Bonum Certa Men Certa

Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part II: OpenSUSE 11.1 Appears as Alpha, SLES in the Press

SUSE manuals



OpenSUSE 11.1: The Birth



The next version of OpenSUSE is out in the wild now... well, at least in the form of an alpha release. Here is the announcement:






Hi everyone,

openSUSE 11.1 Alpha1 is available -- but beware, this is an Alpha with very rough edges!

While testing this on a Thinkpad R51, the system didn't boot after first stage installation. We are still looking into this issue (#411937). In addition to that, the default GNOME installation will complain about a missing package (providing gnome-session-branding)[1].

With the current bootloader issue, using the DVDs for installing is not recommended, until we have a workaround. Please try the LiveCDs instead!

openSUSE 11.1 Alpha1 GNOME LiveCDs: http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11... ttp://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11... openSUSE 11.1 Alpha1 KDE4 LiveCDs: http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11... http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11...

Please refer to http://software.opensuse.org/developer for further details and all the links.

Happy testing, Christoph

[1] missing package is available from: http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.1-Alpha1/hotfix/




Bill Beebe has already taken this alpha for a quick test drive and published some informative notes.

openSUSE officially announced the start of 11.1's development cycle with a drop of alpha 1. What follows are some quick notes taken after booting into the KDE Live CD version. Note that this is indeed an alpha 1.


OpenSUSE 11.0 Tests



Going back to "stable", several people have taken it for a ride and most of the impressions were positive. Here is kmandla's take. The blog typically presents interviews with Ubuntu contributors.

I threatened to abandon my Arch Linux installation the other day, and that happened of course — Crux is recompiling as I type. In between those two I installed OpenSuse just for a lark, and because I don’t think I ever worked with it before.

Technically I did — I think I grabbed a KDE4 live CD that was OpenSuse-based a few months ago. This time I used a Gnome-based live CD and let it spin up, install and mess around, just to kill time.


Jack Wallen was rather impressed and he shared his experiences with many readers.

I am truly impressed with OpenSuSE 11.0. It has made vast progress from its last iteration. I’m so impressed that I am considering keeping this installation and using it as my Linux test-bed (first things first — must install Enlightenment).


The experiences previously reported even convinced Beranger to check what this fuss was all about. He did not exactly regret this.

Given all these experiences, how can I still sustain my previous critics of people who find openSUSE 11.0 as usable, including SJVN?

It's under Novell's umbrella, it's pro-Mono, it's hand in glove with Microsoft, and so on, but it works reasonably well. I have previously experienced the KDE 4.0 CD, then an installation from the DVD — using KDE 3.5.9. And I wasn't really impressed.

I have now tried its GNOME embodiment. Of course, after removing the unusable Slab menu, restoring a classical dual-panel GNOME layout, changing all the fonts that defaulted to "Sans" into "DejaVu Sans Book", and uninstalling everything Mono.

What followed? Updating, adding Packman and a few other things, testing the hibernation, and so on. I am personally now much closer to understanding SJVN's point: openSUSE 11.0 is a reasonable choice for people who just want a system that works.

Too bad most of the other distros are not that usable or, when they are, they're not supported long enough, so you'll be forced to upgrade to something that might break things that were working.

Of course, I can't recommend openSUSE. Given the number of notes on various distros and operating systems, I thought I should try to revisit openSUSE for a reference.


As always, there are those who align a given distribution next to another and do comparisons. Here is one which isn't such a case, but nonetheless it considers things at a shallower level.

Using openSUSE Linux might be the best way to learn Linux if you have an eye toward becoming a Linux professional. With its focus on community development, you can be assured that you are getting some of the latest open source software available. The skills you learn will scale up nicely to the largest enterprise computing environments.


Technical Notes



On a more technical side, here is a blog post about OpenSUSE's improved TabletPC support.

Since a while some newer TabletPCs uses Wacom Tablets with Multitouch support which allows to use the Tablet with the pen but also with your fingers as a Touchscreen. One example is the Lenovo ThinkPad X61t.


A technical assessment of security in OpenSUSE isn't too positive in the following post.

In openSUSE there is a feature called Auto-Login. In short it means that the root can decide which user account should be started as default upon boot, without displaying a login prompt. If you are the only user on a system it might come in handy as you don’t have to type your password each time. Moreover, when installing openSUSE this option is enabled by default.


Timothy Prickett Morgan at the Linux Beacon catches up with Build Service 1.0, which gets praised here.

One of the shortcomings of the openSUSE build service was, until recently, that it didn’t help outsiders (non-Novell employees) in contributing to the distribution’s packages. The build service team worked hard in the last few months, and now it is very easy for external people to send patches directly to be included in the main distribution.


OpenSUSE boasts this helping hand not just to developers.

As some of you may know, several weeks ago, the openSUSE-GNOME Team launched the Helping Hands Project. We’ve had three sessions so far, and each time we host an event, the number of visitors to the #opensuse-gnome IRC channel increases. Last Friday, we actually had a record channel peak of 88 visitors for our Evolution mail client presentation.


This was advertised in the mailing lists.

Over at OSCON, towards the very end, Zonker was grabbed by a journalist for a conversation.

Aside from having one of the niftier names in the industry, Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier has a pretty nifty job, too: He's the openSUSE Community Manager at Novell, where he oversees the folks that help make what will ultimately turn into the next version of SUSE Linux Enterprise. I grabbed a few minutes of his time to follow up on things I'd talked to him about back at the Red Hat Summit.


SUSE (SLES/SLED)



Not much has happened on the more 'commercial' side. The HP 2133 Mini-Note PC appears in the Bangkok Post, but there's no mention of SUSE, let alone GNU/Linux.

Not long ago, market for ultra-portable notebooks belongs to elite class where price is no objection. The launch of Asus Eee PC has forever changed this idea. This year many players try their best to penetrate this newly emerged market. HP has come early and strong with its HP 2133 Mini-Note PC.


A short while ago we caught up with the ASUS situation.

Another pro-SLES testimonial has just been published in this site which offers SLES tips. It's just like last week's. It almost smells like disguised advertising (or "informmecials")

Novell SUSE Linux beats out Red Hat on cost at life sciences firm



"This conversion to SUSE isn't because we love open source. It's not about what's cool," he said. "It's because it's the right thing to do for the company."


It's rather hard to tell apart reporting from advertising, but what can be done other than assigning levels of credibility to publications? This one is actually trustworthy.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Nonfree Software in My Bank, by Richard Stallman
Updated 8 hours ago
Richard Stallman is Usually Right Because He Thinks "Outside the Box"
he is able to observe society (mores and norms) as somewhat of an outsider
 
This Monday WebProNews Absolutely Flooded the Web With Fake (LLM Slop) 'Articles' About "Linux", Google News Promoted Them as Legitimate
All of the following are fake articles attributed to pseudonyms or authors that don't exist; the images are also slop. Why does Google promote these?
Linuxiac is Not a Slopfarm, But at Least Some of Its Articles Are Machine-Generated Fakes
what we said about it was correct
Expect More Microsoft Layoffs
"Are more job cuts coming?"
Microsoft Behaving Like It's Running Out of Money to Pay Salaries
Does that seem like the behaviour expected from a company which claims it is "worth" trillions?
LWN Downtime Due to Linode, Not LLM Bots
"I’ve received an email letting me know that there is a potential for data loss."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 28, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 28, 2025
Links 28/07/2025: Science, Health, and Conflicts
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Healthy Self-Image With Autism and a "New Life"
Links for the day
Links 28/07/2025: COVID-19 Sped up Brain Aging, "Circumvention is More Popular Than Compliance"
Links for the day
LWN Has Been Down for a Long Time, Another Casualty of LLM Bots?
Time will tell. How much time though?
Slopfarms Versus 'Linux' (and Against People Who Write Real Articles About GNU/Linux)
LLM slop in slopfarms by Brian Fagioli and Redazione RHC
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray and Running pkgsrc in a FreeBSD Jail
Links for the day
Microsoft Turns News Sites Into Spamfarms
Is the site The Register MS the next IDG?
The Register MS/The Register US
On Saturday I contacted them for a comment (before issuing criticism)
Hacking revelations at Vatican Jubilee of Digital Missionaries
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 27, 2025
The Week to Come
Planning ahead
LLM Slop Has Only Been a Boon for Misinformation Online
The very same companies that were supposed to maintain quality (again, not limited to Google with PageRank) are now actively participating in generating and spreading slop
When They Tell You It's Free, Does That Mean No Charges (If So, Who's Paying and Why)?
there's "no free lunch"
We're Going to Focus Less on the Molotov Cocktail-Throwing Microsofters and More on Patents
We can get back to focusing on what we wanted to focus on all along
Just Trying to Keep Web Sites Honest (Journalistic Integrity)
the latest articles in LinuxIac are real
Links 27/07/2025: Political Affairs, Data Breaches, Attacks on Freedom of the Press
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: Hot in Japan and Terminal Escape Codes
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs Coming, Science and Hardware News
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: FSF Hackathon and "Hulk Hogan Was a Very Bad Man"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: DAW Mixer Chains and Simple Software
Links for the day
The Register MS is Inventing or Giving Air Time to New Conspiracy Theories so as to Distort the Narrative As High-Profile Agencies Fall Prey to Microsoft Holes
But the problem is holes, i.e. Microsoft making bad products; the problem is Microsoft
Most Editors at The Register Are American, Including the Editor in Chief, a Decade-Long Microsoft Stenographer (Writing Prose to Sell Microsoft)
It's not easy to tell where the site is based (we tried) because it's hiding behind ClownFlare and CrimeFlare hasn't been well lately
Pushers of systemd Rewrite History (Richard Stallman Said UNIX "Was Portable and Seemed Fairly Clean")
Unlike systemd
"New Techrights" Soon Turns 2 (A Few Days Before the FSF Turns 40)
We have a lot more to say about LLM bots
When Silence Says So Much
Garrett, a 'secure' boot pusher, will need to defend himself in the UK High Court
The Register in Trouble
There is not much that can be done at this point
Trajectory of The Register: From News Site/s Into "B2B"... and Into Microsoft Salespeople
Something isn't right at The Register
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 26, 2025
Misinformation in Social Control Media
Social control media passes around all sorts of tropes
Slopwatch: Fake Linux 'Articles' and Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Names/Domains
throwing bots at "Linux" to make some fake articles