Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell News Summary - Part I: OpenSUSE Conference 2009 Reports

Gecko



Summary: OpenSUSE news this week is mostly to do with the conference which ended last week

A LOT has been written about the conference in Nürnberg, but the one person who wrote the most about it was also in part an organiser.

We have several tracks at the conference — two tracks of pre-planned discussions, two rooms for the “unconference” which have been consistently lively and full, and the “hallway” track.


Keysigning and elections were on the agenda. Coverage came mostly from the OpenSUSE community, e.g. the ambassador Sascha Manns [1, 2]. Roger Whittaker flew over from the UK to Germany [1, 2, 3, 4] and so did Benjamin Weber. Bryen Yunashko from the Board also attended alongside core members like Adrian Schröter and Andreas Jaeger, who collected some links to photos.

Today at the openSUSE Conference I took the notes of the governance session. We will continue the discussion tomorrow but let me just publish the raw notes as I took them at the meeting without much editing.


 

Sunday morning of the openSUSE conference I took part in the Lightning Talks which were short talks on a variety of topics.


More photos can be found here.

Zonker wrote about the event in the company's PR blog and his final coverage was crossposted (semi-professional and the personal blog). Michael Löffler did a wrap-up, Martin Vidner took notes later in the week, and a female member of the team was disappointed that they had no shirts for females at the conference.

Unfortunately, this year's openSUSE conference organizing team either assumed that all the conference participants will be male, or (more likely) deliberately chose not to take female minority into account. Ladies tees were sadly not among the conference swag. So I said no, thanks, I already have a shelf full of Linux/opensource/tech conference T-shirts I can hardly wear, because they simply do not fit (those of you who happened to meet me at the conference know that I look drowned even in men's S size ;-) ). I see no point in handing them to friends/relatives either, after all, it was me, not them, who participated at the event, right?


Some technical work that transpired at the conference is this:

On the outskirts of the OpenSUSE Conference, core developers revealed details on the new openSUSE version 11.2. Although it will have Kernel 2.6.31, browser users will have to wait a bit longer for YaST.


In other news, OpenSUSE Edu Li-f-e is said to have gone "hybrid" (not meaning semi-proprietary).

I am happy to announce that the very first working hybrid iso of openSUSE Education Li-f-e DVD created on openSUSE Build Service is now available for testing.


A few days ago, Zonker canceled the project's IRC meeting. He explained this decision as follows: "The openSUSE Project meeting for today is canceled as many of the openSUSE team are traveling or in off-site meetings today. The next meeting will be held in two weeks. If you have any questions or concerns in the meantime, please feel free to bring them up on the -project mailing list." So the IRC meeting was canceled, but SLLUG decided to hold a meeting with an introduction to SUSE Studio.

This month's Salt Lake Linux Users Group (SLLUG) meeting will be an introduction to SUSE Studio.


On the technical side, Duncan writes about zypper, as usual, Sascha Manns puts another package in OBS and here is a new set of instructions for Avidemux on OpenSUSE. An OpenSUSE/SLE book is being put together as yet another new product gets OpenSUSE preinstalled.

TabletKiosk announced three portable computers running OpenSUSE Linux 11 on Intel Atom processors, two of them seven-inch UMPCs (ultra mobile PCs) with built-in Wacom digitizers. The UMPCs are the Eo a7330D and the ruggedized TufTab a7230XD, joined by the 12.1-inch Sahara NetSlate a230T tablet, according to the company.


On the Moblin/Goblin side of things, mechanisms from OpenSUSE are being converged and the significance of this we last mentioned here. Moblin and OpenSUSE getting together [1, 2] would raise some important questions. More news can probably be found in the OpenSUSE Web site.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Legal Letters Are Not Postcards
It seems like intimidation, nothing more
European Patent Office (EPO) Strikes Persist, EPO Management Tries to Give False Impression of "Happy Staff"
EPO is trying to broadcast to the world a totally phony image of itself
The End of FOSSPost (fosspost.org), It Has become an LLM Slopfarm Like FOSSLinux
These sites will never get lucky with slop. These experiments always end badly.
 
Government Bailouts Won't be Enough to Save IBM
Bailouts from taxpayers in the US
Links 23/05/2026: Social Media Bans and Demise of Userbase of LLM Chatbots
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 85 Out of 200: The United Kingdom's Rating for Press Freedom Has Improved, But We Can Do Even Better
we see the US at #64
Sites Realise That Becoming More Active by Using Bots (LLM Slop) is Self-Destructive
We'll soon (maybe next year) also show that some of the 85+ KG of legal papers sent our way are computer-generated garbage, which might run afoul of some rules
Gemini Links 23/05/2026: Patience, LLM Chatbts Being Bad, and Unexpected Computer Surgery
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 22, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, May 22, 2026
Links 22/05/2026: Ebola Crisis and Samsung Averts a Walkout With Big Bonuses
Links for the day
Links 22/05/2026: Inflation Fears and Thailand Tightens Visa Rules for Tourists From Dozens of Nations
Links for the day
EPO Staff Representation Speaks of This Week's Discussion With the EPO's Budget and Finance Committee (BFC) Amid Mass Strikes
The Central Staff Committee's outline (prepared in a rush) or the "flash report"
SLAPP Censorship - Part 84 Out of 200: New Legislation Against SLAPPs on the Way (After We Reached Out to Ministers)
They dealt with the matter individually too, but we won't share this in public, at least not at this time
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part XXX - Where Was "The Ethics and Compliance Team" When the Family of EPO President Campinos Was Caught Doing Cocaine?
It remains to be seen if national delegates will tolerate this in future meetings
Gemini Links 22/05/2026: Esperanto Music History, Suspicious Adoption of Signal, and Unauthorised LLM Slop in Code
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 21, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, May 21, 2026
Links 21/05/2026: "Declining America" and Why Slop 'Code' is Made to Fail
Links for the day
Techrights and Tux Machines Subjected to Cyberattacks for Several Weeks
In the past I spoke to the cybercrime unit of British Police. Maybe it's time to do so again.
The Register MS Has Become a 'Content' Farm Promoting Slop for Hostile Corporations
Now they call it "PARTNER CONTENT" - not "SPONSORED" - as if semantics make the difference
Latest Example of Widespread Fake Assertions (False News) About "Hey Hi"
The false narrative of "Hey Hi layoffs"
Links 21/05/2026: Facebook Rewarded With Tax Breaks to Destroy the Environment and Cause Global Warming, Shortages, Pollution; SpaceX (SPCX) Continues Losing Billions of Dollars
Links for the day
Codecs and Software Patents - Part VIII - GNU Audio/Video Team Has Chosen the AV1 Video Codec and It Explains Why (They've Researched Their Options)
AV1 video codec will be used to encode and share GNU videos online
Dr. Stallman Helps Establish Free Software Advocacy Outside the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as Well
The ideals or principles of Free Software needn't be centralised or monopolised; they can be federated
22 Years of Tux Machines and a Community Stronger Than Ever Before
We've already received some feedback from the community and improved it accordingly
Microsoft Under Investigation for Breaches of Law in the UK
Just like the Microsofters
More Microsoft Layoffs on the Way (June and July 2026)
with or without PIPs
LWN Sponsored by the Linux Foundation (Monopolies)
We must be able to casually point this out
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part XXIX - European Patent Office (EPO) Tells Staff "Speaking up" is Good, But Not When the "Brother-in-law" of EPO's President Does Cocaine
Do we still have a functioning democracy and potent press?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 20, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 20, 2026
Gemini Links 21/05/2026: Immigration, Slop, and Slop 'Code' Suggestions Infesting Code Repositories
Links for the dayGemini Links 21/05/2026: Immigration, Slop, and Slop 'Code' Suggestions Infesting Code Repositories