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Novell News Summary - Part I: OpenSUSE 11.3 Milestone 5, Zypper Changes

Lizard on the ground



Summary: OpenSUSE events, a new project "milestone", and assorted bits from the past two weeks

AS we migrated the Web site last week, no posts were made that summarise Novell's progress (or lack thereof). The Easter vacation contributed to that. So today's summary embodies news from the past fortnight, not a single week.



The main news would probably be OpenSUSE 11.3 Milestone 5, but we'll start with a focus on events.

Events



Novell’s Brainshare is recalled in the following post about "Zypper Revolution"; it's about system/package management.

I have been going over customer feedback from Novell’s Brainshare conference for my internal “Systems Management Zeitgeist” report, and there are a couple of points I just had to share with you all as they are plain simply inspirational.


OpenSUSE conference 2010 is being planned with anticipation in India and over in Nicaragua something similar is being prepared.

The folks of the openSUSE Community in Nicaragua, are preparing a great event in the city of Granada, Nicaragua, in Central America.


In Indonesia there is this OpenSUSE Community Web site.

Indonesian openSUSE Community website has been activated since July 2007 and provide news update, information, tutorial, tips & trick regarding openSUSE using Bahasa Indonesia as main language. I think it would be better to provide a major changes & improvement for main site, especially for content integration and daily update.


From another conference come many videos, such as the talks from Lenz Grimmer, Zonker, Klaas Freitag, Benjiman Weber & Pascal Bleser, and Katarína Machálková (whom we mentioned earlier today). Here is how the OpenSUSE Web site explains it:

Well it’s been almost seven months since our inaugural conference, and there were a load of videos taken.

[...]

Currently only Day 1 of the conference is available, you can view online (flash) or download (ogg) the talks from the openSUSE TV channel on BlipTV. I am working on getting a channel on YouTube to enable a wider reach, as some people have bandwidth issues with Blip. You can also subscribe to the feeds in multiple formats – rss, miro, itunes.


Wafaa still blogs about the OpenSUSE community and communities in general [1, 2]. The OpenSUSE community is considered to be very cohesive.

Reviews



We have not found a single review of OpenSUSE, but someone who moved from OpenSUSE 11.2 to Kubuntu 9.10 wrote about this decision in comparative terms, such as:

Ubuntu also has local mirrors in Australia, and I have always found these to be very fast. Updates and package installs are handled with no fuss whatsoever. No lockups, no problems. It just downloads the files (several at a time) and then installs them. I am never left with a broken system, or if for some reason I am, I can select "fix broken packages" from within Synaptic and the problem is then rectified. I do not recall if zypper has such a feature.


A new review of CrossOver 9.0 for GNU/Linux was based on OpenSUSE:

All tests were run in an openSUSE 11.2 Virtual Machine with 1GB RAM.


Technical



In a new guest post, Rares Aioanei explains Linux inside OpenSUSE while another person from OpenSUSE writes about "openSUSE 11.3 and SELinux" as follows:

The first step was to bring the next milestone of 11.3 to the level of 11.2 by adding load_policy to the mkinitrd scripts. The patch was submitted to Base:System a few hours ago. This work-around was needed because we switched to upstart which does not contain native C API calls to libselinux to load the policy from within init.

The next step fixed the file permissions of /etc/selinux/config to be 644 and to add some functionality to the selinux-ready script. Both are in security:SELinux now and on their way to opensuse:Factory.


OpenSUSE was one of the earliest distributions to incorporate SELinux.

More OpenSUSE-hosted or OpenSUSE-specific HOWTOs from April would be:

  1. openSUSE 11.1 / SLES11 and add-ons
  2. How to Configure clear and smooth fonts (subpixel rendering) in OpenSuSe Linux
  3. Install ATi Drivers on OpenSUSE
  4. Installing VirtualBox on openSUSE 11.2
  5. Installing Ruby 1.9 on openSUSE 11.2
  6. Samba 3.5.2 SMBTA v2 enabled packages releasedRuby 1.9 on openSUSE and SLEx
  7. Call for testing: unzip feature
  8. Small script to monitor service/process


Leftovers



Issue 117 of OpenSUSE Weekly News has been released along with an audiocast [1, 2, 3]. The same goes for the 118th issue [1, 2, 3], whose author, Sascha Manns, keeps packaging software for OpenSUSE [1, 2, 3]. Progress has generally been slow recently, but OpenSUSE 11.3 Milestone 5 is out, so the project carries on, regardless of Novell's fate (Novell is up for sale).

Recent Techrights' Posts

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if this persists, we'll need to escalate
Informal Open Letter to the Lawyer of the Microsofters (on Who's Funding the SLAPPs Against Techrights)
Whenever I ask about the funding they try to change the subject and act all aggressive
Microsoft Lunduke is Just Provoking People for Provocation's Sake
Be forewarned and remember where this guy came from: Microsoft
 
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If one excludes very large capsules and ones that contain non-textual contenty
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The Register MS: We Know Slop is a Bubble and Mindless Hype, But We Get Paid to Participate
Call out the culprits
There Are Probably Over a Million Pages in Geminispace
there are two many limitations which merit a mention when it comes to assessing magnitude
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We really need to exercise or use our collective voice to oppose Serial Sloppers
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they also perpetuate some falsehoods as the LLMs lack any comprehension
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Red Hat will apparently commence mass layoffs early this coming Monday
Links 08/08/2025: "Quit Facebook" and High Cost of Microsoft/Windows Shown Again ("BlackSuit")
Links for the day
Good Morning, Readers of The Register MS
Things The Register MS could (but does not) cover this morning
Why Gemini Protocol Has a Bright Future
Maybe Gemini Protocol's promise becomes more appealing as the Web turns to slop and bloat
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Going after powerful and high-budget interests is never easy
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For over 4 months already their facilitator in London has been under investigation by British authorities because of what's being done to my wife and I
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Talk about this? They'd rather not.
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There are August layoffs at Microsoft
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 07, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, August 07, 2025
Fake 'Linux' Articles, Written by Bots to Take Traffic Away From Real Articles
LLM slop helps replace information with junk or misinformation
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We know GAFAM not only worries about Gemini Protocol but also attempts to 'infiltrate' Geminispace
The Register MS Promotes Microsoft Slop, Assumes All Readers Use Microsoft Windows
Microsoft really dominates the site
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Read Us in Geminispace as Well
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very frustrating
Links 07/08/2025: Hardware Wars, Mass Recall of Colgate Total Clean Mint, More Microsoft Holes Found
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Gemini Links 07/08/2025: "Right To Manage" and LoRa Analysis
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For the first time in a month OSI writes something and it is Microsoft propaganda composed by a Microsoft-salaried operative
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MSN (i.e. Microsoft) and others openly admit it
GAFAM 'Says' is Front Page "News"
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"oligarchs all the way down"
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60 minutes ago
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