Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell News Summary - Part I: OpenFate, Build Service, and Many Events

Lizard on the road



Summary: OpenSUSE brings OpenFate, Hack Week is coming, and many new events take place

WE DELIVERED NO weekly news last week (summer break), so this week's aggregation will be larger than usual.

OpenFate



OpenSUSE introduces OpenFate, about which there is more information right here:

It was just announced that openFATE, openSUSE’s feature tracking system, will now be open to non openSUSE members.


Coding Rallies



Google's Summer of Code still supports OpenSUSE and here is just one report on the subject. Novell's next Hack Week (the fourth one) is coming pretty soon as well.

Novell is once again sponsoring a Hack Week, from July 20 through July 24th. This is an opportunity for Novell’s Open Platform Solutions developers to use their Innovation Time Off and hunker down and work on the projects that catch their fancy.


Zonker wrote about Hack Week very recently:

Novell is once again sponsoring a Hack Week, from July 20 through July 24th. This is an opportunity for Novell's Open Platform Solutions developers to use their Innovation Time Off and hunker down and work on the projects that catch their fancy.

Hack Week projects can be new features, new applications, or improvements to existing services and applications. Previous Hack Weeks have generated projects like Tasque, Giver, Debian package support in the openSUSE Build Service, and many others. Hack Week is also a chance for Novell employees to work with the openSUSE Community contributors if they wish on projects that help improve openSUSE.

You don't have to be a Novell employee to participate! If you'd like to hack on something cool and useful, you're welcome to join in!

We'll be collecting ideas in openFATE for Hack Week, so if you'd like to contribute an idea, just go to openFATE[1] and log in with your openSUSE account. Then select "Create" and add your feature, as well as any test or use cases.

If you'd like to help implement one of the ideas, check out the features that are already in openFATE for Hack Week IV. Go to "Browse" and select Hack Week IV as the Product, and you'll see all of the proposed features for Hack Week.

Have questions about Hack Week? Email Olaf Kirch[2] or ask in #opensuse-project on Freenode.

[1]: http://features.opensuse.org/

[2]: mailto:okir@suse.de


There are surely some interesting projects in store (hopefully not Mono related). Here for example is a welcomed improvement.

Installation: Resizing Windows before proposing Linux partitions



While “selling” openSUSE to a friend of mine, I tried to explain him all the steps of the installation and all the configuration options which I had changed. He was not any geek and it was his first time seeing Linux.

[...]

You can see it with 11.2 Milestone 2, where it is not enabled by default; to enable it, boot with start_shell=1 on kernel command line and uncomment the


OpenSUSE Factory



OpenSUSE Factory is said to be opening... opening up in the sense that other folks are invited to participate.

openSUSE Factory is open! That means that people outside Novell will have a chance to real participate on the openSUSE distribution. That is GREAT news!


The Build Service is being used to bring the latest KDE and LXDE is coming too.

What else is being built? Well, among the things that are announced more openly, there is work on Firefox 3.5 which is built for older versions of OpenSUSE as well. See this post about Mozilla news in OpenSUSE and the writings about another browser, Chrome, being built and tested on OpenSUSE. MySQL 5.4 is coming too and LenZ Grimmer writes about FlightGear 1.9.1. Novell's own iFolder was brought in very recently.

Good news, everybody! iFolder client packages are now available for openSUSE 11.1 from the openSUSE update repositories. This means you can install iFolder client on openSUSE 11.1 using YaST or zypper, without any modifications to your installed system.


Needless to say, many packages are added to OBS without special announcements or any fuss.

OpenSUSE Central



Brian Proffitt has just interviewed Zonker, with whom he did not work directly as a media person.

Linux.com: How are openSUSE, and Novell, approaching the big IT challenges in the current economic climate?

Zonker: Those are two very different questions, really. Novell is approaching the "big IT challenges" in the same way as many companies: Hunkering down and concentrating on the best way to meet customer needs and make sales in a very challenging environment.

The openSUSE Project doesn't really have the same pressures. We have no quarterly revenue targets and the downturn hasn't been a negative for use of FOSS. In fact, we may be seeing more interest by individuals and companies as a result of the downturn. It's hard to say.


OpenSUSE Forums claims 30,000 users now, despite growing pains.

Short but sweet post here: Getting a few numbers on community growth for the openSUSE Day introduction at LinuxTag, I noticed that the openSUSE Forums have now passed 30,000 users!


Events



There are many events this summer. There are heaps of photos from LinuxTag 2009, which took place in Berlin [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8].

Federico Mena-Quintero, who recently left the OpenSUSE Board shares some GNOME Hispano photos and Jack Wallen writes about another event that Novell attended.

I have a licence plate hanging in my office that I received from one of the last major Linux conventions I attended. The convention was in New York at the Jacob Javitz centre. It was huge. The convention was filled to rim with big business. IBM, Oracle, Compaq, Novell — many of the big guns were in attendance.


Looking at South America, many photos from Brazil's Free software conference can be found here.

Well.. I have some photos from International Free Software Conference in Brazil.

We have an openSUSE Users Group booth, with DVDs, T-Shirts and a lot of curious people about openSUSE.


Gabriel Stein from OpenSUSE took many more photos in later days and put a large number of them in Google's Picasa.

Chile too celebrated an OpenSUSE Day.

And the day came. After a six hours trip on bus, and a few minutes of sleep I got to Santiago de Chile. Francisco Toha picked me up so we headed to Universidad Andres Bello for the openSUSE Day. Huge building and plenty of room for everyone. The event started almost on time. I followed the first talk, a bit hoping to have a decent internet connection so I could show a live SUSE Studio test drive. OK, that didn’t happen. The internet traffic ratio was too slow like waiting 59 minutes to build an JeOS appliance was nuts so that was definitely the low aspect of the talk.


Releases



OpenSUSE 11.2 is now at milestone 3 and people take note. Stein posts a little reminder and the official announcement is here.

The openSUSE Project is pleased to announce the release of openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 3. Images are ready for download and testing. This release includes the 2.6.30 Linux kernel, KDE 4.3 beta 2, GNOME 2.27.2, OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 Alpha, and more!


Is SELinux going to be part of it?

Recent Techrights' Posts

Open letter to the ACM regarding Codes of Conduct impersonating the Code of Ethics
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
With 9 Mentions of Azure In Its Latest Blog Post, Canonical is Again Promoting Microsoft and Intel Vendor Lock-in, Surveillance, Back Doors, Considerable Power Waste, and Defects That Cannot be Fixed
Microsoft did not even have to buy Canonical (for Canonical to act like it happened)
Links 28/03/2024: GAFAM Replacing Full-Time Workers With Interns Now
Links for the day
Consent & Debian's illegitimate constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Time Our Server Host Died in a Car Accident
If Debian has internal problems, then they need to be illuminated and then tackled, at the very least in order to ensure we do not end up with "Deadian"
China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 27, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 27, 2024
WeMakeFedora.org: harassment decision, victory for volunteers and Fedora Foundations
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 27/03/2024: Terrorism Grows in Africa, Unemployment in Finland Rose Sharply in a Year, Chinese Aggression Escalates
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: Ericsson and Tencent Layoffs
Links for the day
Amid Online Reports of XBox Sales Collapsing, Mass Layoffs in More Teams, and Windows Making Things Worse (Admission of Losses, Rumours About XBox Canceled as a Hardware Unit)...
Windows has loads of issues, also as a gaming platform
Links 27/03/2024: BBC Resorts to CG Cruft, Akamai Blocking Blunders in Piracy Shield
Links for the day
Android Approaches 90% of the Operating Systems Market in Chad (Windows Down From 99.5% 15 Years Ago to Just 2.5% Right Now)
Windows is down to about 2% on the Web-connected client side as measured by statCounter
Sainsbury's: Let Them Eat Yoghurts (and Microsoft Downtimes When They Need Proper Food)
a social control media 'scandal' this week
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries
Links 26/03/2024: Inflation Problems, Strikes in Finland
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/03/2024: Losing Children, Carbon Tax Discussed
Links for the day
Mark Shuttleworth resigns from Debian: volunteer suicide and Albania questions unanswered, mass resignations continue
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 26/03/2024: 6,000 Layoffs at Dell, Microsoft “XBox is in Real Trouble as a Hardware Manufacturer”
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/03/2024: Microsofters Still Trying to 'Extend' Gemini Protocol
Links for the day
Look What IBM's Red Hat is Turning CentOS Into
For 17 years our site ran on CentOS. Thankfully we're done with that...
The Julian Paul Assange Verdict: The High Court Has Granted Assange Leave to Appeal Extradition to the United States, Decision Adjourned to May 20th Pending Assurances
The decision is out
The Microsoft and Apple Antitrust Issues Have Some But Not Many Commonalities
gist of the comparison to Microsoft
ZDNet, Sponsored by Microsoft for Paid-for Propaganda (in 'Article' Clothing), Has Added Pop-Up or Overlay to All Pages, Saying "813 Partners Will Store and Access Information on Your Device"
Avoiding ZDNet may become imperative given what it has turned into
Julian Assange Verdict 3 Hours Away
Their decision is due to be published at 1030 GMT
People Who Cover Suicide Aren't Suicidal
Assange didn't just "deteriorate". This deterioration was involuntary and very much imposed upon him.
Overworking Kills
The body usually (but not always) knows best
Former Red Hat Chief (CEO), Who Decided to Leave the Company Earlier This Month, Talks About "Cloud Company Red Hat" to CNBC
shows a lack of foresight and dependence on buzzwords
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 25, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, March 25, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Discord Does Not Make Money, It's Spying on People and Selling Data/Control (38% is Allegedly Controlled by the Communist Party of China)
a considerable share exists
In At Least Two Nations Windows is Now Measured at 2% "Market Share" (Microsoft Really Does Not Want People to Notice That)
Ignore the mindless "AI"-washing
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Still Has Hundreds of Thousands of Simultaneously-Online Unique Users
The scale of IRC