Bonum Certa Men Certa

Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part I: OpenSUSE Board, Survey

YaST boot



Overall, the past week has not been packed with major technical developments. On the other hand, there was some organisational activities.



Board



It's still safe to suppose that Novell some impact -- no matter how indirect -- inside the OpenSUSE board and the elections. It's only the illusion of being an impartial outsider (begging for volunteers to put in some free labour).

The first openSUSE board has been appointed a year ago and now the elections are starting. We have formed an election committee that is organising it (see here for details - thanks to Marko, Andrew, Claas and Vincent for running the elections!).


Here is a call asking more people to participate.

Since this is the first member-elected Board, there have been a few special rules put in place to minimize bumps in the election process, and motivate and enable more members and contributors to take part in the voting.


The above coverage comes from a blog where Zonker writes as well, so there could be some prodding involved. Could be.

Survey



The OpenSUSE users survey is out and comments in this blog post augment the findings somewhat.

The openSUSE survey results are out now. The survey we made in July/August time frame attracted over 12,000 participants. Here is a short summary on changes compared to the last one we did approximately 1 1/2 year ago with the openSUSE 10.2 release. The summary is in the same order as the questions are.


Technical



Joe Brockmeier will deliver a keynote speech in Ohio LinuxFest 2008 and he also wrote about KDE in the next version of OpenSUSE.

KDE is hugely important to the openSUSE project, and openSUSE’s users. According to our most recent survey, a total of 68.3% of respondents are using KDE, so when it’s time to decide how to support KDE as it moves through its transition period, it’s not something that is taken lightly.


An OpenSUSE blog also marks the birth of the "openSUSE Tutorials" Web Site, which has this about Nautilus.

Nautilus is the graphical file manager (along with a few other nice features) in GNOME. Most users only use the bare minimum features of Nautilus (including me, as I’m mainly a console jockey) and don’t realize how powerful and flexible Nautilus truly is.


KDE has Konqueror, which can also be equated to cmacs in terms of function.

Elsewhere among the blogs there's this important note about Build Service.

We now have put all checks in packages so that they can be easily enhanced: brp-check-suse, rpmlint (the polices are in the rpmlint-Factory package) and post-build-checks.


Going 'outside' to some other blogs, Scott shows off his triple-boot laptop, which has OpenSUSE on it. Here is some guidance to those who wish to install it.

The openSUSE project is a worldwide community program sponsored by Novell that promotes the use of Linux everywhere. The program provides free and easy access to openSUSE. I want to show you how to easy install openSUSE 11 on this post. The way is only take few time to install it because i will use default settings to install it.If you’ve never use Linux before, you shall follow my easy steps to install it. openSUSE 11 is one of many linux distros and it’s also a friendly Linux distro so i am really like it and want to introduce more about it.


As its turns out, it's possible to perform the instillation over the serial line and here is a new rave.

OpenSuSe is another Linux distribution worth looking at. It’s listed as the second Major Distribution at Distro Watch so it must be raising more eyebrows than you think. With an easy to use installation that requires little to no previous experience and a better visually appealing boot loading screen by defaut, OpenSuSe is something you should try out. I currently use it on my laptop to do some OpenGL programming, and to be honest, it’s great.


More bits of news can probably be found in OpenSUSE Weekly News.

In this week:

* Hack Week III Judging * Novell OpenPR Blog: Zonker Blogs * Board election * Hackweek review * Jigish Gohil: Spin openSUSE Live CD or USB stick image “easily” * Stephan Binner: New KDE Four Live-CDs


Next up: SUSE and Xandros.

Recent Techrights' Posts

SLAPP Censorship - Part 29 Out of 200: Violent Language Won't Go Away When You Use It in Your Site, Blog, and Social Control Media
abuse began in 2012 because I had politely and accurately criticised Red Hat
Lacking Business Model, Bluesky Has Become Slop and Gravitates Towards Plagiarism, Bots
LLM slop/plagiarism under the guise of "Artificial Intelligence" (AI)
 
Links 01/04/2026: Quantum Hype (Turing and Google), "US Fuel Prices Surge Past $4 a Gallon"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/04/2026: "Sacred Week of Cycling" and Zenity for Scripts
Links for the day
Losing Debian: Sruthi Chandran election flop
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
French judgment: parasitisme by FSFE & Matthias Kirschner (CO23.002709)
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Microsoft Uses April Fools to 'Joke' About Inserting "Age Verification" (Surveillance) Into Linux
MinceR says the "lkml [message/page] one is April Fools or at least they're trying to pass it off as April Fools [however] the [GitHub] one was archived on the 8th and yesterday, so that probably isn't..."
IBM "Headcount Reductions" by Early Retirement and Death
The tragedy at IBM started 33 years ago on the first of April
Red Hat: Latin-1 character set under threat from Bishop Michael Martin, North Carolina
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 01/04/2026: Microsoft GitHub Now Pushing Ads Into People's Code/Commits, Earth Overshoot Day Draws Nearer
Links for the day
What IBM and EPO Workers Have in Common: European Media Not Covering Very Major News (Press Became Dysfunctional)
Are IBM operatives working to scuttle the process of investigative journalism?
Free Speech in the United Kingdom When "Chilling Effect" is Increasingly Prevalent
If politicians cannot even use a term like "parasitic behaviour", then where do we as a society end up?
Oracle Lays Off Because of Debt and Commercial Issues, Not Slop
Like Scam Altman, Larry Ellison hangs around Cheeto King because he could use some bailouts in the form of government contracts or phony money with an incredible name like "Stargate"
The Real Reason Many Sites and Forums Shun Microsoft Lunduke
When forums say that they banned Microsoft Lunduke or don't want him mentioned it's probably because they are familiar with the "stench" that follows him around
Gemini Links 01/04/2026: Hallucinations, Stitching, and Type Systems
Links for the day
Lots of Layoffs at IBM, "Media Blackout" About Mass Layoffs at IBM's HashiCorp and Confluent Last Month
IBM is a dying company circling down the drain while manipulating or paying the media to pretend everything is fine
Microsoft Under Investigation by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for Abusive Tactics
What's noteworthy is that this is "set to begin in May"
Sounds Like Red Hat (IBM) Layoffs in Slop Clothing
This is an IBM policy. They try to justify staff cuts.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 31, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 31, 2026
In Time for April Fools (and Easter), 30,000 Oracle 'Pink Slips' While People Are Asleep
Oracle probably has no choice but to fire a ton of people
Gemini Links 31/03/2026: Five Years on Gemini (Rob's Gemini Capsule), OFFLIFIRSOCH 2026, and More
Links for the day
Slopfarms Persist, But Google Seems to Have Delisted Many
We are still checking
Links 31/03/2026: More Energy Shortages Noted, Taylor Swift Faces Trademark Infringement Suit
Links for the day
Chaff, Slop and Spam Help Distract From Parallel Crises at IBM
IBM seems very eager to undermine discussion about what goes on inside
IBM-Spawned Lexmark Sold, Then Came Mass Layoffs, Now the CEO Who Did This is Leaving
IBM is really not a magnet for talent at this point
Not April Fools But April First: Red Hat Staff Becoming "IBM"
claims of mass layoffs set to kick off at IBM some time soon
Gemini Links 31/03/2026: Antenna Packed Up, AuraGem and AuraSearch Maintenance
Links for the day
Links 31/03/2026: More Social Control Media Bans, BBC Now Run by GAFAM (US) Executive
Links for the day
'Broligarchs' Don't Want Science, They Want Entertainers to Entertain Them (and Make Them Richer)
Of course this will result in things getting worse in the sciences and everyone who relies on the sciences
When Republics Turn From Democratic Governments Into Imperialistic Dictatorships
What goes on in the US would require talking about politics
Companies That Have Nothing Except Buzzwords and Promises Will Perish
Dishonest media will perish along with the companies it is covering up for
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to be Grilled in Two Weeks' Time by the British Government for "Recent Regulatory Failures"
we escalated to our politicians
GNU/Linux Will Thrive as Long as It's Modular, Not Monolithic
To IBM, it's all about money. Nothing else matters.
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part X - People Are Leaving
"I was happy to be at the EPO in the beginning, but since I realized it's all a big mafia"
IBM's 33 Years as a "Financial Engineering" (Accounting Tricks) Company
In relation to Red Hat, this "financial engineering" involves culling many workers and trying to replace them with slop
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 30, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, March 30, 2026
Links 31/03/2026: Rising Costs, Cyberattacks, Novo Patent Expiry
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/03/2026: American Spring, Distributed Systems Simulator, and Calculus for Electronics
Links for the day
SUEPO Central Made a Strike (or Striking) Success
Europe has more than enough qualified patent officials
IBM Layoffs and Their Expected Scope in April 2026
Such layoffs impact not only IBM "proper"
SLAPP Censorship - Part 28 Out of 200: Facing Consequences for Impersonation and Worse
It's not "funny". It is moreover libellous.
Links 30/03/2026: South Korea Next to Curb Social Control Media Addiction and Manipulation, Notorious Patents in the US Challenged
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2026: Going Back to Wrist Watches and Why LLMs in Programming Suck
Links for the day
Did IBM Pay thestreet.com for Puff Pieces? (Like It Did With Forbes)
If so, there is no disclosure
Wikipedia - Funded by Slop-pushing Companies and 'Broligarchs' - Gave Benefit of the Doubt to Slop, Then Regretted It
Wikipedia sucks. Without slop it'll suck a little less.
Payoffs of Lifelong Commitments
"The Lifelong Activist"
Links 30/03/2026: "We Can’t Income-Tax Ultra-Elites"; "The Pirate Bay’s Oldest Torrent Turned 22"
Links for the day
Today, Europe's Second-Largest Institution (EPO) Goes on Strike That Can Last Until 2027. Nobody in the Media Covers This!
"We stand with the protesters"
When the Cost (or Time) of Maintenance Exceeds the Value
In recent years it seems like more people learn to remove things from their lives, not add more things
Passage of Wealth Upwards, Blaming the Victims
Tim Sweeney's net worth is 5.1 billion USD according to Forbes
More Media Needs to Tell the Public Slop is a Giant Bubble, It Should Stop Taking "Sponsorship" Money to Inflate This Bubble
If enough of (what's left of) the media changes its tune and quits being a parrot of GAFAM, then we can debate slop like grown-ups
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 29, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, March 29, 2026
Trying to Hide One's Abuses by Imposing Silence on Critics ("My Profile Was Private")
With enough daylight, sooner or later everyone knows you are a vampire
Fedora Badges System Shows the Demise of Fedora Under IBM
IBM isn't good at keeping what it buys
IBM is Sunsetting Red Hat, It Only Uses the Brand and the Shell
IBM buys or spins off companies as containers for "toxic assets" and debt
Cisco Systems is a Still Weak Spot With Bug Doors
nothing to offer except storytelling
EPO Strike Begins Today and It's the Longest One Yet (Can Last a Year)
Where's the media?
Gemini Links 30/03/2026: Approaching April and Arvelie Calendar
Links for the day