Bonum Certa Men Certa

Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part I: OpenSUSE and Summer's Hack Week

YaST update

In this last week of August, much has happened mainly because of Hack Week. Here is a quick rundown.



General News



The following is quite important: Novell and/or the community has appointed a new committee.

We now have founded an openSUSE Election Committee consisting of:

* Claes Backstrom (Community) * Andrew Wafaa (Community) * Marko Jung (Novell) * Vincent Untz (Novell, deputy)


We shall return to this in the future. It shows Novell's influence in (if not control of) the project. It's not just about funding.

On to some good news: Stellenbosch University is going to have a lot of fun.

South Africa’s Stellenbosch University now has a high-performance Sun Fire cluster running OpenSuse Linux, courtesy of Breakpoint Solutions.


The Utah Open Source Conference has just ended. Novell was there, but we've complained before at the sight of Novell not funding it. Is this still true?

See the openSUSE Project at the Utah Open Source Conference this week!

The Utah Open Source Conference is going on August 28 through August 30 at the Salt Lake Community College.

[...]

As part of Hack Week, we’ll also have a room set aside for Hack Week III participants, so you can watch the hacking in real time.


This is the Hack Week which the post above is referring to.

Hack Week



Here is a nice project proposal from the almighty Cyberorg.

Here is an idea, build OLPC XO’s Sugar interface for openSUSE this hackweek.

What is Sugar?

* Sugar graphical user interface, written in Python, on top of the X Window System and the Matchbox Window Manager. o Designed specifically for collaboration of users through network sharing of user activities (method calls and signals); o “Zooming” interface to network connectivity “spheres” (local, collaborators, neighborhood); o Journal interface to storage of events, activities, objects (files)



Here is another example project.

My goal for this hackweek is to unify them as much as possible. So, now I have something to show. The prototype works on openSUSE 11.0 Alpha2 and unifies steps 1-3.


Reviews



There were quite a few of them, all of which rather short. Among the quick experiences:

1. On openSUSE, sorta

Don't be like that. Don't discount ex-Novell-employees, their experience or capability, or Novell products just because Novell's management isn't being held responsible for better performance standards. Not only is it not the fault of the individual contributors, it simply is not accurate.


2. openSUSE 11 - Desktop Emphasis

Today, I completed my download of openSUSE 11.0 (after my recent Vista failure) and set about installing it. It was a DVD of the latest ISO from openSUSE. My machine is the same Acer Ferrari 5000 (2.0 GHz X2 AMD Turion 64, 2GB RAM, ATI X1600 Mobility Radeon).


Here is a more extensive examination of OpenSuse 11.0 with KDE 4.

Except for the still touchy subject of the Microsoft deal, I’d recommend Novell to someone who was new to Linux but ready to learn. It doesn’t have the same hand-hold style of Ubuntu, so that’s still my top choice. Right now it’s really almost a tie between recommending Mandriva and openSuse as the next best thing after Ubuntu.


Roblimo took a look at the same setup and he produced a slow-going video.

SUSE has been around almost since the dawn of consumer-level desktop Linux, and openSUSE 11 upholds the SUSE reputation for having not just a wide range of available applications, but also excellent documentation and a fine user-to-user support community. For this video we chose the KDE 4.x desktop option. KDE 3.5x and GNOME are also available as defaults in openSUSE.


Here is a direct link to the Ogg Theora file (use it to encourage its use):

Ogg Theora



Technical



ComputingTech.Blogspot.com covers a variety of distributions, but this time it focused on SUSE. Here is an article about X.

SaX (also referred to as SaX) is the X configuration tool for SUSE Linux. It runs for the first time during the initial SUSE Linux installation, where it identifies your graphics card, installs the graphics drivers, and sets up X to its default configuration. The settings are stored in the /etc/X11/XF86Config file. You can edit this file manually, but that would be unnecessary risky behavior.


This second article from the same blog looks at KDE and GNOME.

When you first install SUSE Linux, YaST will recommend installing just the KDE desktop. You can choose to install GNOME instead, or install both if you have enough disk space.


Last week we wrote about SELinux in OpenSUSE, but we missed what Andreas Jaeger had posted.

Beginning with openSUSE 11.1, SUSE users will have an additional option regarding security frameworks. In addition to AppArmor, we will be adding SELinux capabilities in openSUSE 11.1, which will allow users to enable SELinux in openSUSE if they wish.


This puts them in a better position against Fedora.

More



As always, more details might be available in the OpenSUSE site. We don't look at it for reference, but there may be overlap.

In this week:

* Hack Week III * openSUSE Election Committee Founded * openSUSE at Utah Open Source Conference * T&T: Accelerate your build speed with Icecream * linux.com: A video tour of openSUSE 11 (with KDE 4 desktop)


Next up: SUSE.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Coming Soon, the Next Chapter About the Crisis of the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
We're far from done
Expect GNU/Linux to Rise Sharply in China
But Red China won't trust Red Hat (IBM), which works for the Pentagon and keeps the "secret sauce" for its OS secret (just what Americans accused China of doing with its distros)
Gemini Links 16/03/2025: Threats to Canada and How to Process News Online
Links for the day
 
When You Don't Want to Tinker Much You Just Use GNU/Linux, Not Windows
With GNU/Linux upgrades are possible and, failing that, one can just back up the home directory and copy it "back into" the new OS
Facebook REALLY, REALLY, R E A L L Y Does Not Want You to Read This Book
It would be a CRIME to read it
Illuminating Microsoft's Code of Conduct (CoC) Hypocrisy
Oppressor victimhood? Leadership claimed by the worst offenders?
Planet Ubuntu - or Ubuntu Planet - Has an LLM Slop Problem (Called Faizul "Piju" 9M2PJU)
Does investigative reporting have any future at all?
Links 16/03/2025: Handwriting Comeback and "MElon’s Attack on U.S.A.I.D."
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/03/2025: "Differences Distance" and "Dopamine-addicted Pigeon"
Links for the day
Links 16/03/2025: American Press Under Attack, "France Offers to Take in US Scientists"
Links for the day
Links 16/03/2025: Growing Tariff Hostilities and Social Media Surveillance
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 15, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, March 15, 2025
Gemini Links 15/03/2025: Sleeping in March, Headless Raspberry Pi 4
Links for the day
Links 15/03/2025: Hey Hi (AI) Hype Waning, Microsoft and Apple Ridiculed for Vapourware
Links for the day
Many Reports About Microsoft Layoffs Are LLM Slop Based on Other LLM Slop (From Microsoft-controlled LLMs That Downplay the Layoffs or Give Badly Outdated Data)
The LLM slopfarms also dilute/derank actual news about Linux by pushing Microsoft Azure instead; it's a spamfest!
When You Expose Corporate Crimes, Misconduct and Lies They Harasses and Troll You. Then You Write About the Harassment and Trolling and They Allege It's "All Personal".
protect women's safety
Gemini Links 15/03/2025: Bandcamp and DST
Links for the day
Links 15/03/2025: Albania TikTok Ban, No Skinnerboxes in Danish Schools
Links for the day
Sierra Leone: Android Up to Record Highs, Windows Falls to Record Lows of Almost 5% (15 Years Ago It Was 100%)
This is what happens when about 83% of Web requests come from mobile
Margarita Manterola (marga, Google) & Debian DebConf13 Swiss venue intrigue
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 14, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, March 14, 2025
'India Today' is a Slopfarm, Sometimes 'Covering' "Linux" With Slop Images
New example of pure BS
Gemini Links 14/03/2025: Grizzy Bear and Prime Beats
Links for the day
Links 14/03/2025: ProPublica Admitting That It Uses Slop (Foolish Move), RIP Mark Klein
Links for the day
Windows is Fast Becoming Insignificant to Zimbabweans
based on this survey, less than 1 in 6 Web requests may originate from Windows
Rumours of IBM Layoffs Again, This Time Marketing
It's "bad marketing" to talk about layoffs
The Fall of the Open Source Initiative (OSI): The OSI Does Not Speak For You, OSI Staff Speaks for GAFAM/Microsoft (the Paymasters)
they speak for proprietary software companies, but they wear "open" on their sleeve
Microsoft Money Used for Abuse of Women and Against Journalism in Support of Women (the Victims)
"Never interrupt your opponent while he is in the middle of making a mistake."
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com and hamradio.my (in Planet Ubuntu) Are at It Again With LLM Slop About "Linux"
LLM slop does not save time
Links 14/03/2025: Chinese Tensions With Australia, Putin Turns Down Ceasefire
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/03/2025: Löjl and Docker Context Stuff
Links for the day
Links 14/03/2025: Scam Currencies in the US and Oligarchs (Including GAFAM) Controlling All the Major Policies
Links for the day
Antisemitic Attacks on Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS) in Wikipedia This Week
Did the man strike a nerve or what?
Bluewashing Ends DEI at IBM and at Red Hat (HR or Hiring Become Gender- and Race-Neutral)
All that "whitelist is racist" stuff is likely a thing of the past
Links 13/03/2025: Intel Rotates Figurehead and South Korea Imports Karen People From Myanmar
Links for the day
Meanwhile at Microsoft Canonical...
Promoting proprietary surveillance by a company that actively attacks Linux in a lot of ways
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 13, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, March 13, 2025