It's mostly helpful on IRC or in emails, if you want to make people's life a little easier.Thanks to Bernhard Wiedemann for the idea! [Less]

If you own an ExoPC, and you’re eager to know how to get Plasma Active, our new workspace and set of applications for consumer devices to run on it, this blog article will help you get going. Note: Plasma Active is in alpha state right now, it is ... [More] basically usable, but you will find many rough edges. You should not try this unless you consider yourself an early adopter, or if you mind fiddling with bits and pieces. We are working towards an end-user ready product, but we’re not yet there. What to pick? There are a few different options to choose from, I’ll quickly explain which to choose under which circumstances. MeeGo: Works well overall, but is lacking in key areas, for example we do not have a UI to connect to wireless networks yet, and as the device doesn’t have Ethernet (and cables are lame on mobile devices anyway). You can work around this with a trick Marco explains. Choose this option if you want to run and develop for MeeGo Balsam Professional: Download the Balsam Professional live images from open-slx. This live image provides a fully functional live system without too much hassle. Choose this option if you want to try Plasma Active openSUSE: Install Plasma Active on top of openSUSE 11.4, it uses the Active packages created by open-slx (me, my employer), but is a bit more laborious to install. Choose this option if you want to run the full experience on your ExoPC, or track progress and hack on Plasma Active I will explain here how you can get to a state-of-the-art Plasma Active, using what will eventually become the Tablet Edition of Balsam Professional. Balsam Professional is, unlike openSUSE, focused on end-users and the user experience on consumer-level devices. Balsam Professional is based on openSUSE, so you might well be familiar with many of the tools already. What you need An ExoPC, or a WeTab An empty USB stick of at least 700MB A USB keyboard and possibly a mouse Note that the installation is possible to do by keyboard only, but a bit more comfortable if you have a mouse available. As the ExoPC does only have two USB ports, one of which will be occupied by the installation medium for the first part of the setup, you either need a USB hub, or a combined receiver for mouse and keyboard. If you don’t have a mouse or the means to plug one in, don’t worry, it’s not really hard to do. In this case, I’d recommend to install the updated kernel package from the KDE:Active repo as soon as the base installation is done, as that makes the touchscreen work, from that point on, you won’t need a mouse anymore.The process should take you about two hours, you might get it done quicker, but should be able to get it running within, say, one evening. Getting started The following points provide a detailed guide to installing Plasma Active and the Contour shell onto your ExoPC, using openSUSE. This process is also explained on the wiki, check there for the latest updates. Install openSUSE 11.4: Download this image, Use “dd” to write it to a USB stick, or use the excellent imagewriter tool to handle this for you. after this step, you should have a bootable installation medium in your hands. Insert the USB stick into your ExoPC, boot it and install openSUSE 11.4 onto the machine. It’s wise to enable auto-login, and possibly the SSH server during the installation, since this makes your life a bit easier later on. You need a keyboard for this. Set up the repositories for Plasma Active: zypper addrepo --refresh \ http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Release:/47/openSUSE_11.4 kr47 zypper addrepo --refresh \ http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Active/openSUSE_11.4/ plasma-active zypper modifyrepo --priority 90 plasma-active The last line increases the priority (lower value means higher priority) for the Plasma Active packages. Update your KDE installation to the 4.7 release, this pulls in the dependencies needed for Plasma Active. At this point, you still have a traditional desktop, you now update the KDE stack to the 4.7, and get a few updated packages as well (among them Mesa and a new kernel which is needed to make the touchscreen work and brings much better performance): zypper dup Accept all vendor changes. Make sure the 3.0 kernel is installed (“zypper if kernel-desktop”), if not install it with zypper in plasma-active:kernel-desktop plasma-active:kernel-desktop-base Install Plasma Active packages on top. This will install the contour shell, some apps and configure your system to run Plasma Active, including tweaks to the defaut configuration that make the whole system more touch-friendly and suitable for mobile use cases. zypper in plasma-contour-config After this step, you have Plasma Active on your system. Reboot to boot the new kernel, the Active shell will start automatically. If you get a black screen past login, use a keyboard and ALT+F2, “konsole” to get a shell and try starting “plasma-contour” by hand. If the command is not found, as root, do “ln -s /usr/bin/plasma-mobile /usr/bin/plasma-contour”. Install additional packages, such as Calligra Active (package “calligra-active”) Kontact Touch (package: “kdepim4″) or the kdegames4 suite. Bringing you a nice collection of useful software. Hop into the #active IRC channel on Freenode.net, tell us about your experiences and help others gettting started as well. =) On Tuesday at 14:00 UTC and on Friday at 12:00 UTC, we will organize online install fests on #active (Freenode.net) where we can help you with installation issues, and where you can share your experience with others. Of course you’re free to drop by and hang around at any time. [Less]

Up earlyish, off to Parc Asterix - somewhat staggered by the price and number of people queueing to get in; you would imagine one would offset the other. Wandered around queueing at length for everything, indeed having queued for 30+ ... [More] minutes the one minute ride seems almost a relief; an applied, repeated, and extended exercise in character building patience it seems. Enjoyed several rides, and an excellent dolphin show. Set off driving to Calais, couldn't find a supermache open in the evening - only innumerable wine outlets (with English signs and name) odd. Caught the ferry, fine crossing, both France & England concurrently visible again. Long drive home. [Less]

Discussing automated maven central pom -> rpm .spec file for openSUSE: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-packaging/2011-08/msg00073.html [opensuse-packaging] Automated binary java packaging using maven central

Desktop Summit Last minute team Monday before Desktop Summit, I’ve just learned that we (as openSUSE/SUSE) will not have the SuseStudio kiosk. Too bad, but Wednesday, I finally get confirmation from my customer, that the new hardware will not be ... [More] delivered before Friday 12th. Ah ah good news. I will be able to go to Berlin. So I bought the last airplane ticket for Friday afternoon, and also the last bed at good price. I will be a Berliner for a few days! And fill the blanks to maintain our booth up and welcoming Somethings has to be done? sometimes has been done! Setup the booth each morning with goodies Burning 120 usb SUSE key half Gnome3, half kde 4.6.5 reloaded 4 by 4 [picture] + 1 nokia N97 mini with Gnome3 [story] Placing over 20 posters : RWX3, 11.4 Linux for open mind Distributing almost one hundred DVD to attendees Distributing around 100 usb keys Distributing the only one green Geeko t-shirt we have Help Jos to get the quadri-folio flyer printed Shopping with Jos to buy 60 t-shirts for the football match (love the pink one) Ensure those get printed in time for the match Shopping 28 packs of ice to keep drinks fresh during soccer and volley parties Helping some users with their laptop Answer lots of questions Put the good mood and Have fun button on Get a long list of patches for the Cheat Sheet Poster (thx Bernhard) to be reported Shoot all of what I can my DS Album Collaboration across the border Discussing with Enlightment team [website] to convince them to use OBS and really give it a try, inviting them to join us at OSC11, and try to push them to become our fifth choice’s desktop. Invite also KolabSystem to join us, and let’s talk about using OBS, and how to have better interaction between us and them I address here an official thanks to Georg C.F. Greve, Izabele and Co. who kindly stay awake during my last night in Berlin. Help Izabel Valverde to find a good wifi connection, and quiet place to finish her presentation. Yeap inside the University the wifi really sucks. Artwork : start to discuss with several people if we can build a real collaboration team about artwork. And try something really new and different for 12.1. Nothing is done yet, but future will tell me if I’m right or not Wednesday ask nepomuk maintainer to have a look on some bugs hanging around : patches are waiting in git now People open source software is all about humans, and people after all I really enjoy to meet in real life for the first time Frédéric Crozat, Ismail Dömnetz, Bin Lin, Riccardo Iaconelli, Georg C.F. Greve, Camila, Lamarque V, +100 See a lot of already known friends like Andreas Jaeger, Andrea Florio, Sacha Pellicke, Bernhard Wiederman, Will Stephenson, Jos, Izabele, Javier Lorente, Vincent Untz, Claudia Rauch, Aaron J. Seigo, my beloved greek team, Thomas Thym +200 others Was really impressive, and I need to fix my memory who love to mix names and faces Missed Pretty much all talks I’m waiting the recorded sessions now. Time to talk with all friends around. The group photo, we were blocked at a slow pizzeria with Javier Lorente at that time. and they didn’t wait us! A lot of People Links Andreas Jaeger Album Efstathios Iosifidis’s album Bruno Friedmann’s Album A big big thanks to the organization team! [Less]

The third openSUSE Conference, osc11, kicks off on Sunday September 11, 2011 in Nuremberg, Germany. Under the motto RWX³ all Free and Open Source Software enthusiasts are invited to come together for four days to learn, hack and to have a lot of ... [More] fun. The program will cover a variety topics with an emphasis on interaction between participants. The conference is free of charge and open to anyone! OSC – The annual meeting of the community The conference is the yearly get-together of  the openSUSE community to give its people a chance to meet face to face, talk to and inspire each other. Having the chance to chat on the hallway, to quickly throw some ideas together on a whiteboard or to watch over each others shoulders while hacking can easily substitute endless chat sessions, thousand-mail threads on a mailing list and tiresome telephone calls. Being together in one room, even in this day and age, beats every other collaboration method and is what forges cohesion and friendships. That is why the openSUSE Project tries to get together this conference every year for its contributors. But not only for them, the conference is also for anyone using, working with or taking advantage of the project. No matter if you use our technology, if you are one of our many friends from free and open source upstream projects or if you contribute to another GNU/Linux distribution this conference is for you. Find more information about the conference, the program and the location at http://conference.opensuse.org The Program – Everybody has to read, write and execute Last year, the conference had the motto ‘Collaboration Across Borders’ and brought together an international crowd from many communities. This year we shift our attention a bit deeper, aiming for hands-on discussions to get work done. Smaller, more focused meetings with a strong “read-write” attitude are at the core of the conference. Hence the subtitle of RWX³, commonly known as the UNIX acronym for “Read, Write, Execute” – three times, for you, your community and the rest of the world! The highlights, like every year, are the keynotes that kick of each day. This year our community manager Jos, kernel hacker Greg KH and Michael Miller, marketing vice president of SUSE will give the honors. Of course the general program also has a lot of highlights in the distribution, community and technology tracks. Our distribution is, naturally, one of the topics which receives a lot of focus at our conference. Learn from Stefan Seyfried how to run the coolest bleeding edge stuff from the development tree while still retaining a reliable system that you can use for daily work. Let the Boosters teach you how to leave your own footprints in the distribution by becoming an contributor. Or get creative and work with other designers on the artwork for the desktops and applications 12.1 then and there. Also the “soft topics” in (Free-) software engineering will get their share of attention. Lydia Pintscher gives a workshop to discuss a number of topics that often cause social problems in technical communities and Henne Vogelsang introduces you to the basics of citizen journalism so you can improve your blogging skills. Or how about you help to shape the future of the Ambassador program in a workshop with Kostas Koudaras and Manu Gupta? Another cluster of topics will evolve around new technology that will bring FOSS and openSUSE forward. Robert Schweikert will give you an introduction to the basics of a cloud and an overview of the cloud projects in the Open Build Service. Brush up your debugging skills in a gdb workshop with Jürgen Weigert or tag along for the journey of an I/O request through the kernel block layer with Suresh Jayaraman. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. So how about you visit the legen, wait for it…., dary social event on Monday at “The Geek – Saloon and Dance Hall“, see some great musicians from the Fat Orange Collective live on the main stage or how about you let Winfried Appelt show you highlights of his collection of over 800 ancient calculating machines? And let’s trow in a teaser. There will be a contest related to openSUSE and yet Unidentified Flying Objects, with those UFO’s as prize!!! Find more information about the program, the keynotes, speakers and the social events at http://conference.opensuse.org/program The Location – Work & Play After two years at the Berufsförderungswerk in the outskirts of Nürnberg, we have found a new location smack in the middle of the city. 10 minutes away from the center of Nürnberg, in a former production area of the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG), the conference will be hosted by the Zentrifuge. The Zentrifuge is a project that networks cultural interested and creative people in the region. The whole location has a special atmosphere of an old industrial plant, mixed with art and creativity. The perfect balance between work and play which we always aim for at the conference. Nürnberg with a population of 500,000 is the nucleus of the metropolitan region Franconia at the heart of Europe. Located in southern Germany, it is midway between Munich and Frankfurt and therefor easily reachable by road, rail and air. As a tourist city, known for the Nuremberg Trials and famous for the Christmas Market, Nürnberg has a very good tourist office which will help you with all your needs. The office also provides an accommodation portal on the web which should be your starting point to find a place to stay. Find more information about the location, how to get there and where to stay at http://conference.opensuse.org/location So where do I sign up? Just register today in our conference tool and swing by the venue at the 11th. And once you’ve signed up spread the word about it and tell all your friends! We’ve prepared some artwork for you to do that. Code: <a href="http://conference.opensuse.org"><img src="http://static.opensuse.org/promo/osc2011/banner/square-badge.png" title="openSUSE Conference: 11.-14. September 2011" alt="I'm going the to openSUSE Conference! The conference for openSUSE - and Free Software enthusiasts, September in Nuremberg, Germany. Are you?" /></a> Find more banners, badges and counters at http://conference.opensuse.org/promotion We hope that you are intrigued by the community, program and the location. Come and visit us, we are looking forward to see all of you in September! [Less]