07.25.09
Novell News Summary – Part I: Hackweek, Reviews, and Call for Testers
Events
THERE was no particularly important event, but OpenSUSE was tested against other GNU/Linux distributions over at Phoronix and the biggest new event probably ought to be Hackweek, which produces some more valuable software.
I wanted to reimplement kio_sftp with libssh since some month. This week is another openSUSE Hack Week.
Another event that’s coming is the OpenSUSE Conference.
Attending the openSUSE Conference is free, but registration is required.
Pascal is still running FOSDEM, where Novell's role may cause issues. Videos are now available from the OpenSUSE portion of LinuxTag 2009.
Packages
The solar eclipse that goes several days back could be viewed on OpenSUSE, but the astronomy package at hand is just one among many that OpenSUSE speaks of, including some KDE ones.
Today i’ve released the kpassgen Package in KDE:KDE4:Community.
OpenSUSE continues to talk about LXDE, as well. More here:
A while ago, Andrea Florio posted about LXDE on openSUSE. Since one platform that LXDE is supposed to be good for is Netbooks, I decided to give it a whirl on my Acer Aspire One.
I have to say that I really like LXDE and there are plenty of positives about it. It’s nippy and responsive.
There are lots of other packages that OpenSUSE people write about it and Gabriel Stein chooses to talk about Samba.
Suprise! My first test: a openSUSE 11.1 box with Samba configured in ‘You are my guest’ mode. Everything open. And MacOSX? Automatically detected Samba shares. Without commands. Just point-to-click. What a surprise! I love MacOSX!
I will share my smb.conf here, on next post, totally dedicated to Samba and interoperability.
Reviews
Reviews of OpenSUSE have been rare recently, but here is one short review which is largely positive.
* Pros: Comprehensive and intuitive configuration tool; large repository of software packages, excellent web site infrastructure and printed documentation
* Cons: Novell’s patent deal with Microsoft in November 2006 seemingly legitimised Microsoft’s intellectual property claims over Linux; its resource-heavy desktop setup and graphical utilities are sometimes seen as “bloated and slow”
* Software package management: YaST graphical and command line utility using RPM packages
* Available editions: openSUSE for 32-bit (i386), 64-bit (x86_64) and PowerPC (ppc) processors (also installable live CD edition); SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop/Server for i586, IA64, PowerPC, s390, s390x and x86_64 architectures
There is also this migration from Fedora to OpenSUSE.
These are the main reasons why I made the switch to openSUSE even though I don’t doubt that Fedora is a fine Linux distribution with a great community. For a distribution that releases every six months, they manage to maintain the right balance between bleeding edge software and stability. Their feature list is exhaustive as well and they’re usually ahead of Ubuntu in terms of implementing features. But its openSUSE for my taste and I think I’ll stick to it.
The Shuttle X27D, which runs OpenSUSE, was also reviewed in a British Web site.
Our Shuttle X27D sample was supplied with openSUSE 11, a mature and reasonably user-friendly Linux operating system.
Other
OpenSUSE is looking for testers.
In addition to well-developed code, testing is a major part of ensuring a rock-solid openSUSE Linux distro. To make sure testing of openSUSE 11.2 (and beyond) are done in a well-organized way, we’re improving the way the openSUSE Core Test Team works together to ensure top quality for openSUSE.
There may be more interesting picks at the OpenSUSE Web site, which seems to have slowed down somewhat (maybe caused by the season).
In this Week:
* Register Today for the openSUSE Conference!
* Lydia Pintscher: The Way to Amarok 2.2
* Sebastian Schöbinger : Adding a music profile with the KDE Energy Manager Plasmoid
* Michael Andres: libzypp-6.10.4: Tune automatically created solver testcases (zypper dup)
* Interviews from the LinuxTag @ Radiotux
The next part will deal with SUSE. █
