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Novell News Summary - Part I: OpenSUSE Survey and Site Changes, Breakage



Summary: OpenSUSE news from the past fortnight, extending from Boxing Day to present

LAST week there was no post on the subject because of the holidays. This week's post is a calm and mostly positive one.

Events



Zonker, a Novell-paid spinner, writes about writing release announcements, which are naturally filled with a lot of promotional language.

I've been spending a fair amount of time away from the computer while on vacation, which has been nice, but I took some time yesterday to catch up on my RSS feeds. Even thought it's pretty quiet out there right now, I found several posts and announcements about beta releases, project releases, and so on.


Zonker also writes about SCALE again. OpenSUSE will have presence there.

The Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) is coming up shortly. We’re looking for some volunteers to help man the openSUSE booth at the show. If you’re an openSUSE enthusiast and planning on attending SCALE, please drop a note to the openSUSE marketing list.


Novell is hoping to put the red "N" and green Geekos right in people's faces.

Releases



OpenSUSE 11.2 is far from a new release, but eWEEK did a special report on it just around Christmas.

eWEEK Labs' Jason Brooks and Andrew Garcia discuss Novell's latest community-oriented Linux OS, OpenSUSE 11.2, which is packed with official OpenSUSE versions of the latest and greatest of what the open-source software world has to offer. Where OpenSUSE 11.2 sets itself apart from its Linux rivals is its focus on highlighting community software contributions alongside the official distribution-provided packages. This community software focus, combined with the long time "power user" orientation of SUSE distributions, makes OpenSUSE 11.2 a very configurable--but potentially confusing--Linux-based operating system option.


Zonker wrote about promo DVDs of OpenSUSE 11.2 and later on he mentioned the OpenSUSE survey. OpenSUSE-Edu Li-f-e got coverage from Download Squad:

The best collection of Linux educational software for all ages that I know of is the openSUSE-Edu Li-f-e (Linux for Education) Live DVD.

[...]

There's a wide variety of "edutainment" software on this DVD for kids 12 years old and up. For religious education there's BibleTime, a Bible study tool. For chemistry, there's Avogadro, Chemtool, gElemental, and XDrawChem. For astronomy, there's the Stellarium planetarium simulator, and for math there's Dr. Geo, Euler, K3DSurf, KSEG, wxMaxima and Xaos.


Let's look at some reviews of OpenSUSE 11.2.

Reviews



Here is a new comparison which was labeled "The Ultimate Distro Showdown". Important distributions like Fedora are conspicuously missing, whereas OpenSUSE 11.2 is included.

We laid our hands on all the three biggies—Ubuntu 9.10, Mandriva 2010 and openSUSE 11.2—and pitted them against each other. What followed was the battle of the century, as each distro pulled off one unique trick after another to stay on top of the game.


A KDE developer had some difficulties with OpenSUSE 11.2, but it might not be related OpenSUSE itself. Other people who are closer to OpenSUSE seem to be getting along just fine.

Now finally yesterday I installed OpenSUSE 11.2 on my notebook (this one).

Installation went very smooth, and it seems all the hardware components were recognized automatically, 3D graphics, even WLAN.

Only issue, it still seems modern networking (aka networkmanager) doesn't like me. Or I am too stupid.


By contrast:

In summary, all is well with openSUSE 11.2 on the Dell Mini 10v including the 3D desktop with compiz.


Looking at the GNOME side, OpenSUSE 11.2 received this fantastic new review.

openSUSE 11.2 Emerald is really a phenomenal release. It's smooth, polished, expensive, with extreme attention to little details. It comes with everything you may need, want or desire. You will have to work very, very hard to find any flaws.


Technical



There were many posts of a technical nature but nothing spectacularly new or exciting. Ben Kevan wrote some posts about OpenSUSE and packages that it includes. Thunderbird 3.0 is among them:

Thunderbird 3.0 got released and is available as official update for openSUSE 11.2


Google Chrome got tested under OpenSUSE 11.2 over at Linux Crunch, which is a nice new Web site.

I would like to share with you my short experience with Google Chrome on openSUSE 11.2. Although it is in a beta stage, it is stable and fast. I like many things in it and I even tried to emulate them in Firefox (thanks to Firefox add-on). In this post, I will state my personal thoughts about Google Chrome and I will refer to Firefox in any comparison. I am using version 4.0.249.43.

[...]

I can summarize the GUI design of Google Chrome with three words: simple, clean and effective. I like the way Google Chrome puts tabs in the title bar. I enjoy also how Google Chrome populates the speed dial page with time. There is no status bar.


We have found many HOWTOs relating to SUSE Studio or OpenSUSE 11.2 and Masim still makes a lot of OpenSUSE HOWTOs, such as this one. Here is an extensive installation guide for OpenSUSE 11.2:

When I wrote and published my extensive Ubuntu installation guide, I promised you many more step-by-step installation guides to come. Indeed, I have kept my word. You have had the Windows 7 guide and the new dual-boot guide for Ubuntu and Windows 7. Now, it's time for the openSUSE installation guide.

Currently, openSUSE 11.2 is the latest openSUSE release, which will be the focus of our article today. We will learn how to choose the right edition, download it to our computer, burn the image to a CD/DVD, and then install the distribution to hard disk.


For those who want to build OpenSUSE packages, more information was made available [1, 2] and Katarina says that "YaST is falling" as she makes some suggestions.

Other technical posts of interest include:

Gemcutter + openSUSE Build Service cooperation (idea)

Last but not least: If Fedora and Mandriva had gem2rpm templates in a perfect shape too, Build Service could provide packaged gems also for their distributions.


Command-Line Tool Fuzzer Beta 2

On my train travel to Nuernberg I heavily rewrote fuzz-cmdline while testing it by fuzzing several setuid command-line tools on openSUSE 11.2.




Leftovers



OpenSUSE Weekly News went on as usual throughout the holidays (issues 103 and 104 are out, as well as an audiocast in German). They are looking for more translators/polyglots.

Improvements have also been made to openFATE, which we last mentioned a month ago (more details here).

Today i’ve made an little Cleanup in the openFATE Databse.


Site changes are an ongoing issue that led to technical problems and the OpenSUSE Wiki keeps getting changed, even "renewed" according to one source.

The openSUSE wiki is on the way to be renewed.


They have been saying this for quite a while now. Some of it appears to be coordinated in IRC.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Real Life Should be Offline, Not Online, and It Requires Free Software
Resistance means having the guts to say "no!", even in the face of great societal burden and peer pressure
 
IBM Took a Man’s Voice, Pitting Him Against His Own Work, While Companies Profit from Low-Effort Garbage Generated by Bots and “Self-Service”
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Links 26/09/2023: KDE, Programming, and More
Links for the day
Mozilla Promotes the Closed Web and Proprietary Webapps That Are Security and Privacy Hazards
This is just another reminder that the people who run Mozilla don't know the history of Firefox, don't understand the Web, and are beholden to "GAFAM", not to Firefox users
Debian More Like an Exploitative Sweatshop Than a Family
Wiltshire is riding a high horse in the UK, talking down to Indians who are "low-level" volunteers in his kingdom of authoritarians, guarded by an army of British lawyers who bully bloggers
Small Computers in Large Numbers: A Pipeline of Open Hardware
They guard and prioritise their "premiums", causing severe price hikes due to supply/demand disparities.
Microsoft Deserves a Medal for Being Worst at Security (the Media Deserves a Medal for Cover-up)
There are still corruptible/bribed publishers that quote Microsoft staff like they're security gurus
10 Reasons to Permanently Export or Liberate Your Site From WordPress, Drupal, and Other Bloatware
There are certainly more more advantages, but 10 should suffice for now
About 200,000 Objects in Techrights Web Site
This hopefully helps demonstrate just how colossal the migration actually is
Good Teachers Would Tell Kids to Quit Social Control Media Rather Than Participate in It (Teaching Means Education, Not Misinformation)
Insist that classrooms offer education to children rather than offer children to corporations
Twitter: From Walled Gardens to Paywalls and/or Amplifiers of Fascism
There's moreover a push to promote politicians who are as scummy as Twitter's owner
The World Wide Web is Being Confiscated From Us (Like Syndication Was Withdrawn About a Decade Ago) and We Need to Fight Back
We're worse off when fewer people promote RSS feeds and instead outsource to social control media (censorship, surveillance, manipulation)
Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links
There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging
We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world
First Iteration of Techrights as 100% Static Pages Web Site
We want to champion another decade or two of positive impact and opinionated analysis
Links 25/09/2023: Patent News and Coding
some remaining links for today
Steam Deck is Mostly Good in the Sense That It Weakens Microsoft's Dominance (Windows)
The Steam Deck is mostly a DRM appliance
SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies
SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux
It's not about the clients, it's about money
Birthday of Techrights in 6 Weeks (Tux Machines and Techrights Reach Combined Age of 40 in 2025)
We've already begun the migration to static
Linux Foundation: We Came, We Saw, We Plundered
Linux Foundation staff uses neither Linux nor Open Source. They're essentially using, exploiting, piggybacking goodwill gestures (altruism of volunteers) while paying themselves 6-figure salaries.
Security Isn't the Goal of Today's Software and Hardware Products
Any newly-added layer represents more attack surface
Linux Too Big to Be Properly Maintained When There's an Incentive to Sell More and More Things (Complexity and Narrow Support Window)
They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash
Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
Godot 4.2 is Approaching, But After What Happened to Unity All Game Developers Should be Careful
We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware)
Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
Another Copyright Lawsuit Against Microsoft (or its Proxy) for Misuse of Large Works by Chatbot
Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
Privacy is Not a Crime, Reporting Hidden Facts Is Not a Crime Either
the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
United Workforce Always Better for the Workers
In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer