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Novell News Summary - Part I: OpenSUSE in London, Nürnberg; Infrastructure Repositories Migration

Rock lizard



Summary: A grouping of the past week's news about OpenSUSE

OpenSUSE has had a quiet week, but it received free publicity after the team had been sucking up to some journalists from London area for SUSE publicity (press tour).

Brigitte and the PR team had set up a fantastic day of interviews and I had some quite good conversations with Glyn Moody, Richard Hillesley, Jason Stamper, Cliff Saran, and Peter Judge.

Talked about the openSUSE 11.2 release, where the project is at now, and also got rather a lot of questions about what it's like to transition from journalism to my current job. I suspect the last part probably won't feature in most of the final stories, but was more a chance to talk shop.


Zonker was feeding journalists some Microsoft/Novell spin. From Peter Judge who was there:

Three years on from Microsoft's deal with Novell, the real importance is coming through, says Novell's OpenSUSE community manager, Joe Brockmeier


Yes, Brockmeier is paid by Novell to defend this patent deal. It's all about PR and that's where it came from.

Down in Germany, Novell sponsored an "open source" research group.

Novell, provider of the community open source project openSUSE and the commercial open source product SUSE Linux Enterprise (Desktop/Server) is sponsoring the Open Source Research Group of the University of Erlangen Nuremberg. We are very happy to receive the gift which will support half a Ph.D. student (as a research assistant) for three years. The sponsorship was facilitated by the Open Source Business Foundation.


Also noteworthy: "Open source professorship at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg"

Germany's first open source professorship was established at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.


Andreas Jaeger wrote about the board elections -- a message that appeared also in the opensuse-announce mailing list.

Releases and Reviews



Looking at the latest release, Dan Lynch experienced some difficulties with it and his final scores are therefore quite low.

Conclusions: Ease Of Installation & Use: 4/5 Speed: 3/5 Stability: 2/5 (due to my false booting problem) Community Support & Documentation: 4/5 Features: 3/5 Overall: 3/5


Other OpenSUSE folks reported difficulties.

… This install is anything but painless.


Here is a better experience from Jonathan.

Since I have been running SuSE/openSUSE since 9.1, I feel this is the best release to date. Now I'm not knocking other distributions. Ubuntu and Fedora are fine distributions. It was little things that I was used to that annoyed me. My philosophy is, use what works for you. But I am very impressed with this release of openSUSE.


SUSE Studio was reviewed by Jim Lynch and this person was handling different versions of OpenSUSE, having a bit of an ordeal throughout.

All in all it was pretty impressive, and I thought by myself “that’s like the stories the debian users always tell about upgrades”.


Other posts about such an adventure include this one (there are about 4 in total).

Technical



The retirement of Sax2 was mentioned earlier in the week and it is quite major. Heise covered it and there have been many other technical writings about OpenSUSE, some of which relate to new packages that are updated. OpenSUSE infrastructure repositories are being moved.

The migrated subversion repositories are at BerliOS and reachable via http://developer.berlios.de/projects/opensuse/. The translation repository (suse-i18n) is also moving now (details on the mailing list).


Some KDE developers who are affiliated with OpenSUSE look for bugs and look for more tests. Luc Verhaegen, whom Novell laid off despite his important work on RadeonHD, will attend FOSDEM.

More links can be found in OpenSUSE Weekly News, as usual.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Many Microsoft "Assets" Are Fabricated Baloney (to Game the Numbers)
At times it seems like what we deal with are many weak patents (on algorithms), valuations or speculations based on hype ("hey hi"), and stocks held by Microsoft and its own staff
"Internal Changes at Red Hat / IBM"
It seems like quite a few people are leaving
Confirmed in French Media: Mass Layoffs (10% Culled) in Microsoft France
Now some reports in French
Microsoft in Freefall in Finland
Can Finland eradicate Windows from all its infrastructure, including core operations that are sensitive to sabotage by cracking?
Google's Chrome Passes 70% and Web Standards Are Dying
The Web is quickly becoming devoid of any standards
Slopwatch: Plagiarism and Ponzi Scheme, Bubble About to Burst Entirely, Admits Goldman Sachs
the hype that Google News and The Register MS actively participate and profit from
The Register MS Says "AI Web Crawlers Are Destroying Websites", So Why Does The Register MS Help 'AI' Companies? (Spoiler: Money)
People need to call out The Register MS on its hypocrisy
Slopfarms Already Peaked, They Will Die When Slop Companies Run Out of Money to Borrow
slopfarms will lack an actual "engine"
 
Open Source Initiative IRS Filing: Almost All the Money is Corporate, Stefano Maffuli (Executive Director) Takes About a Quarter of That Money for Openwashing of "AI" Ponzi Scheme
OSI is currently little but a PR/marketing agency of Microsoft
Many People Are "Leaving" Red Hat, Even High-Level Managers
Something is definitely going on at Red Hat
Techrights Has Been Subjected to Calls of Violence (and Death Threats), It Never Condoned Violence
I have no sympathy for people who call violence "free speech" and then get in trouble
Condoning Violent Behaviour and "Free Speech"
perhaps Microsoft Lunduke lost touch with what constitutes violence
Takeaway From the Google Verdict: GAFAM Has Too Much Control (Even Over the US Government and Courts With Government Appointees)
Many people feel disappointed but hardly surprised by the verdict
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 in One Month
As noted a few days ago, several times in fact, many people now recognise the importance of the FSF's mission, even if most people don't know what the FSF is
"Voluntary" Layoffs at Microsoft (to Game the Numbers, Sugar-Coating a Crisis)
"Employees interested have until the end of October to volunteer."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 02, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 02, 2025
Links 02/09/2025: Oligarch Tech and Text Encoding Concerns in Ada
Links for the day
"People on LinkedIn Saying That They've Left Red Hat."
We already saw signs of it a month ago and named some of the people
Gone With the BRICs (or BRICS): "Linux 8" in Cuba
GAFAM must be worried
Telecompaper Reports Microsoft to Reduce the Workforce by Another 10% (in France)
Imagine what this will do to staff's morale
India is Back to Windows 8 (Market Share Down to 8%) as Android Soars to a New Record High
For Microsoft, India is a runaway market
Links 02/09/2025: SCO Summit and Russia Suspected Of Jamming GPS
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/09/2025: Mediterranean Marriage and Staying Connected at 35,000 Feet
Links for the day
Links 02/09/2025: Attacks on Unions, Microsoft TCO, and DDoSing a Growing Problem
Links for the day
Why We Publish Information About the SLAPPs (But Not About the Legal Process), an Abuse of Process by Americans Trying to Silence Critics of Their Employer, Microsoft
It doesn't take thousands of pages to explain something simple
Internet Relay Chat Didn't Fall Off a Cliff
IRC will turn 40 in less than 3 years from now
The UEFI 9/11 - Part V - This is Not a Drill (Disable "SecureBoot" Now)
A "9/11" Coming
There's No Obligation to Speak to Anybody
The very fact that "bkuhn" is till spending time in social control media says a lot about his poor judgment
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 01, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 01, 2025
Microsoft Trying to Force People to Resign (Amid Mass Layoffs) a Strategy That Takes Its Toll
Microsoft seems to be circling down the drain and the "final flush" will be the moment the "hey hi" (AI) bubble implodes completely
Google Simply Cannot Be Trusted
Only fools would trust GAFAM
Admission That a Third Party (or Parties) Funds the SLAPPs Against Techrights
This can end up costing them over a million dollars
Modifying and Writing One's Own Computer Programs is Not a Crime (or: Google Proves That Stallman Was Right)
We're generally gratified to see so many positive mentions of him
Why We Stopped Publishing Videos (for Now)
We'll probably get back to videos one day, but it's hard to say when or to what extent
What Animal Rights Activism Teaches Us About Sympathy and Focus
It's possible to believe that the planet is warming, that we must do something about it, and still eat eggs and butter
When You Turn Web Sites About Tech Into Political Sites
A lot of people fall into the trap of catering only for particular groups
Gemini Links 02/09/2025: ROOPHLOCH 2025 and Lagrange 1.19 Released
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/09/2025: News Corp. WSJ and A Month With NixOS
Links for the day
“Sideloading” Never Killed Anybody
There are many online discussions this week about the misnomer "sideloading"
Slopwatch: Google News as FUD Vector Against Linux and Plagiarism Enhancer, Serial Slopper (SS) Uses LLMs to Googlebomb "Linux"
Slop destroys the Web not just by screwing with search engines and helping plagiarists. It's also responsible for de facto DDoS attacks...
Links 01/09/2025: "Attacks on Science" and China's "Soft Power" Grows
Links for the day
Links 01/09/2025: Fresh Backlash Against Slop and "Norway’s Electricity Crisis is About to Hit Britain"
Links for the day
Writing and Coding Isn't Always Enough
Last year we had to assume a role we didn't have before: litigants
Links 01/09/2025: Catching Up (Mostly via Deutsche Welle), "Windows TCO" Effect in UK
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/09/2025: Linguistic Barriers and "Web 1.0 Hosting"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 31, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 31, 2025
Autumn Has Come
Autumn should be exciting in all sorts of ways; it'll also mark our anniversary
The UEFI 9/11 - Part IV - External Interference
They all seem to be playing a role in crushing Software Freedom and self-determination for users