openSUSE news

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Announcing openSUSE on ARM Release Candidate 1
1 October 2012, 5:00 pm



After 11 months of grueling work, openSUSE is pleased to announce the first Release Candidate for openSUSE 12.2 on the ARM architecture. After discussing ARM first at the openSUSE Conference in 2011, the openSUSE ARM team has managed to bring up openSUSE from nowhere to being a truly usable and functional distribution on the ARM version 7 architecture in time for the new openSUSE Conference in Prague next month!

Hardware and device support This RC1 release is focused on ARMv7 which encompasses the Cortex-A processor profile from the Cambridge, UK based chip designer. Due to the current nature of the existing ARM landscape it doesn’t mean that all devices that use a v7 SoC are supported though. As such openSUSE took the engineering decision to focus on a subset of devices to minimize the time it takes to bring the distribution up on the architecture. The supported SoC vendors for this release are Texas Instruments’ OMAP3 & OMAP4 and Freescale I.MX51; the supported devices running with these SoCs are the Beagleboard, Beagleboard-xM, Pandaboard, Pandaboard-ES and the EfikaMX smarttop/smartbook. There is also an image for the VersatileExpress which is suitable for use in Qemu as well as a generic root file system tarball that users and developers may use to help bring up unsupported devices. The images are available from the download section, the .xz archive files contain the full image (filesystem + kernel + initrd) and the .tar.bz do NOT contain a filesystem (kernel + initrd only).

More information Information for each platform is available on this wiki page and a quick guide on how to get up and running with openSUSE on ARM is available on this page. As with everything that openSUSE does, we invite everyone who is interested in joining in and help make openSUSE the premier distribution for the ARM platform. There is a brief guide on how to submit package fixes for ARM, for those that wish to see what the Action Items and the TODO list are there is a Trello Board which is open to everyone, there are also the usual communications channels of IRC(#opensuse-arm on Freenode) and mailing list (subscription to the list is required, here is the list archive). If you have a device that isn’t currently supported, openSUSE would love to help you get it up and running.

Thanks The openSUSE-ARM effort has been built using the Open Build Service, leveraging Qemu for emulation of the target architecture, ensuring a single package source for all architectures and simplifying software maintenance. This method has led to numerous bugs being found and subsequently fixed with all fixes submitted upstream to Qemu, OBS, Kiwi as well as many other packages. A native build farm mirrored the OBS environment to verify package failures as well as testing builds. This native farm would not have been possible if it were not for the sponsorship of hardware from Texas Instruments/Pandaboard Project, Genesi, ARM and the openSUSE community.

Source: openSUSE News

[openSUSE.fi]

openSUSE Conference 2012 – Invitation to Lightning Talks and Speedy Geeko
2 October 2012, 4:26 pm

The openSUSE Conference in Prague is about to happen and we know that all of you are really excited about it. One more year with great talks and workshops and the warmth of the openSUSE Community around. Being there is really awesome and being a part of it is really great. Since having fun has no limits for us we feel the need to ask you the following:

• Did you wanted to submit a talk and you were late?
• Do you feel like talking about something that has to do with openSUSE?
• Do you feel like talking about something that has nothing to do with the openSUSE?
• Do you feel the need to have an on-stage group-hug with Izabel and Kostas?
• Can you do all that in 2 to max 5 minutes?

If yes is the answer to at least the last and one other of those questions, here is your chance to make it happen.

This year, on oSC we bring one more time the openSUSE lightning talks and the Speedy Geeko and we encourage everyone to come and be a part of it.

Lightning Talks After many people submitted talks a bit late to fit on the regular conference Schedule or weren’t sure if they wanted to submit a whole talk in order to present something related to openSUSE, we recognised the need to organise something for all of you. After all there should be place for everyone in the openSUSE Conference.

We invite all people that want to make a short talk or talk short about their work inside openSUSE to join us in Lightning talks. Send your requests, info below.

How it works?

• Each Presenter gets 10 minutes to present their topic (depending on the number of submissions…)
• The topic should be related to openSUSE
• You must send a description of your talk until the 10th of october and have the slides ready to send before the beginning of this years oSC
• Your talk has no slide limit

Time is crucial so after the time limit you will have your microphone taken no matter what…

Speedy Geeko After last year’s huge success and fun we dare to do it one more time. This year we promise to entertain you showing you the other stuff that openSUSE people do. Last year we had bacon, bees, countries, global personalities plus other cool stuff, this year we hope to be at least that interesting and exciting.



How it works?

• Each Presenter gets 4 minutes to present their topic
• Each Presenter will present with 20 slides
• The slides progress every 15 seconds whether the Presenter is ready or not
• The topic can NOT be related to openSUSE

Time is crucial here too so after the 5 minutes we will find ways to remove the microphone from you. Please don’t make us run for it and be aware that we will carry some sort of weapons.

Instructions If you feel like participating all you have to do is to follow the instructions below:

• For submitting a lightning talk click here with subject title: Lightning talks
• For submitting a Speedy Geeko talk email click here with subject title: Speedy Geeko

The deadline for sending your talks is 10th of october and we will release both schedules at the 15th.



After we release the schedules all you have to do is to be sure that you will have your presentations given to us at some point before this year’s openSUSE conference.

Of course in an open format, preferably ODF or PDF!

Your hosts

Izabel Valverde and Kostas Koudaras

Source: openSUSE News

[openSUSE.fi]

openSUSE Factory Moving: Milestone 0 Ready for Feedback!
3 October 2012, 11:00 am



Good news! openSUSE Milestone 0 of openSUSE 12.3 is out! While we’re still discussing the schedule and won’t be deciding anything before the openSUSE Conference in Prague later this month, development is picking up steam.

Changes Ismael Doenmez was kind enough to provide us with a quick overview of the latest changes in Factory:

• KDE is updated to 4.9.1 release
• Glibc is updated to 2.16 release
• Kernel is updated to 3.6.0-rc7
• X.org updated to 1.13 release
• All X.org video drivers are updated to latest stable release (or snapshot).
• Mesa updated to upcoming v9 snapshot.
• DRM libraries updated to 2.4.33 release
• Qt updated to 4.8.2 release.
• Emacs updated to 24.2 release.
• OpenJDK updated to 1.7.0.6 release
• Banshee media player is updated to 2.5.1 release.
• zsh is updated to 5.0 release
• SourceCodePro font from Adobe is now available among other new font packages.
• Support for OPUS codec added via libopus
• jpeg-turbo is now the default jpegv8 implementation, jpegv6 is dropped.

Helping out easier than ever! As expected from a development release, there is still a lot of work to do, so your input at this early stage will be a huge help in making the final release into the beautifully polished work that we aim for. openSUSE 12.3 Milestone 0 has a list of most annoying bugs here, please add issues you find and help fix them. As Will Stephenson recently blogged, fixing an issue is a matter of BURPing on build.opensuse.org! Find a how-to here.

So run, don’t crawl, to your nearest downloader and see for yourself what the next version of openSUSE has in store for you at our download center.

Source: openSUSE News

[openSUSE.fi]

oSC 2012 BoF sessions can be scheduled!
3 October 2012, 5:00 pm



Within three weeks, in Prague, the openSUSE Conference will start off again. Like last year, we have not only an awesome program but also reserved time for small sessions to get work done. We’ve got a wiki page where you can schedule such sessions before the event and on the event itself we’ll allow scheduling more sessions Unconference style. Read on to learn more about the BoF session, based on an article from last year’s conference.

Definition Wikipedia defines a BoF as ‘an informal discussion group’, ‘often formed in an ad-hoc manner’. It also describes a BoF as ‘an informal meet-up at conferences, where the attendees group together based on a shared interest and carry out discussions without any pre-planned agenda’.

The central concepts are informal, shared interests and ad-hoc. What is not mentioned are goals, the why of such a session. But based on the concepts, you can get an idea. The informal factor means everyone is equal and can and should voice their opinions. The shared interests mean you get together people who care about a particular subject. The ad-hoc factor merely re-inforces the other two. A BoF is very much like meeting for dinner: you talk as friends about whatever interests you! That is not to say a BoF can’t have goals. Often, BoFs have a number of things the participants want to discuss. The person organizing the BoF is usually the person who puts one or more topics forward, but everyone is free to bring up other issues. This is central to the concept of a BoF – discuss things.

Why? Free Software communities work online in a collaborative fashion. That’s marketing speak for: we work together, alone. While each of us sits behind his computer, either alone or with others in an office, we form one team. We communicate over mail, IRC and other online channels.

For asking questions, basic decision making or just getting work done, this is excellent. For socializing, it is less optimal, but you’ll still find plenty of social interactions especially in IRC channels. It gets much harder however, when complicated issues surface. If decisions have to be made about processes or fundamental technical directions, the online aspect gets in the way. You quickly run into misunderstandings and while our hacker culture compels us to fairly direct (‘rude’) communication, still emotions can run wild.

This is where face to face meetings help. Getting to know each other over dinner or during a party is a powerful enabler for future online communication. But it is also the perfect moment to make those hard decisions! And that is where the BoF comes in.

How? Discussions about future directions or day to day business like improving a review process or working together more efficiently – all things done better in person. In a BoF, a team working together on-line meets and discusses these things, face to face, in an open manner. Not completely unstructured, mind you, but still very open. The organizer of the BoF is there merely to start up the discussion and possibly facilitate it. Facilitate by making sure some decisions are actually taken. And recorded!

A typical BoF starts with a short ‘hi all, thanks for coming’, and if needed an introduction of the participants. Then, it is time to find the subjects of the discussion at hand. The organizer can coin a few things he or she things need to be discussed and others can chime in. From there on, it’s a matter of actually going over the subjects one by one.

The challenge now is to keep the discussion from going in all directions – something which is fine at a dinner but not productive at a BoF. Gently reminding the team of what the goal of the current topic is is usually sufficient. You all share the same goals, after all. The second challenge is to make sure decisions are taken and recorded. Creating the typical action list of who does what is the best way to go. It might make sense, with a large BoF team, to have one person lead the discussion while someone else takes notes.

Know that the person organizing the BoF does not have to be a ‘team leader’, nor a ‘great communicator’!  Every attendee is equally responsible for the quality and results of the discussion. Organizing the BoF is merely a technical detail – not a huge deal at all, and anyone can do it.

Responsibilities and tools Organizing a BoF is surprisingly simple if the right people turn up. For that, a clear description is usually enough. A title like “Factory review process discussion” will most likely attract those involved with review of packages in Factory and interested in improving the process. If the review process has had hickups in the last few months it is highly unlikely that the discussion won’t be attended or not attract the right people. Nor is it likely to not have ‘enough to talk about’. The problem is usually more one of getting sidetracked and not actually finishing discussing the topic with a proper todo list!

What do you need to organize a BoF? Almost nothing. Pen and paper (for the todo!) will usually suffice. A whiteboard might be nice for more complicated problems like mapping out a new API, creating a flow diagram of a process or simply noting down the agreed-upon topics for the BoF. Otherwise, just talk! Introduce the topic quickly and ask for opinions will fire it off easily.

Scheduling BoF’s Usually, BoF’s are scheduled ‘on the spot’ using a big whiteboard in the main hall of the conference or on an open wiki page. That can lead to two similar BoF’s or two BoF’s targeting the same team at the same time, however. It also means you might not have a spot at a decent time. Which might result in being forced to plan a BoF in the time slot of a talk about the same subject . This is why the openSUSE CfP team asks you to plan BoF’s in advance! We’ll also offer room to schedule BoF sessions at the event itself, of course.

The biggest perceived problem with planning a BoF is the inherent contradiction in ‘planning’ and ‘BoF’. Yes, you might not know now what will be an issue 3 months from now. However, you don’t have to nail the agenda down today, that would indeed run counter to the whole concept of a BoF. If you think your team will benefit from having a good, open discussion about what you do and how you (want to) do it, simply send in a quick proposal to the openSUSE Conference Paper Committee. It is no problem if something more urgent pops up and you discuss that instead of following the initial description. The main reason for ‘planning’ (part of) the BoF’s beforehand is to allow the CfP team to try and schedule things in such a way there is little overlap with talks and other BoF’s and to allow teams to reserve a room.

So go to the BoF wiki page and add a BoF! You’ve got until the day before the conference to do this – after that, we’ll schedule at the event itself using whiteboards.

Source: openSUSE News

[openSUSE.fi]

First openSUSE Conference Sneak Peek
8 October 2012, 11:23 pm



Less than two weeks from now the openSUSE Conference will start. The location itself is almost enough reason to attend: the openSUSE Conference 2012 is in the beautiful, historic city of Prague. For those jaded by gothic beauty, the conference program will provide all the motivation you need!

If you’re new to the world of Linux and software conferences, you might think that you’ll be out of your depth, especially when you recognize some of the leading lights in Free Software development and culture among the speakers. But there’s plenty at the openSUSE conference for the Linux newbie – in fact, it’s the perfect way to dive into the world of open source. Held in context with the local Linux Days and incorporating also SUSE Labs and a Gentoo miniconference, this openSUSE conference has something for everyone.

Read on to get a taste of the contents of the conference, with video and text interviews!

Video Interviews We’ve interviewed Agustin Benito, our keynote speaker, who will talk about the importance of Small and Medium businesses for Linux World Dominance. See below or click here for a link to blip.tv

The second speaker we interviewed is Linux Defender Armijn Hemel from the Open Invention Network. Click here for a blip.tv link.

Getting involved Monday afternoon offers some really useful talks for participants who are interested in getting involved in spreading the word about FLOSS and taking an active role in their project’s public face.

Isabel Valverde kicks things off after lunch with a presentation about the openSUSE Travel Support program. Many contributors are on a tight budget, so travel to events can be a real challenge. Providing direct assistance with travel and accommodation costs helps bring people together, creating a dynamic environment and allowing face-to-face communcation where problems are quickly solved and new ideas generated. Isabel explains how openSUSE’s approach to providing this assistance works and looks and costs and benefits.

openSUSE Ambassador Kostas Koudaras is the veteran of many conferences and events and has been heavily involved in developinng the Greek openSUSE community. Establishing successful programs for marketing and community involvement can be a trial-and-error process: you can never be sure how something will work until the ‘rubber hits the road’. In this talk, Kostas sets out the roadmap for the newly invigorated openSUSE ‘Ambassadors 2.0′ . Find out how you can get involved or leverage these ideas for your own FLOSS project.

Following on from Kostas is his countryman Ευστάθιος Ιωσηφίδης  (Efstathios Iosifidis). Stathis was a driving force in establishing the Greek openSUSE community and is a key member of the translation team. He is also a member of the GNOME foundation.and participated in mentoring for Google Summer of Code. He also has experience at some huge events including a Thessaloniki International Trade Fair and FOSSCOMM.

Ih his talk on ‘nonverbal communication at the booth’, Stathis shares some tips on reaching out to attendees and creating a successful rappor. Linux events are building a reputation for being inclusive and welcoming. It’s not always easy to do – sometimes the most ‘natural’ assumptions can be wrong: you’d be right about my status as ‘just a user’, but that other grey-haired older woman over there – she’s been writing bare metal code since before you were though of.  Meanwhile for those of us who are naturally a bit reserved (and who isn’t more comfortable behind a monitor?), the face-to-face interactions with strangers at a booth can be pretty daunting. I asked Stathis about his approach to breaking out of one’s shell.

“To begin with, I’ll look at the impression we create in the first few minutes – first impressions count! Things like  clothes and body language are important if the visitor will want to interact with you or just pass by. Where you stand is the key. If you stand behind the table, it’s kind of defensive. You need to stand in front of the table, so that way the visitor will like you and feel more friendly.”

That makes a lot of sense – I’ve seen some booths where the tables felt more like a fortress and the attendants were hidden away behind them, and I felt like an intruder disturbing a private meeting. Not a nice experience!  An openSUSE booth I’ve attended previously had a great solution to this problem, with a table for merchandise on one side, but open on the other, and attendants standing to talk to people at eye level. Of course, even then, some people, and especially new conference-goers, can be hesitant to approach.

“Many visitors are reticent and just check out our booth from a distance,” Stathis notes “When this happens you need to take the ‘offensive’ approach. Smile, say hi and talk first. Then you can give them promo materials and start the conversation.”

Stathis has identified some common mistakes that booth attendants make at open source events, but suggests that it isn’t really that difficult to improve your user experience.

“We don’t tend to let visitors talk,  and we don’t listen, ” he explains. “Instead, we say what we want to say. What we are focusing on is not always what the visitor wants to listen to – for example, if the visitor wants to hear that Gnome is faster, has beautiful colours, has userful extensions etc, the chances are that we will be telling them that ‘openSUSE currently has Gnome 3.4 and soon we’ll have Gnome 3.6, that it has gtk3 instead of gtk2…’ – and that’s a huge mistake.  “The key to everything is ask the right questions –  and shut up and listen!  It’s a point I really want to emphasise –  it’s the visitor who should be talking most of the time, and not you. You do the listening. ”

Stathis feels that a personal connection is important, and evergreen wisdom still holds true. “Remember too that people like to hear their name, so try to remember names and use them in conversation.” That’s an ‘oldie but a goodie’ that I struggle with – thank heavens for conference nametags! Part of the process of the conversation is finding out why they are there and what they need from you. Stathis says “After you evaluate their statements and questions, then you need to  either “forward” the visitor to someone from the group that knows best the answer, or depending the personality and the issue, give them some answers yourself.”

More advanced Programmers who have mastered some coding skills will find many talks to help them enhance their ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ skills, exploring ideas around development as well as lessons and hands-on workshops.

‘Building RPMs for Starters’  is a fantastic choice if you’re interested in getting ‘hands on’ with Linux. Learn basic packaging skills that you can apply to your own software or even use to help maintain packages for the distribution. (ask Nelson for a quote about this).   Straight after this talk is Stephan ‘coolo’ Kulow’s  session on packaging perl, python, ruby and java.

Web developers aren’t forgotten. As part of the Linux Days proram you can catch Michal Čihař ;s ‘Online translation using Weblate’ at 11.30. You can learn how to make your software accessable to Linux users with Nelson Marques.

How will your software fit in the world of open source? Learn more about the ecosystem with  Libor Pecháček’s ‘How software gets from the community to commercial enterprise’.

There are many more advanced sessions at the conference, see more in the schedule.

Be there! The conference will start in less than two weeks! That means it is time to find accomodation, start planning your trip and of course make sure you are registered!

Source: openSUSE News

[openSUSE.fi]

Learn More About Free Software Next Week in Prague
11 October 2012, 5:00 pm



The openSUSE Conference 2012 takes place next week from October 20th to 23rd in Prague, Czech Republic.

When you first step into the world of Free Software, it isn’t always easy: to paraphrase Richard Stallman, we are used to “trading freedom for convenience”. Understanding why you are using Free/Libre/OpenSource Software and seeing it at work can be inspiring – you might well find yourself on the path to be a Free/Libre Open Source Software contributor or advocate. Seeing how the principles of FLOSS are applied to things other than software can be equally inspiring and like Free Software, it is a revolution you can contribute to! You’ll find this and more inspiration in the Future Media track at this year’s conference.

This track aimed specifically at bringing a wider scope to the conference and with talks by people like Georg Greve, founder of the Free Software Foundation Europe, Lydia Pintscher from the WikiMedia Foundation and Bas van Abel from the FabLab movement, the sessions will you a proper knowledge base on the why and what of the ‘open’ movement.

We spoke with a number of the speakers to give you an idea what they will talk about.



Earlier interviews On Tuesday we already published the interview with Linux Defender Armijn Hemel from the Open Invention Network. Click here for a blip.tv link. and here for YouTube and we also interviewed Agustin Benito, our keynote speaker, who will talk about the importance of Small and Medium businesses for Linux World Dominance. See here for Agustin on youtube or click here for a link to blip.tv.

Gamification and Engaging Design After the Keynote on Saturday morning comes the first choice from the packed program. You might like to consider Thijs de Vries’ session on Gamification, using concepts from gaming in software design.

Thijs de Vries’ talk on Gamification provides inspiration for software developers who want to explore design concepts and create a richer user experience. Discover how software developers are using ideas from the world of gaming to create more intuitive user inferfaces, engaging websites and fun. As Free Software developer, getting your users engaged in your application is a good thing – the more people care, the more likely they are to be willing to contribute.

We did a video interview with Thijs de Vries, which you can watch below or click here for blip.tv if you prefer that.

If you can’t open it, you don’t own it! Bas van Abel tells us to start demanding open products. He states that “if you’re not open-sourcing and making stuff radically transparent, the way it happened in open source, (…) in the physical world then stuff will not change.”

Bas has been involved in the ‘maker’ movement, setting up fablabs in the Netherlands and in short advancing the case of decentralized production. He believes that, by bringing products closer to the consumers, there can be more innovation and less waste. He explains fablabs and his vision in the interview below. Click here for blip.

Why Groupware matters Likewise, Georg Greve’s ‘What you don’t understand will still control you’ takes a look at the importance of Free Software. Georg founded the Free Software Foundation Europe and has since moved on to ‘solving’ the problem of moving businesses to Free Software. According to him, the ‘office challenge’ consists of three pillars: the browser; the office suite; and groupware. While the browser and the office suite are well taken care of, free software groupware solutions are still very limited. And that blocks the other pillars. If you get a free office license with your groupware solution, why use LibreOffice? And if the collaboration tools integrated with our office and groupware require you to use a Microsoft browser, why also install Firefox?

But the current open source groupware solutions all have some fatal flaws. There are problems like bad scaling, no cross-platform clients, bad infrastructure, bad licencing, no community involvement and more. One solution exists which solves most of these: Kolab. Kolab however really needed a dedicated, commercial entity pushing development forward, providing enterprise-level support and marketing and assisting in deployments. So, Georg co-founded KolabSys to kickstart the progress of this groupware suite. Recently, version 3.0 was released with a boatload of improvements. In the interview below, Georg explains the importance of Kolab, the third pillar and why the solution they have developed is so good. Click here for blip.tv.

Ramon Roca: Building Networks Ramon Roca is a well known Spanish activist fighting for a free network. In 2004 he co-founded guifi.net, a grassroots Broadband initiative in which citizens provide themselves the telecommunication infrastructure they use without the participation of traditional Internet Service Providers (ISP’s). Today, Guifi.net connects more that eighteen thousand homes through a more than thirty three thousand kilometers-long network through radio links and optic fiber channels in Spain.

Guifi in action – from guifi.net To give some insight into his presentation, Ramon Roca spoke with Thanasis ‘Zoumpis’ Rousinopoulos. Ramon, born in rural Catalonia and in his late forties has been “a corporate IT professional for around 25 years, living in various places”. He’s now back in Catalonia where he has started a family.

He explained that Guifi.net started when “several people began cooperating by aggregating wireless networks”. The infrastructure is shared and supported by a social network of people who care about it and it has now grown into “a collective initiative led by the people with the aim of providing broadband as an alternative of traditional telcos. Just like in open source, you can participate in many ways” but here, we’re talking infrastructure, the main goal for the network. When asked what he considered big successes of Guifi, Ramon answered that for him “every single connection is a success itself, so now we can say that there are many thousands of successes, with different technologies (wireless or cable)”. He himself is of course also connected to the network, with “a fiber optic with 1 Gig symmetric at home. There is no magic behind it: when we manage the infrastructure, you’ll get the full benefit of the state of the art of it, and that is what fiber optic currently provides”. Finally, the end goal for Ramon is “Internet for all. That means having a network commons alternative worldwide, regardless if you call it guifi.net or not”.

Be there! This year oSC12 will take place at the Czech Technical University in Prague. The campus is located in the Dejvice district and is next to an underground station that gets you directly to the old town  - an opportunity you can’t miss!

As the interviews show, we have an incredible schedule lined up for you with speakers about a wide variety of topics, both going in-depth into core Linux technologies as well as folks talking about the why and how of Software (and hardware!) Freedom.

We expect to welcome about 500 Open Source developers, testers, usability experts, artists and professional attendees to the openSUSE conference, but we won’t be alone: this year, we work together with the local LinuxDays, SUSE Labs and the Gentoo community, making one big, smashing event!

The entire combined conference is expected to attract well over 1000 visitors. Admission to the openSUSE conference as well as LinuxDays, the SUSE Labs conference and the Gentoo miniconf is of course completely free.

The conference starts on October 20 2012 and ends on the 23rd. Be there!

Source: openSUSE News

[openSUSE.fi]

Reminder: Get BoFfin at openSUSE Conference 2012!
12 October 2012, 5:30 pm



Everyone knows what really matters at a conference happens outside the scheduled talks, right? The life of the openSUSE project happens when we get together, talk and plan, and this happens much faster face to face than on the mailing lists or forums. These Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions are how we do this.

Team members within the openSUSE Project should take the opportunity the openSUSE Conference offers to sit down together and hash out their plans for future activity.

Get your team’s BoF Session at openSUSE Conference 2012 planned now!

BoF HOW-TO:

• Enter your BoF into the openSUSE Wiki page here. There are 29 hour-long slots available in both venues over the four days of the conference, so there is plenty of time to talk.
• Plan your BoF. Agree an agenda, consult team members who are not attending oSC12 for input, and make sure the important things you want to do for upcoming openSUSE distribution releases or changes you would like to have in the project are on the list.
• Remind people who haven’t yet decided if they are coming to the conference.
• Announce your BoF on mailing lists – face to face meetings are the best way to turn interested conference visitors into new and motivated contributors.
• Nominate a BoF chair who will be responsible for running the session
• We recommend that you keep your BoF short and sweet – one or two hours, if you have a detailed agenda to work through in your team.
• Nominate someone to take minutes, and publish those minutes on the relevant meeting list and add them to the openSUSE wiki!
• Read more info and tips in this article

BoF sessions will take place in dedicated labs at the venues.

We look forward to seeing lots of you talking until your jaws ache!

Source: openSUSE News

[openSUSE.fi]

Announcing openSUSE Conference 2012 Sponsors
15 October 2012, 8:00 pm

Next weekend the openSUSE Conference 2012 begins in Prague, Czech Republic. Without the generous and comprehensive support of our sponsors, this event would not be possible. So we’d like to present them to you in this post.

Platinum sponsor SUSE Linux GmbH

 

 

No surprises here, SUSE, as the main sponsor of the openSUSE Project, is supporting the conference.

SUSE is the original provider of the enterprise Linux distribution and the most interoperable platform for mission-critical computing. It’s the only Linux recommended by VMware, Microsoft and SAP. And it’s supported on more hardware and software than any other enterprise Linux distribution.

Gold sponsor Aeroaccess GmbH

 

 

Aeroaccess stands for integrated mobile communication. Aeroaccess are specialists for design, implementation and management of your mobile communication and network environment, in order to enable integrated business communication, independent of location and time.

Silver sponsor Google, Inc.

 

 

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Bronze sponsor B1 Systems

 

 

B1 Systems offers professional consulting, specific development, individual and continuous support as well as qualified trainings.

B1′s comprehensive Linux / Open Source project experience is based on the successful completion of many projects for numerous major enterprises as well as on the professional accomplishment of long-term support. In close collaboration with the customer B1 Systems develops target-oriented and customized solutions. With established Linux solutions based on practical experience B1 has built an excellent reputation and is happy to pass this knowledge on through individual support, professional books and practical work in a wide variety of Linux / Open Source community & enterprise projects.

Supporting Sponsors ownCloud, Inc.

 

 

ownCloud is a flexible, open source file sync and share solution. Whether using a mobile device, a workstation, or a web client, ownCloud provides the ability to put the right files at your employees’ fingertips on any device in one simple-to-use, secure, private and controlled solution.

Univention GmbH

 

 

Univention is the most important producer of Open Source complete solutions, the enterprise Linux distribution Univention Corporate Server (UCS), identity and infrastructure management systems and groupware and desktop solutions in the German-speaking world.

Media Partners Linux Magazine

Available in both print and digital editions, Linux Magazine brings practical, hands-on solutions for real users who depend on Linux in their daily lives. Our readers are a new generation of Linux experts who are pushing the limits of Linux as a server, desktop, and development platform. They read Linux Magazine to learn more about technologies and products for Linux. Our unique combination of advanced coverage with a practical emphasis makes Linux Magazine a great fit for the kinds of reader who tend to make decisions and pass on recommendations.

Root.cz

 

 

Root.cz is a well-known IT and open source technology news site in the Czech Republic.

Thanks! We’re very gratful for the support these sponsors provide us for the event.

Source: openSUSE News

[jmp]

Tervetuloa openSUSE-iltaan!

17:00 OpenSUSE Suomi

    Tuorein openSUSE yleisesittely
    SUSE Manager
    OpenStack (SUSE Cloud)

18:30-21:00 Vapaata keskustelua, sauna, ruokaa ja juomaa

Paikka on Pitäjänmäellä Valimon aseman tuntumassa. Parhaiten paikalle pääsee A- junalla tai bussilla 54 (päätepysäkki).
 Myös kaikki Vihdintietä kulkevat bussit menevät läheltä. Kartta.

Pääoven luona on henkilö, joka ohjaa eteenpäin klo 16:00 Flug- yhdistyksen kokoukseen ja klo 17:00 yhdistyksen ja openSUSEn yhteiseen iltatilaisuuteen.
 Jos tulet eri aikaan, niin soita numeroon 050 5407788 (Tuomas Levoniemi)

Ole hyvä ja ilmoittaudu Doodlen kautta: http://www.doodle.com/wngd5fbw535w66g8

[guest405]

TIlaisuus on täynnä. Minulle voi pistää ykistyisviestiä jos haluaa vielä mukaan. Katson huomenna, että on onko tullut peruutuksia,

T: Tuomas Levoniemi

[guest405]

Kiitoksia kaikille OpenSuse iltamiin osallistumisesta. Ps. Tapasin eilen Messukeskuksessa sen oikean Suse- kameleontin

[jmp]

Iso kiitos Tuokille ja Fujitsulle saunatiloista.

Jostain syystä tuo kuvien ottaminen unohtuu mutta tässä nyt muutama kuva.

[openSUSE.fi]

Newcomer experience in openSUSE and other FOSS communities – Survey
7 November 2012, 9:50 pm

Kevin Carillo, a PhD student currently living in Wellington (New Zealand) is doing some research on Free/Open Source Software communities. He asked the openSUSE community for help, especially those who have joined the openSUSE community after January 2010 (within approximately the last 3 years), in assisting him with his research. He is looking to find out how newcomers to a FOSS community become valued, sustained contributors and thus he needs input from people, both technical and non-technical, on their experiences as newcomers. Find the survey here. Read on to find out what Kevin has to say about the survey!

A quest for community citizens openSUSE is a successful community that keeps attracting new contributors and that has a reputation of being extremely newcomer-friendly. But is this enough to make sure that openSUSE remains a healthy and growing project?

Suppose a community manages to attract 20 new members every month and suppose a large number of them do not comply to the code of conduct, commit changes without considering the people or modules/components being affected by the commits, do not attend or contribute to any of the community events, do not assist any other members when they seek for help, do not treat other members with respect … It will not take a lot of time until the health of the community will be affected and the future of the project seriously jeopardized.

The main assumption that motivated this project is that attracting new members has become crucial for a large majority of FOSS communities but this is not a sufficient condition to ensure the success and prosperity of a project.

So, yes … it is important to attract newcomers but a community needs to make sure that a certain proportion of these newcomers become ‘good’ contributors from the community perspective. ‘Good’ in the sense that they shall contribute to the well-being and growth of the community. ‘Good’ as good community citizens.

What do newcomers really experience? Keeping all that in mind, FOSS projects have thus to do a good job at ‘socializing’ their newcomers and turning them into contributors. Doing a good job here means that FOSS projects shall ensure that they help generate those citizenship behaviors from newcomers by designing appropriate newcomer programmes and procedures.

openSUSE has initiatives to facilitate the integration of newcomers with its active involvement in GSoC or GCI, or the use of junior jobs for instance. Other large FOSS projects may rely on other types of newcomer initiatives such as the use of newcomer resources (e.g. tutorials), newcomer sub-communities, formal/informal mentoring, or sponsorship mechanisms…

However, it seems that the other side of the coin is less understood by communities: the actual experience of newcomers.

How are the contributions and the behavior of a new member affected if he or she has received formal mentoring by one or several experienced members? Are junior jobs really helping integrate newcomers? How important is the support of a community towards its newcomers? This is what I am trying to find out.

How is this study going to help openSUSE? The data will help gain insights about the experience of newcomers within the openSUSE community. In addition, it will allow to understand how to design effective newcomer initiatives to ensure that openSUSE will remain a successful and healthy community.

The dataset will be released under a share-alike ODbL license so that openSUSE contributors can extract as much value as possible from the data.

Since this survey involves other large FOSS projects such as Mozilla, Debian, Gnome, Ubuntu, or Gentoo to name but a few, it will also be possible to compare practices across projects in order to identify what works from what does not work when facilitating the integration of newcomers.

About the survey This survey is anonymous, and no information that would identify you is being collected. I expect the survey to take around 20 minutes of your time.

The survey is available at this site.

It will be available until Tuesday, 20 November, 2012.

If you know members of the openSUSE community who you think would be interested in completing it, please do not hesitate to let them know about this research.

I will post news about my progress with this research, and the results on my blog. Don’t hesitate to contact me by mail.

Thanks for participating!

Source: openSUSE News

[openSUSE.fi]

openSUSE 12.3 Milestone 1 is Ready for You!
8 November 2012, 7:34 pm



News fresh from the Factory: the openSUSE Release team has made the openSUSE 12.3 Milestone 1 available for testing and feedback. There has been lots of plumbing in the infrastructure, with most prominently the removal of SuSEconfig – the capitalization of its name should give a hint about its age. If you want to get a taste of the upcoming release or want to help test and develop this awesome, green Linux distribution: come and get it!

Updated infrastructure With Milestone One of openSUSE 12.3, things start getting interesting. For starters, the init system continues to evolve rapidly. Sysvinit has now been removed, following some discussion. Given complete dominion over the boot procedure and device management, systemd has swallowed udev and udisks whole, and the result is systemd v195, up from v44!. This offers the following features:

• Completely migrated to /usr
• Improved journal data and queries
• Additional conditions for unit files (the systemd equivalent of /etc/init.d/ scripts under sysvinit)
• /media temporary mount points are now under /run/user/
• Suspend, hibernate and the laptop lid switch are now handled by systemd

Watch a video presentation from OSC12 about developments in systemd on the openSUSETV channel on blip.

Dracut and PackageKit Discussions about Dracut vs the custom mkinitrd scripts are ongoing. Currently, different scripts are used to create images in different places and Dracut offers an opportunity to fix that – but it is in dire need of more testing and also still lacks a number of features. There are also talks about what to do with PackageKit: the current zypper backend does not work very well and the new PackageKit (which brings a great many desirable changes) really needs a fully rewritten version.

SuSEconfig Another piece of long-time S.u.S.E., SuSE, SUSE and openSUSE infrastructure to be demolished for 12.3 is SuSEconfig, probably the most annoying command to enter manually. SuSEconfig was created to replace /etc/rc.config and the often-criticized direct modification of config files by YaST, as a modular host for configuration scripts to apply system-wide changes after installing or removing groups of packages – for example, rebuilding the font database, applying policy stored in a standard format in /etc/sysconfig to the actual config files, or migrating gconf schemas after a version update. Performing these actions once after installing a group of packages reduced installation time. With the trend to performing these actions in post-install/post-uninstall specfile stanzas, or via rpm triggers, the move to dynamic self-configuration by Xorg and NetworkManager, and the removal of slow operations at install time, SuSEconfig is without a role for the first time in more than 12 years, and sysadmins’ pinkie fingers will get a much-needed break.

Software changes This milestone of course also brings many newer versions in toolchain and for end users. GNOME is now updated to version 3.6 and this milestone also includes the 1.0 version of GStreamer. The software collection from KDE is incremented to 4.9.2 with Qt 4.8.3 underneath. Firefox and Thunderbird are updated to latest stable 16.0.2 releases and colord-gtk and nginx are new. Removals include the Evolution GroupWise connector, removed due to lack of maintenance. F-Spot likewise falls by the wayside, as does the Sabayon configuration management tool. The Smolt hardware tool was dropped as it was deemed to have served its purpose.

In the toolchain and platform section we have the following major changes:

• Switched to libpng 1.5
• binutils 2.23 (previous was 2.22)
• gcc has been updated to 4.7.2 release
• We are now shipping bison 2.6 and flex 2.5.37
• Python 3.3 is now shipped (up from 3.2)
• Mesa 9.
• xf86-video-ati 6.98.1 (CHANGES??)
• xf86-video-intel 2.20.12
• We are now shipping the stable 3.6.3 kernel

Helping out easier than ever! As expected from a development release, there is still a lot of work to do, so your input at this early stage will be a huge help in making the final release into the beautifully polished work that we aim for. openSUSE 12.3 Milestone 1 has a list of most annoying bugs here, please add issues you find and help fix them. My old blog about BURPing on build.opensuse.org is still relevant: find a how-to for fixing issues here.

See for yourself what the next version of openSUSE has in store for you at our download center.

Source: openSUSE News

[openSUSE.fi]

The Board Election 2012
13 November 2012, 11:00 am

This years openSUSE Election Committee is in the pleasant position to announce the 2012 Board elections[0].

The timeline we decided for this year election is the following:



November 13th (Phase 0)

- Announcement of the openSUSE Board election for 2012.

- Start of 2 week period to apply for an openSUSE membership (in order to vote).

- Start of 2 week phase to stand for a position in the openSUSE Board.

November 27th

- Notification of intent to run, and application for an openSUSE membership close (end of phase 0).

November 28th (Phase 1)

- Start of 1 week campaign for the candidates before the ballots open (campaign might be done until ballots close).

December 5th (Phase 2)

- Ballots open

December 16th

- Ballots close (end of phase 2)

December 17th

- Announcement of the results

So, if you want to participate in the openSUSE board and influence the future direction of the project please stand up and announce your candidacy. If you want to vote for the candidates, please make sure your openSUSE membership [1] is approved. If you are a contributor of openSUSE but you are not a member yet, apply for membership now[2] and be a part of the changes to come.

For the openSUSE Board will be 2 seats to be elected, each for a 2 year term.

If you have any questions about the election or the board’s tasks, please contact the election commitee (election-officials@opensuse.org) or the board (board@opensuse.org).

With Honour

This year Election Committee

Bryen M Yunashko

Izabel Valverde

Thomas Schmidt

[0] http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election

[1] http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Members

[2] http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Membership_officials#Process

Source: openSUSE News

[openSUSE.fi]

openSUSE at LinuxCon
21 November 2012, 12:49 am

Two weeks ago, openSUSE Ambassadors Ilias and Diomidis joined the SUSE crew at LinuxCon in Barcelona, Spain, to represent the Geeko to the visitors of this conference. As most ambassadors do, they wrote an excellent report about the event which we didn’t want you all to miss. To give you a taste of the event, Ilias send the report with the following comment: “it was an amazing experience for me and Diomidis.” Read on for more details!

Booth after setting it up (with us in it) Introduction The openSUSE Project participated at LinuxCon Europe 2012 (05-08 Nov 2012), sharing booth space with SUSE. Two ambassadors (Zoumpis,Diomidis] were there to represent the openSUSE Community during the conference. Let’s see what happened there!

Pre conference Day On Sunday evening we made our first visit at the Linuxcon Venue. Our first mission was to visit the registration desk and get our ID’s and T-Shirts, then we went to the co-hosted (SUSE/openSUSE) booth and started to unpack the SUSE goodies. Allan Clark, who organized the SUSE attendance at the event, also joined us to help with the booth setup.

First day Our day started early, at 7.30 am. We went directly to Hotel Fira Palace, where the LinuxCon was hosted and we prepared the booth. We attended the morning keynotes: Advancing the User Experience by Mark Suttleworth and

Why Evernote runs their own Linux servers instead of “The Cloud” by Dave Engberg.

We didn’t attend more presentations than the above because we had to be at the booth. At the booth our main job was to welcome, assist and help the visitors. Also we had the biggest promo staff give away on Monday. openSUSE dvd’s, hats, stickers, lighters, openSUSE Community flyers and USB sticks. Finally we had a contest for winning 4 SUSE laptop bags and the draw took place on Wednesday.

Feedback The feedback we got from the conference attendees was very good and friendly about the openSUSE distro and community of course. The common questions that people had were:

• Which is the difference between SUSE and openSUSE
• What software and features does include the openSUSE 12.2 Promo DVD
• Does openSUSE 12.2 support ARM architecture
• Asking if the promo stuff was free.

Furthermore we got very good and promising feedback about the Open Build Service (OBS). We also went to a few presentations: Open Source Community Metrics : Tips and Techniques for Measuring Participation by Down Foster (Puppet Labs) and The Giant IT Vending Machineby Daniel Roberts Ridruejo (BitNami)

Ralf Flaxa, SUSE’s VP of engineering talks at LinuxCon Second day As we spent the full first day at the booth, it was the right moment to attend more presentations: this time we took turns staffing the booth. The day begun as the previous one by attending the keynotes, like Open Source Cloud Platforms by Marten Mickos [CEO,Eucalyptus Systems] and Importance of Linux at Intel by Imad Sousou [OTC,Intel]. As the openSUSE Release Party was about to take place we informed people about it.

After the day at the conference was over, we went to the party organized by Zoumpis and a Spanish friend, Fran L. Murcia. Many people from the local KDE community attended at the party but people from the Conference as well (Alan Clark, SUSE Employees, HP employees, Director of Spanish-spoken Linux Magazine). Furthermore some other people who read the party announcement were there. In total we had about 15 people talking about the openSUSE 12.2 release and its features, openSUSE in general and of course we had fun.

he first day we (me and Diomidis) were at the openSUSE booth , but we attended the Keynotes as well. The other days we did take turns. We assisted the openSUSE booth and attendedpresentations as well. The SUSE booth was asisted only by Alan Clark and SUSE employees. The stuff we had was, openSUSE Promo DVD’s, the new openSUSE leaflets, SUSE hats, usb sticks, openSUSE flashlights.

This time, we went to way more presentations, of course.

Meeting famous people (yes, that is Linus) Day Three The day started with Linus Torvarlds interview, no need for introduction! Many questions were made, many of them were about on how Linus sees the future of Linux, what features the next kernel will have and of course there was a discussion about embedded arm devices. Again, we attended presentations as well and talked to many people at the booth.

At the end of the second day of the conference it was time to deconstruct the booth and do the raffle for the SUSE bags. Four laptop bags were given away.

Fourth day As there was no booth we were free to attend any of the presentations that were taking place. So we chose to attend the Gluster Workshop and Yocto Project Developer Day .

Conclusion Now we have so many things to share, many good memories and so much enthusiasm to pass to you openSUSE community people. But let’s keep it short: LinuxCon is one of the best experiences that a Linux fan/developer/user etc can get. Motivational speeches, enthusiastic people talking about open software and hardware, workshops from top-tier developers around the world, literally EVERYTHING about Linux and it’s derivatives. Embedded devices and yocto were probably most visible. All we can say its that going to LinuxCon was a dream that became true for us!!

Here you can find photos of the conference and here are some more.

Report by

Athanasios-Ilias Rousinopoulos (aka zoumpis)

Diomidis Anadiotis

Source: openSUSE News

[openSUSE.fi]

Planned maintenance downtime December 1st
24 November 2012, 6:16 pm

Update: all services are back – please report issues via mail to admin @ opensuse.org

On Saturday, December 1st 2012, at approximately 05:00 UTC our data center team will do a backend storage upgrade. The planned window is 8-10 hours for the maintenance, and specific applications will probably be not available until 24:00 UTC as listed below.

• openSUSE Forums
• openSUSE Lizards
• openSUSE News
• openSUSE (landing page and wikis)
• Novell Open ID for SUSE Studio

The plan is to keep read only versions of each affected site running. We will keep this announcement updated with the current state and also report changes to opensuse-announce@opensuse.org.

To avoid confusion – the services listed below are not scheduled for any downtime and accordingly up for the whole time:

• openSUSE download page

• Documentation
• Video recordings
• Mailing lists
• IRC channels

• Planet openSUSE
• openSUSE Connect
• openSUSE Shop

• Features openSUSE
• Build Service
• Bugzilla

Source: openSUSE News

[openSUSE.fi]

Meet the openSUSE Board Candidates
28 November 2012, 2:14 pm



The period for standing up for election to the 2013 openSUSE Board is now closed and the openSUSE Election Officials committee is proud to announce this year’s candidates.  Please welcome the following candidates in alphabetical order:

• Matt Barringer (announcement)
• Richard Brown (announcement)
• Carl Fletcher (announcement)
• Manu Gupta (announcement)
• Chuck Payne (announcement)
• Robert Schweikert (announcement)
• Stefan Seyfried (announcement)
• Raymond Woonick (announcement)

What an exciting list of candidates, all extremely qualified to represent our community in the upcoming board.  With just two open seats to be filled to begin a two-year term,  Agustin Bethencourt, openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE,  recently noted: “Interesting times are ahead and, In any possible scenario we are thinking of, the Board will play a key role.”

So What’s Next? As defined in the previous announcement by the Election Officials, the remaining steps in this year’s election timeline are that the candidates shall begin officially campaigning henceforth.  Balloting will begin on 5 December, 2012.

All eligible members of the openSUSE Project will be notified with the process for submitting their ballot to choose their two favorite candidates for the Board.  Members will have up to 16 December, 2012 to vote.

Then, if all goes well, and we don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t, we’ll be announcing the winners of this year’s election on 17 December, 2012.

You can read the full set of timeline and procedures here.

The Election Officials committee would like to extend good luck wishes to each and every candidate and look forward to the conclusion of this exciting campaign.

 With special thanks to victorhck for the creation of the art graphic on this page.

 

Source: openSUSE News

[openSUSE.fi]

Board Report – Travel Sponsorship Programme
3 December 2012, 7:07 pm

Summarizing the Travel Support Program



The openSUSE Travel Support Program aims to support contributors representing openSUSE at events, conferences and hack-fests with their travel and hotel costs. The program pays up to 80% of the travel and/or hotel costs for contributors who could not afford going to these events otherwise. In turn the contributors make a worthy contribution at the event and report back to the openSUSE community about what they did.

The Travel Committee also decides on travel support for openSUSE events like the openSUSE Conference and the openSUSE Summit.

Current Committee includes

•  Kostas Koudaras (ambassador event planning)
•  Izabel Valverde (finance & planning)
•  Agustin Benito Bethencourt (openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE)

Results

The Travel Support Team has till now sponsored various conferences including FOSDEM, Cerea Fair, Solutions Linux, COSCUP, Indiana Linux Fest, Linux Tag, SELF, Libre Office Graphic Meeting and loads of others. Along with this, the Travel Committee also handles sponsorship handling for openSUSE Summit and openSUSE Conference which in itself are very tedious tasks.

Numbers 

• TSP : 15
• Summit :  11
• openSUSE Conference : 21

A total of 37 sponsorships were given out this year.

What we need you to do?

If you think you need a sponsorship, then APPLY For it. However there are a few rules, which you have to keep in mind. So if you are thinking of applying, have a look at here

 

 

Source: openSUSE News

[openSUSE.fi]

2013 Board Elections begin today!
5 December 2012, 2:07 pm



The excitement has been building for weeks and now the most important phase of the openSUSE Board elections begins today — Election Time!

Two seats are open for election by members of the openSUSE Project.  The first seat is vacated by Henne Vogelsang who has completed his two-term limit.  The second seat is  currently held by Manu Gupta, appointed to fill in for Peter Linnel who stepped down in August of 2012.  Both seats are for a two-year term that begins in January 2013 and ends in  January 2015.

How to Vote If you are a current member of the openSUSE Project, you will receive an email with instructions on how to vote via openSUSE Connect polling system.  You must be a member in good standing on or before 27 November 2012.  If you have not yet received an email within the next 24 hours, please contact the Election Officials committee at election-officials@opensuse.org.

Each eligible voter will be given two votes to cast, one for each seat to be elected in this cycle.

Voting begins today and concludes  at 23:00 UTC on 16 December 2012.

But I can’t decide! With 8 excellent candidates running for two seats, we feel your pain.  Luckily, there’s two ways to learn more about the candidates.

Option 1:  Platforms and Blogs Read the candidates platforms and blogs here.

Option 2:  Live Q&A Debate Tomorrow, Thursday at 15:00 UTC (what’s my timezone?), candidates will gather in the #opensuse-project channel on Freenode IRC network.  A two hour session, moderated by the Election Officials, this will be an opportunity for you to ask questions live .

Can’t make it, no problem.  We will post transcript of the debate here and on the mailing lists.  Got a question you want to ask but can’t make it?  Post your question in the comment section below and we’ll make sure the question gets asked during the debate.

Thank you,

openSUSE Election Officials

With special thanks to Marcus Moeller for creation of artwork banner.

Source: openSUSE News